Nope. Synod?
K By Ann Hafften K
evin Kanouse is a bishop without a synod, and that’s the way he likes it. Since 2009, Kanouse and leaders in Northern Texas-Northern Loui- siana have been striving to take their synod apart and experiment with something new. A series of summit meetings led to their goal: to decon- struct traditional ideas about the synod and concentrate on leader formation. The process was named “DiscipleLife.” People here don’t use the word “synod” anymore. Instead, they have landed on “mission area” as a way to describe the territory and congregations where mission is carried out from the western edge of the Texas Panhandle to Monroe, La. Call it a gimmick, but the non-synod has caught on, aided by the bishop’s early dictum that any- one using the word “synod” in a council meeting or at an assembly would fork over $25 to ELCA World Hunger (
www.elca.org/hunger). “The word ‘synod’ wasn’t particularly meaningful to our people, and for some it carried bureaucratic, negative baggage, like ‘the powers that be,’ ” said Stephanie Var-
Hafften is a member of Messiah Lutheran Church in Weatherford, Texas. 34 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana wants to be known as a mission area
MARK GRAHAM
Kevin Kanouse, bishop of Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana, poses outside a Lutheran church in Alvarado, Texas, where the pastor’s horse grazes in the background.
num, vice president of the mission area. Kanouse said, “We used the name change to promote conversation about what it means to be disciples. We want to keep asking: What can our 120 congregations do better together than they can do alone?”
Deconstruction involved more than the name. “We took the freedom to … set aside the synodically mandated com- missions and committees and set up short-term teams to meet specific goals,” Kanouse said. “We have plans to for- mally amend the constitution at an upcoming assembly.” It should be noted that in official documents they call themselves the “Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Mis- sion Area (Synod)” or “NT-NL Synod, doing business as the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Mission Area.” Some big ideas are under way. The mission area’s
offices are moving from a business park in Dallas to a new DiscipleLife Center for Mission at Briarwood Retreat Center north of the city. Kanouse calls it “a year-round, 24/7 center for conversation and ideas.”
Sonia Chase, a member of Preston Meadow Lutheran,
Plano, Texas, hopes the center will help congregations “share best practices, along with prayer and worship.”
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