A blog from the Southeastern Synod Council

by the Rev. Michael Huntley




In order to be this church’s chief catalysts for mission and outreach, synods need to be organized and supported. For the sake of congregations, synods should be centers of encouragement and facilitators of planning and partnership. For the sake of the larger church, synods should be the constant reminders that our common life is larger than the local congregation.

Excerpt from the LIFT Task Force Report, 2011

How can we help congregations to network with one another for shared ministry in our conferences and synod? What are some ways that we can encourage grass roots-based ministry initiatives across a large geography to strengthen local and shared ministry in our synod? What can we do to help congregations to join together and pool resources to strengthen the vitality of congregations and faithful Christians seeking to live and share the Good News of Jesus Christ in our local communities and beyond?

These are the types of questions we wrestled with at the Synod Council meeting on September 9-10 at Cross of Life Lutheran Church in Roswell, GA.

This is now my second year to serve on Synod Council, and I am amazed at where we have come over the past year. Last September, we spent the lion’s share of our time reading through reports and acting upon action items that they contained. It was standard committee busy work that, while important, didn’t seem to me to relate to issues that most of us attend to in daily ministry.

This month’s conversation was much different.

We talked extensively, this time, about identifying concrete ways for us to create and nurture relationships between our congregations in order to strengthen ministry. Specifically, we want to:

1. Foster stronger relationships at the conference level and encourage congregations to partner more deeply in shared ministry at the local level. We believe that strengthening conference ministry will grow and strengthen our congregations’ ministries.


2. Cultivate a broader understanding and shared vision of what it means to be a synod of the ELCA. How can leaders in our synod, at all levels, increase our partnership and shared ministry by connecting congregations as a synod and beyond? For example, the disaster recovery work in northern Alabama, Missouri, and other places is our ministry, rather than the ministry of the synod or the ELCA. Together, we are the synod and part of the wider ministry of 65 synods and 9 regions in the ELCA.


3. Find ways to use some of our time together at Synod Assembly to network and begin conversation that would extend beyond the Assembly weekend. One idea we discussed was to use one or more of the workshop periods for dialog around specific ministry concerns that participants identify. The intent is that people would then continue those discussions and share ideas after they return home. Another idea was to participate together in tangible outreach activity during a block of time at the Assembly.


4. Create materials for Synod Council representatives and others to bring to congregations to highlight our shared synodical ministry. Specifically, the Council would like to visit all of our congregations for dialog, if possible. The intent is to foster a two-way conversation by talking about our synod’s shared ministry and by listening for local issues that need to be raised to the wider synod.


5. Provide tools and training for our congregational leaders to foster missional conversation in encouraging one another to share our faith in our daily lives and to tell the amazing story of how God is working in our midst. One example of this is the ELCA Mission Interpreter endeavor. (For more information about becoming a Mission Interpreter, contact our synod office or Rev. Michael Krekling at krekling@windstream.net or 770-503-5050.)

The ELCA “Living into the Future” (LIFT) Task Force found, in its research, that when most congregations and rostered leaders talk about “The Synod,” they actually tend to be talking about the synod staff. LIFT found that most people identify candidacy, rostered leader mobility, dealing with conflict, and planting new congregations as the focus of the synod’s work. While these are important and necessary things for our synodical leaders to do, we think that there is much more that we can do to support our congregations and their members in daily life and ministry. What if we spoke of “synod” as congregations “walking together” in ministry (as the primary meaning of the word synod implies)? What would it look like if we did a better job of pooling our resources to strengthen our shared ministry at the synodical level and beyond? What impact would congregations deepening partnerships with one another have on our shared witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Please take a moment to comment in the space below, and join in this conversation about our shared synodical and churchwide ministry. (If you have difficulty getting your comment to post, email eschwartz@elca-ses.org.)

Pastor Huntley is the Synod Council representative of Conference 9, the Ruach Conference. He submitted this blog post at the request of and in conversation with the Synod Council.