DiscipleLife Alive funding from Northern Texas- Northern Louisiana will allow its companion synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sierra Leone, to complete the Jubilee Center in Freetown. A special fund appeal that has so far raised $1.8 million has made this and other initiatives possible.
“[DiscipleLife] is a brave idea and a healthy one,” said Diane Eggemeyer, a pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Miles, Texas. “A lot of our churches are small, but we are not entrapped in fear that we might fail. Let’s just see what happens.”
Eggemeyer eagerly anticipates the online component of the DiscipleLife Center. Miles is four and a half hours from Dallas-Fort Worth. “Live-streaming is so helpful because I can’t run up that road all the time,” she said. During 2012 the mission area experimented with quar-
terly “Table Talks” streamed over the Internet to partici- pants like Eggemeyer. Each featured a speaker who is at “the forefront of missional thinking,” Kanouse said.
Macedonia & vitality
Coming next is “Macedonia” (see sidebar). Eggemeyer’s congregation is one of six in the pilot project, which matches them with Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Lub- bock, Texas. While the churches are 190 miles apart, they are considered neighbors in Texas.
The two congregations will pick a weekend to swap pastors, and each will send a contingent to the other church. They will hear the “mission biography” of the host congregation, have dinner and worship together. “I am taking six people. We will share our gifts and learn from each other,” Eggemeyer said. “We are small (about 60 in worship), but we will show them our work with the food bank—work we do ecumenically with other local churches.”
Jon Lee, a retired ELCA pastor and member of King of Glory Lutheran Church, Dallas, sees change as a process. “We have a sense of things changing, of new identity,” he said. “We are not yet there as a whole group. ... But at least we are willing to talk about how the church is more than survival.
“Just because the whole church is growing smaller What’s Macedonia? R
ediscover Macedonia is an ELCA churchwide stewardship effort that has given more than $500,000 to synods for creative stewardship ministries (for free resources, visit
www.elca.org/macedonia). Its use and approach varies across synods. Macedonia is based on 2 Corinthians 8:1-9, where Paul praises the grace God gives the Macedonian churches. In the midst of their own trials, Paul writes, they overflowed with joy, shared generously and begged for the privi- lege of sharing in service to God’s people.
March 2013 35
doesn’t mean we have to lose vitality. Our new vitality comes from realizing what the church is about in this world, what God is about. We have some indicators that things are a brewin’.”
Signs of change include the NT-NL Parish Lay Mission
Academy, which trains lay leaders in the basics of wor- ship, preaching and teaching.
Kanouse points to “the way we are growing new mis- sion starts, organically, from within. We are lifting up leaders through the academy and Theological Education for Emerging Ministries (TEEM), especially with the Latino leaders we are so in need of.” TEEM is an ELCA process that expedites the route to ordained ministry. “God lit a fire in the midst of the community making this journey,” said Paul Mussachio. The Macedonia initia- tive matched his church, Preston Meadows Lutheran in Plano, with congregations in Shreveport, La., and Cran- fills Gap, Texas. He is delighted with enhanced collegial- ity and deeper relationships among leaders. “We are sharing values and commitment; we are less isolated,” he said. “Our pastors feel like they are on the same team. We are talking together about what is pretty dang important, and that has forged important bonds.” Back at Trinity in Miles, half the people are aged 80
and older. “They want to stay alive,” Eggemeyer said. “[They] know mission. … These folks are not saying, ‘We’re too old’ or ‘We can’t do that.’ ”
Kanouse said he sees part of his role as “giving permis- sion to congregations to try new things.” A successful new Spanish-language mission in Irving,
Texas, gave Kanouse just that opportunity. They wanted the name, Iglesia Luterana Santa Maria de Guadalupe. Kanouse had to “step out of his comfort zone” to approve naming a Lutheran church for the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas. The mission is the only one with this name in the ELCA.
“Our real hope is that ... people begin to think differ- ently about our mission,” Kanouse said. “The bishop and staff exist for the sake of congregations and their leaders, to support them, not the other way around. We are mov- ing out of institutional routine and into a practical effort to make disciples for Christ.”
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