The Multicultural Center at LSTC opened its doors in October of 2006 as a newly funded project of the church for the purpose of strengthening the church’s commitment to multi-cultural ministries. Working jointly with the Vocation and Education unit of the ELCA, ELCA program units and the ELCA cluster of seminaries, the Center serves as […]
Archives for February 2015
Religiosidad Popular: The Virgin Mary and Lutherans
Presented at the Cofradía Católica-Reformada Meeting, Santa Cruz Lutheran Church, Joliet, Ill., September 14, 2006. I. What is “Religiosidad Popular?” One of Virgilio Elizondo’s signficant contributions to contemporary theological thought has been the invitation to take seriously what is called “religiosidad popular” — “popular religion” or “popular piety” in distinction to “official” or “institutionalized faith” […]
Great Commission Imperatives Shaping Hispanic-Latino Ministry
This document, as originally presented, is a mission plan in progress. A second draft of the full strategy was received in April of 2006 as a foundational document for Hispanic-Latino ministry by the Northern Illinois Synod’s Outreach Committee. That committee established a Hispanic ministry task force shortly after the strategy was received. Development of the […]
High Church, Low Church, “Long Tail” Church?
Last summer I traveled to St. Augustine’s House in Oxford, Michigan for the first of what I hope will be many visits. For fifty years, St. Augustine’s House has been tending the thin flame of Lutheran monasticism, a phenomenon marginal at best within Lutheranism and practically unknown outside of it. Yet the monastery has fine […]
What the Lutheran Church Offers Hispanics
This sounds a little bit like the kind of subject you would find in a questionnaire made for marketing research. You know, the sort of study where you compare and contrast what you can offer versus the needs of a particular population to find a niche within. It’s similar to the old story of the […]
Mary, Mother of God: A Confessional & Patristic Reading from a Hispanic Pastor
My interest in and understanding of the Mother of God comes from an outreach perspective. Let me explain: I have been a missionary to Hispanic communities for the last eleven years, both as a mission developer for the ELCA’s Division of Outreach and now as a parish pastor. A missionary needs to understand his context […]
Bibliography for Hispanic-Latino Ministry
(part I) Arias, Miguel; Francis, Mark R. & Perez-Roidriguez, Arturo J., La Navidad Hispana at Home and at Church. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2000. Carrasquillo, Hector and Cassese, Giacomo, Reaching the Latino Community: A Manual for Congregational Leaders (with contributions from many leaders in the Latino Community of the ELCA). Chicago: Evangelical Lutheran Church in […]
Equipping the Saints for Diakonia
… equipping the saints for diakonia; building up the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:12) diakonia is a two-year process of spiritual formation and theological education for baptized members of the Lutheran Church. This process occurs in three basic ways: By thorough grounding in the classic seminary disciplines of practical, systematic, historical, and Biblical theology; By […]
Diversity of a Different Sort
Ethnicity is an important factor in understanding diversity within the complex identity of the ELCA. It is one of a number of variables necessary to comprehend the social and cultural complexities of any large pluralistic population in the United States. Other key factors are gender, sexuality, class, region, and local social morphology (urban, suburban, exurban, […]
Another Way to Interpret the Bible
On the basis of Bishop Landahl’s introduction of Dr. Ralph Klein at the 2007 Metropolitan Chicago Synod Assembly, I thought that Dr. Klein would address options for interpreting the Bible. In other words, he would give us a lesson in hermeneutics. The bishop introduced the professor by reminding the assembly that the ELCA is engaged […]
Reflections on a Mission to Honduras
“I want you to join our mission trip to Honduras!” That was the enthusiastic invitation I received from Pastor Gary Olson of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Naperville. I agreed to think about it – and then politely declined at a later date. When I mentioned the invitation (rather unenthus-iastically) at a council meeting the […]
Receiving Guadalupe
No Lutheran has taken up the scholarly and ecclesial issues surrounding Our Lady of Guadalupe — in terms of its narratives, popular manifestations, liturgical history, iconography, and implications for theology as a whole — as has liturgist Maxwell Johnson of Notre Dame. “Religiosidad Popular: The Virgin Mary and Lutherans” in the last issue of Let’s […]
Voces Luteranas Emergentes
(An English language version follows the original text) Este artículo desea dar a conocer la trayectoria de las voces proféticas y evangelísticas latino-luteranas que se han incorporado dentro y fuera de la estructura de la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana en América (IELA) para promover un enfoque evangelístico que es auténtico, autóctono y representativo de las comunidades […]
How Do We Talk About God?
I am what you might call “old school.” When I grew up, we children were taught to pray to God, our Father. In confirmation class I learned Luther’s explanation of the introduction of the Lord’s Prayer: “Here God encourages us to believe that he is truly our Father and we are his children. We therefore […]
Anxious Exegesis and Immigration
An experienced observer of public religion in America could, without reading anything on the topic, imagine the outlines of the unedifying theological debate over our country’s immigration policies. Recent attempts at rewriting immigration laws have addressed the difficult policy areas of border security, a guest worker program, establishing the status of those already here illegally […]
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