Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries

Guest blog by Proclaim member and First Call Candidate Brenda Bos

The 2005 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America looked like most Churchwide Assemblies.  A few thousand earnest Lutherans, ready to discuss and debate the issues which vex and motivate the church.  Pastor James Boline, fresh-faced blond South Dakotan, now serving a congregation in Santa Monica, heart pounding, knew his destiny was about to be sealed.

“I incarnate the issue which is before this assembly…”

The resolution was the vote regarding the ordination of gay and lesbian pastors. Boline had tearfully told his church council and his bishop Dean Nelson just a week earlier it was time to come out at Churchwide.  He had received his church’s blessing and his bishop’s prayers and had headed to Orlando to face the church he loved.

Holding the Bible he had received in his third grade Sunday School class at Trinity Lutheran Church in Vermillion, South Dakota over thirty years earlier, Boline leaned down to speak into the microphone.

“…I am a third-generation pastor of this church, a gay man, in a relationship of profound love and commitment with my beloved partner of eight years, Christopher Ma, who is also your child, named and claimed in the waters of baptism.  With my beloved Christopher I share my life and my home and my soul, my meals, my body, my ministry, my joys and my sorrows, and all that the years bring…” Boline reminded the church of both his and his partner’s Christ-marked lives and asked for their prayers, for his family, his church, his bishop and himself, who “refused to be banished from this church.”  A few speakers later another man who had been in the same Sunday School class decades earlier spoke against the resolution.  The resolution would fail that year and two years later, finally passing

While Boline was in Orlando, Becca Seely was preparing for her senior year in college.  She joined a friend at St. John St. Matthew Emanuel Lutheran church in Brooklyn, New York and liked what she saw and heard.  Raised Unitarian Universalist, Becca was baptized Lutheran and slowly answered the call to ordained ministry, entering Yale Divinity School in 2009.  Her coming out was much less public or dramatic than Boline’s.  In fact, Seely admits her friends and family find her call to ministry much more unusual than her sexuality.

Both Boline and Seely are members of Proclaim, the professional community for publicly identified LGBTQ Lutheran rostered leaders, seminarians and candidates.  Both also graduated from Yale Divinity School.  As part of her seminary education, Seely is serving her internship at Boline’s church, St. Paul’s Lutheran in Santa Monica, California.

St. Paul’s is proud of their story, which includes going “under sanction” while supporting their gay pastor before 2009.  And yet, that moment of courage is only one piece of their eighty-eight year history.  Now the church asks the question most churches ask: what’s next?  What is their mission going forward?  Two years ago, they decided to become an internship site.  Once they agreed to join with other congregations in the community to raise the funds for the internship, they realized they were in a unique spot to offer internships to LGBTQ seminarians.

Boline: St. Paul’s has always been ahead of curve on the LGBT issue by calling me and keeping me after my coming out.  When we realized the great need for LGBTQ interns to have welcoming sites, we found ourselves saying, ‘Of course we need to be this place’.  We have a great community; we have a supervisor who is a leader in the LGBTQ Lutheran community, and it just sort of all clicked.

St. Paul’s called their first intern, Brenda Bos, in 2012.  Bos lived in Southern California and could waive intern housing.  This allowed the church to try the internship program out for a year before making the enormous financial commitment interns require.

Boline: So there was this moment in our annual congregational meeting when we had to decide whether or not we would continue, not only with the internship, but as an intentionally welcoming site for LGBTQ interns.  The congregation was confronted with the challenge of finances and housing in the second year, and that was the defining moment, when they raised their hands, literally, by the Holy Spirit of God, when calling LGBTQ interns became St. Paul’s own calling.

St. Paul’s second intern, Becca Seely, arrived in September, 2013, just days after she married her wife, Abby.

Seely:  I had my own “a-ha moment”, when I was interviewing for a site where the supervisor was really supportive, but said, “You know we would really have to work through whether this would be an OK fit with you with the council.  They’ve been damaged in these conversations before and I don’t think anyone would be unkind to you, but it’s something the congregation would have to work on.”  It was a totally fair response. I realized this is a reality so many other interns are facing.

The supervisor said, “Do you want to be the intern who goes into a place who has those hard conversations?  Maybe you will change hearts and minds and help the congregation move forward on this issue.  Or do you want to go to a place where it’s a non-issue so you can work on other parts of your formation without that being a distraction?  What do you feel called to in the internship process?”  I realized it was important to go someplace where I could work on ministry and not be that person who was pushing that envelope.  So I was really grateful for St. Paul’s, where I could have a supervisor who has walked this road of being a gay man and also a pastor, and see how you do that.

Boline: It’s been important for me to think about being a gay pastor again, in this new light.  It almost feels self-aggrandizing to talk about gay inclusion because the people of St. Paul’s are on the same page of acceptance already.   But we need to constantly receive those who are often not welcome by the church, and we need to continue naming the exclusion of LGBTQ people in the church, even though that means we are naming our own oppression.

Seely: On a practical level, I hope St. Paul’s can serve as a pioneering example of what other congregations can do and the collaboration between several funding congregations can happen in other communities.

St. Paul’s has received financial support from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, Lutheran Church of the Master, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Chapter of Reconciling Works and the Southwest California Synod’s Mission and Ministry Endowment, for this LGBTQ internship.

Boline: And for the record, I can’t wait for our first transgender seminarian.

Seely: And I bet there’s a transgender seminarian who can’t wait for an internship site that can’t wait for them!

Boline: We don’t remark on this very often, but we have a unique combination of being internship site with a gay pastor and a gay intern with a transgender person on the internship committee.  Actually, the reason I asked Suzanne to be on your committee is because she’s a lifelong Lutheran and works in Hollywood.

Seely: She gives great sermon notes!

Boline: The fact that she’s transgender is certainly interesting, but it was not the reason I put her on your committee.  Gay supervisor and intern, gay and transgender people on your committee:  it all happened in one place.  All that, AND a gay bishop too!  Like I said, we don’t remark on it often.  Maybe we forget how remarkable it is.

Seely:  We forget because we’re just being church.

by Amalia Vagts, Executive Director

I often pinch myself that I get to be involved with the work of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries. Not only am I awed by the past courage and faithfulness of our founders, I’m daily inspired by the new vision of people with long-time and recent involvement in our mission.

I got a big dose of that this past weekend as the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries’ Board met for their first in-person meeting of 2014. This group of volunteer leaders provides the strategic vision and overall governance for the work of ELM. They are all closely involved with our programs (Proclaim, Accompaniment, and Ministry Engagement) and our committees (Development, Inclusions, Board Recruitment, and Finance).

We gathered Jan 30 – Feb 2 in Washington, D.C. for a three day meeting and retreat. We are always looking for the most economical, yet satisfying way to spend time together.  This year we tried something new and found a home through the rental site AirBnB that would accommodate our whole group and cost less than a retreat center. Yes, it was a little bit like the Real World House! We loved having a place to ourselves in the heart of the city. Board member Rose Beeson coordinated fantastic, nutritious, and simple meals – and our total food bill was about a third of what we usually spend at a retreat center.

We spent time discussing the next steps in our strategic plan and recent development in our three programs. We celebrated that the Proclaim community has reached 148 members! We prayed about and discussed new ways to support the 11 people in the Proclaim community still awaiting first call, and those awaiting a new call. We heard from several experts – Steve Hitchcock, who inspired us with ideas about raising the funds we need to support our mission; John Beck, who will be working with our board on the Intercultural Development Inventory in the coming year; and YK Hong, who led us through a conversation about gender identity and expression and how to expand our understanding and work in areas affecting the transgender members of our community.  We had thoughtful conversation about the changes in civil marriage laws and how this impacts our community. We reviewed our fundraising achievements in 2013 and examined the work ahead as we seek to bring new supporters in to learn about and engage in our ever-growing work. We had many moments of energy around the results and greatly expanding work of our three programs Proclaim, Accompaniment, and Ministry Engagement, led by our new program director, the Rev. Jen Rude.

Our current Board includes: Rev. Julie Boleyn (Co-Chair), Rev. Mike Wilker (Co-Chair), Dr. Jeremy Posadas (Secretary), Charlie Horn (Treasurer); Asher O’Callaghan, Rose Beeson, Rev. Dr. Elise Brown; Carolyne Schultz, M.S.W., Angel Marrero, Jim Kowalski, and the Rev. Dr. Randy Nelson. This is a hardworking and committed group of leaders. Please join me in praying for them, thanking them, and supporting the work they do to lead Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.

And Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” Mark 16:15

Proclaim the good news!  This is what members of Proclaim, the professional community for LGBTQ Lutheran rostered leaders, candidates and seminarians, seek to do with their lives and ministry.  The mission of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries also includes this commitment to “proclaim God’s love and seek justice for all.”

And now, we are excited to launch a new resource – Proclaim Pulpit Supply.  The next time you need pulpit supply in your congregation, either as a one-time or short term thing, considering inviting a Proclaim member.  We have Proclaim members all over the country who are ready to share good news with your community.

Thanks for your support and partnership and for the ways you proclaim God’s good news.

 

Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries. – 1 Corinthians 4:1

We celebrate with Proclaim member Angela Joy Nelson who received a call to Christ our Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Chatham, NY this past weekend!  

This is good news for Christ our Emmanuel, Angela, and for our whole church.  The above passage from 1st Corinthians is part of the service of ordination to Word and Sacrament ministry and a reminder of the call we share – serving Christ and stewarding God’s mysteries.

Angela graduated from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in 2012 and has been living in New England while awaiting call.  Angela also serves as a chaplain for Proclaim, the professional community for publicly identified LGBTQ Lutheran rostered leaders, seminarians and candidates.

As we celebrate Angela, we also call to mind others who are on this path.  In the last few months we’ve had almost a dozen Proclaim seminarians approved for ordination.  In a few weeks, February 18 & 19, this group of seminarians will go through the ELCA assignment process, determining the geographical area of the church where they might serve.  During this exciting, stressful, at times quite mysterious, and hopefully spirit-filled process, we hold all these candidates in prayer.  ELM’s Accompaniment program will be holding two conference video calls after the assignment process with approved candidates.  We are eager to hear how the process went and where people are assigned as they await a call.  Join us in praying for these candidates, those awaiting call, courageous faith communities, Christ our Emmanuel, and Angela Joy Nelson, as we all continue to serve Christ and seek to be good stewards of God’s abundant mysteries.

Guest blog by Emily Ewing, Proclaim member and Proclaim seminarian coordinator, 4th year student at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC)

Over Thanksgiving this past year, instead of spending time with friends and family giving thanks, overeating, and taking long naps, I was privileged to participate in the Dialogue of the Americas on Faith, Migration, and the Economy. Thanks to support from ELCA Global Mission, I didn’t need to pay for the plane ticket to Quito, Ecuador for the event.

The event was an ecumenical gathering of pastors and theologians from North America, largely the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. I was the only seminarian at the event and one of the youngest people there. Throughout the event, people presented papers they had written around the topic of faith, migration, and the economy. In our breakout groups, we discussed wide-ranging issues from identity to the church, scripture, justice, and empire.

One of the topics that kept coming up for me was the concept of imago Dei—the image of God. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created humankind in hir image, in the image of God she created them; male and female he created them.”* While we were discussing the themes around identity that came up during presentations, we kept coming back to an understanding of humankind as the image of God, or rostro de Dios (literally translated, it is “face of God”) in Spanish.

Some of our conversation was around who all this includes (we decided that it included everybody). This meant that when we heard Rev. Dr. Nancy Cardoso articulate the situation of many women who migrate, we had to recognize that the face of God is the face of sex workers and domestic workers throughout the Americas. This then led to conversation about how God’s face, God’s image in humanity, is not complete when some are marginalized, murdered, and oppressed.

From there, we explored the concept that most drew me in: that humankind is made in God’s image. It is not, in fact, any one individual who is made in God’s image, but only together, collectively that we are made in God’s image. To be the full rostro de Dios, we must all be present, all be in the face. This changes how we interact with each other. It’s no longer just that each individual we encounter bears the image of God, but that all those who are affected by oppression and marginalization, all those who oppress and marginalize and all those who are in between or do both at different times are the image of God together.

For those of us from the United States, it means that we have to ask ourselves what it means that we are building a wall through God’s face. We have to question the foreign policies that cause so much harm and suffering in other countries and lead to the movement of God’s face. We have to recognize our interconnectedness and our need for the Other and others in order to be complete.

*Note: In an effort to use more expansive and inclusive language for God, when necessary and appropriate, I alternate pronouns for God between ze/hir/hirs/hirself (gender neutral/third gender pronouns), she/her/hers/herself, and he/him/his/himself, rather than restricting myself to either “God” or “He” as can be more common.

Registration for Dreams & Visions, the 2014 Proclaim Retreat, begins this Friday, January 10th!  The Proclaim Retreat is an annual gathering of Proclaim, the professional community for publicly identified LGBTQ Lutheran rostered leaders, seminarians and candidates.  It is a time of renewal, learning, connections, laughter, worship, and play.  This year we are gathering May 4-7, 2014 at Heartwood Conference Center and Retreat in Trego, WI.

Being a publicly identified LGBTQ leader in our church can be both a blessing and a challenge. Gathering for support, celebration, and community is critical for us and for the ministries we serve, so that we can continue, with boldness,  to proclaim the Good News!

Help us get the word out about ELM, Proclaim, and the retreat. We are sending retreat posters to seminaries and divinity schools (poster pictured). Are there other places where we can get the word out?  Email program director, Jen Rude (programdirector [at] elm.org), if you’d like us to send you some snazzy posters.

Check out the Proclaim Retreat site for more details, information about scholarships, and to register, beginning January 10th!

Thank you to the Philip N. Knutson Endowment, the Carpenter Foundation, and other ELM supporters for special contributions for this retreat.

Thanks to you, it’s been another full and productive year for Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.  If you missed a few stories, or just want to look back at all you helped accomplish, we’ve gathered together our top stories of the year.

Proclaim
Our Proclaim community grew to 143. This means that in less than three years, the number of publicly identified LGBTQ rostered leaders and candidates has TRIPLED.  Wowza.  We launched a new section on our website, Proclaim Profiles, to help you learn more about the leaders you are supporting. Read Profiles.

A number of folks in Proclaim received calls.  For some these were first calls – including the Rev. Erik Haaland (called to Christ Church Lutheran in Minneapolis, MN), the Rev. Sara Cogsil (called to University Lutheran Church in East Lansing, MI), the Rev. Matthew James (called to Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester, MA), the Rev. Jeanine Reardon (called to St. Paul Lutheran in Evanston, IL and specialized ministry in chaplaincy).  And others began new calls: Rev. Paul Clark (Chaplain at Fresno State University), Rev. Jenny Mason (Light of the World in Farmington, MN), Rev. John Roberts (Unity Lutheran in Chicago, IL), and Rev. Mark Allred (Program Director for American Indian & Alaskan Native Ministries for the ELCA).

Oh and then there was that other call…the Rev. Guy Erwin was elected Bishop of the Southwest California Synod of the ELCA making history (and the news!). Full Story.  And a link to all the news coverage here.

We said goodbye to a beloved member our community, the Rev. Paul Brenner, who passed away on February, 24 2013.  Full Story.

And we walked with many Proclaim members who still await call. Chris Wogaman shared his take on this experience in a guest blog. Read it here.

We held our biggest Proclaim Retreat yet! LGBTQ leaders and their families gathered for renewal and learning in sunny California. Full Story. Or if you like to see it in pictures, check out our retreat slideshow.

Accompaniment
Thanks to you – and in response to a growing need – we greatly expanded our outreach to LGBTQ Lutheran candidates for ministry in 2014. Full Story.

We launched a major resource for ELCA Candidacy Committees working with LGBTQ candidates.  Full Story and resource download.

Ministry Engagement
This was a year of transition for the way that we support LGBTQ-led ministry. 2013 marked the final year (for now) of direct grants to congregations and ministries. We provided nearly $1 million in grant funds since 1995. In 2014, we are launching Ministry Engagement, a new way of connecting with ministries led by LGBTQ-leaders – and those that are open to it in the future.

You helped support fantastic and successful ministries like EcoFaith Recovery and pastors like the Rev. Robyn Hartwig in Portland, Oregon. Full Story.

You provided support for mission development ministry like Spirit of Hope in Detroit, MI, led by the Rev. Matthew Bode. Full Story.

You helped fund four internships for LGBTQ seminarians – from Denver, CO to Victoria, British Columbia! Full Story.

Joel R. Workin Scholar
You supported Gretchen Colby Rode, our 2013 Workin Scholar. Full Story. Gretchen shared some reflections in a guest blog post here.

Other Noteworthy Highlights
Of course, a major development this year was saying goodbye to long-time staff member, Rachael Johnson, and expanding our staff to include a  new full-time program director. We’re delighted that the Rev. Jen Rude began this important role in October of this year! Full Story

The Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries Board of Directors approved a new mission and vision statement and affirmed a multi-year strategic plan.  Full Story.

The Rev. Jenny Mason traveled to her former missionary site in Chile and had a powerful experience. Read More.

Executive Director Amalia Vagts was able to give an important LGBTQ perspective in The Lutheran. Read the essay.

Lastly, we launched a new 6 -minute video to help you introduce your friends and congregation to ELM. Share this video widely! Click the photo below to watch the video.

 

 

We couldn’t do any of this without you.  We haven’t finalized our 2013 numbers, but over 425 individuals and congregations and two foundations shared their resources to help us raise $207,886 for LGBTQ leaders and LGBTQ-led ministries. Friends also gave special gifts totaling $14,300 towards the Joel R. Workin Endowment. All of this work happens thanks to your generosity and faithful support. Thank you for your wonderful involvement in 2013 and for joining us as we head into 2014!

by Jen Rude, program director of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries

We live in an in-between time: between God’s promises made and fulfilled, between the Christ who came as a baby and the Christ we wait for to come again. Once again our Advent themes speak truth to so many of our lives.

The in-between time is profoundly felt by many, including those in our Proclaim community who are waiting for their first call. Seminary is complete. Internship done. Candidacy papers and committees approved. Assigned to a synod, done. But still waiting for the call of a community to share their gifts of preaching, teaching, sharing the sacraments, pastoral care and more.

This past week Randy Nelson, our Candidacy Accompaniment convener, and I hosted a video chat gathering for those in our community who are in this in-between time. We gathered over computers and phone lines from California to Massachusetts. And I was once again amazed by the creativity, depth, and faithfulness of these gifted and called pastors of our church.

Perhaps your congregation could benefit from some of the extraordinary gifts of these or other Proclaim leaders. When you need pulpit supply, ask a local Proclaim seminarian or person awaiting call (look in the new year for an easy way to find out who’s available in your area via the ELM website!). As your community enters a call process for a new pastor, consider intentionally opening that process to a gifted LGBTQ candidate.

Thank you for your support of these leaders and others. One of the ways your gift to ELM helps is to provide scholarships for seminarians and those awaiting call to attend the annual Proclaim retreat, a time to refresh, renew, network and be sustained for ministry. Because while connecting over computer screens and telephones is valuable, sharing a meal together, worshiping together, or sitting by the lake and just talking, is priceless.

 

 

Quick Question: What do you guys want for Christmas?
By Bruce Jervis

My spouse, Jim Kowalski, and I both read the e-mail a few years ago one afternoon in late November. It was just a few lines long, from a dear friend asking what we wanted for Christmas – sent ahead of time so that our reply could inform his gift shopping before our mid-December planned get together. A few days later, two different relatives separately asked the same question by phone.

We thought about it for a while, trying to come up with something to suggest. Something nice, but easy for the shopper to find. Something that wasn’t too big and was definitely affordable. Nothing came to mind. Sure – there were things we wanted (like to demolish and fully remodel our upstairs bathroom – since done!) but nothing that we felt right to ask for as gifts from family and friends. We knew we had to give an answer or else be given something that sat there, not needed or wanted – and ultimately never used.

As we were giving our annual gift to Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, we spent a few minutes reflecting on the amazing work ELM does, supporting LGBTQ clergy and the ministries they serve. We smiled with joy thinking about the ELM-affiliated pastors who make such differences in the lives of those they proclaim the Gospel among. Then it just clicked – why not ask our friends and family to make donations to ELM as our gift!

We asked. They gave! Many of them continue to give each year. We’re truly grateful for their ongoing support of an organization we love!

Maybe your friends and relatives would want to give to ELM as their gift to you, too! Please consider adding support of ELM to your Christmas wish list this year. Thank you!

Bruce Jervis and Jim Kowalski are long-time supporters of ELM and members of St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Jim currently serves on the ELM Board.

by Amalia Vagts, executive director of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries 

This past Monday night, my partner David and I were driving to an orchestra concert at school. We had an “NPR” moment – those times when you are trapped in your car by a story you want to hear. This was a report about charitable giving and since Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries exists because of the generous investment of individuals and congregations, I was curious.

One thing that jumped out for me was the comment that most people do their charitable giving after they’ve paid for everything else – fixed expenses, savings, and personal enjoyment. Of course, I’ve always thought that the friends of ELM who write checks faithfully to us to support LGBTQ pastors and seminarians were a unique bunch. So I have to think we are different than the norm in this regard too. I’ve met many of the people who have been involved with ELM over the years.  And for most, supporting ELM is a priority.

I thought about David’s and my giving. The biggest charitable check we write each month is to ELM, second biggest to our congregation, and then we have a few other organizations we support. Okay, we don’t actually write the checks (it is 2013 after all), rather they are automatically deducted from our account. They come out each month, right after our paychecks go in. That way, they are just part of what we do every month. Every year, when we add all of this up, David says, “We gave THAT MUCH away?” I don’t say that to pat ourselves on the back for being generous or to intimate that David isn’t aware of what we give. Rather I share it for three reasons: 1) if I’m going to ask you to write a check to ELM, I want you to know that my family does it too; 2) making a gift each month really adds up to quite a surprising amount for the things we care about; and 3) since it’s automatically deducted we just give it without trying to decide each month if we can swing it or not.

It’s the season when you are being asked to give (you may even have a letter from me in your mailbox or on your table). For all who support non-profits at any level, I say THANK YOU. You probably hear from every organization that “we couldn’t do it without you.” And it’s true. And who would want to? Doing this work with all of you is way too much fun.

Advent Blessings to you. Thank you for all you do for Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.