Blogs of the ELCA

Are you feeling alone in your work as a resource center director? Are you looking for ideas to improve your center? If so, allow me to share this suggestion: meet with resource center directors (of different denominations) in your area. Start with one, add another and then expand the invitation to as many as feasibly [...]

Father Bassilius Nassar, a Greek Orthodox priest who was helping a wounded man, was shot and killed in Hama on Wednesday.  Both the government and the opposition blamed the killing on the other.  This was the same day the Secretary General of the Syrian Red Cross, along with 23 others, were killed.  Reports of what really happened [...]

We’re living in a “global moment.” For the next four years, the ELCA is joining hands with other churches, government agencies, non-profit agencies, celebrities and– very importantly– researchers in our quest to overcome malaria by 2015. Malaria researchers are coming at the problem of malaria from all angles. Some are working to create a vaccine [...]

Being welcoming and inviting: some of us have to work hard at cultivating those traits. A rather shy person, even after a career of teaching public speaking, I know the tendency to pull back, hoping that the person in front won’t move suddenly and catch me off guard, exposed to the whole room; or the [...]

by Sharon Ely Pearson  spearson@cpg.org (Sharon has been serving as the Christian Formation Specialist for Church Publishing Incorporated /Morehouse Education Resources since November 2007. Prior to that, she was the  Resource Center Director at Yale Divinity School’s Ministry Resource Center as well as the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. She is also an author and has [...]

Chris Raschka, a member of Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan, an ELCA congregation in New York, has been awarded the American Library Association’s 2012 Caldecott Medal for his children’s book, “A Ball for Daisy.” Raschka, author and illustrator, also won the medal in 2006 for his illustration of “The Hello, Goodbye Window” and earned the [...]

We are blessed to be a global church! The ELCA is in partnership with many Lutheran churches across the world through the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).  The LWF is divided into regions and sub-regions, and one of those sub-regions encompasses the churches in Southern Africa. This region is called LUCSA– the Lutheran Communion in Southern [...]

Contributed by Aaron Matson, Toronto, SD Warm-up Question Do you like scary movies? What’s the scariest movie you’ve seen? Hollywood and Demons At least since the 1973 movie, The Exorcist, Hollywood has been scaring audiences (and selling lots of tickets) with images of the devil, demons, and demon possession. The last few years have seen [...]

Dana Nelson is an ELCA missionary in Lima, Peru. To support Dana, or another of the ELCA’s nearly 250 missionaries, go to www.elca.org/missionarysponsorship.   Dear sponsoring congregations, friends and family, Domestic Violence is a serious issue all over the world as we know.  Peru, where there is a lot of machismo, is no exception. I am thrilled [...]