Faith leaders extend best wishes to ELCA R
epresentatives from religious bodies who brought greetings to the Churchwide Assembly were a witness to “unity and diversity in what is shared both in our past and a vision of how we will move forward together,” Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson said.
All the guests congratulated the
ELCA on its 25th anniversary. Susan Johnson, national bishop of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, began by saying: “In honor of this auspicious occasion, I dyed my hair silver” “We human beings are a weird mix of both desiring and resist- ing change. Well, like it or not, my friends, the times and the church are a-changing,” she told the assembly. “God is calling us to a new thing, a new way of being church. The hard
KAREN DERSNAH
part is that we don’t know what this new thing is yet.” As Munib Younan, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jor- dan and the Holy Land and president of the Lutheran World Federation, took the stage, he thanked Hanson for being a “strong, prophetic voice for justice, disturbing many people who hate justice.” “You have lived through your own Reformation journey and seek to boldly respond to the challenges in different times and situations, both theologically and pastoraly,” he told the church. “Your ministry of love is a living and strong witness affirming that the Reformation did not stop in the 16th century but con- tinues through the Holy Spirit ....” Younan said the LWF approaches the 500th anniversary of the Ref-
essica Nipp Hacker, diaconal min- ister who spearheads the ELCA Malaria Campaign (
www.elca.org/ malaria), told the assembly of the need to raise $6.3 million more to reach the 2015 goal of $15 million. The 2009 Churchwide Assem- bly passed action that empowered 11 “visionary synods” to begin work with companions in Africa to pioneer malaria awareness in the ELCA. Congregations and synods throughout the ELCA have been engaged in the campaign. The 2011 Churchwide Assem- bly approved launching the ELCA Malaria Campaign with the $15 mil- lion goal. Pilot synods had already raised $1.2 million for malaria pro- grams in Africa, and ELCA mem- bers have given an additional $7.5 million since—over the halfway point.
J
Tarunjit Singh Butalia, the first non-Abrahamic faith leader to address an assem- bly, said the ELCA was the first organization to reach out to the World Sikh Coun- cil-America Region following the shooting at the Oak Creek (Wis.) Sikh temple a year ago: “Your words of support and encouragement came as a shining light at a time when my community was recovering from the numbness of senselessness.”
“So many lives are being saved,” Hacker told the assembly. “Just a year ago, a child in Africa was dying every 45 seconds of malaria. Thanks to the work of Lutherans and mil- lions of others across the globe, that death rate has slowed dramatically. Now we lose one child a minute. Much progress has been made, but I’m sure we all agree that our work is not complete until no children are dying from malaria.”
September 2013 29
ormation in gratitude and with the continued message of salvation and healing to the world.
For a longer version of this article, see
www.thelutheran.org/feature/ september.
Malaria Campaign passes halfway mark
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