Wayne N. Miller August 7, 2022 I write this on the opening day of the 2022 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Leading up to this assembly there has been a significant movement to re-examine the entire structure and constitutional polity of the ELCA, largely motivated by a series of recent […]
Success and the Cross: A Response to “The Perils of Success”
In an article for Let’s Talk, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pastor Paul Buettner offered a thoughtful challenge to the wholesale appropriation of our cultural “success ethic” as a valid measurement of faithfulness. As one who has had the privilege of serving congregations that are “thriving” as well as those that are “declining,” I share a […]
Breaking Free
Like many in our Church, I am deeply grateful to our Presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, for raising the challenge to re-engage on questions of race and privilege in our society. This is work in which I have been personally involved for many years , and frankly, one that continues to challenge and sometimes to frustrate […]
Holding the Center
The Church exists to call the whole world into a reconciled relationship with God through a relationship with Jesus Christ by the way of the cross. Everything that we say and do is accountable to this identity. Yet as a practical matter, we have spent centuries trying to fully understand the implications of this identity […]
Structures of Mission and Ministry Leadership
All baptized Christians are called by virtue of their baptismal covenant to live a lifelong ministry of Word and Service. The Word is the grounding for all that we do, and all expressions of Christian life begin with our self-understanding as servants of all. As a practical matter, however, it has been good and necessary […]
Justice
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. (Rev. 21:1) The November gathering of the Chicago Council of Religious Leaders convened at St. Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Church at the north end of Lakeshore Drive. While we were there, I spent some time […]
Evangelizing the Contemporary Urban Metropolitan Landscape
This issue of Let’s Talk has posed the question of whether or not it is still necessary or even appropriate to engage in the intentional Christian evangelization of a highly diverse, pluralistic social environment. The question itself implies an attitude or understanding about what evangelism is and how evangelism is done that is highly suspect. […]
Remembering Joe Sittler
During my middler year at LSTC I was a commuter student, which meant that, in order to beat the traffic, I was often sitting in the refectory early in the morning sipping coffee and reading. It was not uncommon in those years to find Joseph Sittler sitting at one of the small tables looking out […]
Mission Communities: Seeking a Fresh Approach
It is no secret to anyone in North American Christian circles that Christianity specifically, and organized religion in general, have fallen on hard times, from an institutional development point of view. In many rural communities the decline is part of a general demographic shift caused by the substitution of agri-business for family farming and the […]
Imagining Leadership
[Samuel] sent and brought [David] in…. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this the one.” I Samuel 16:12 As a kid, I always had a particular fondness for the story of David’s anointing as the once and future king. Perhaps this was at least partly because, since I was the one who was […]