Dick Spreitzer chose to attend the Glocal Mission Gathering in Park Ridge, Ill., to help his congrega- tion change the way it does things.
‘Glocal’gatherings give new twist to mission
Text and photo by Robert Elliott L
ast May, St. Luke Lutheran Church, Park Ridge, Ill., hosted a Glocal Mission Gathering. That’s not a typo. “Glocal” is what author Lewis Carroll called a “portmanteau word”—two words smashed together to give both a new twist. As in: “Mis- sion is both global and local; there- fore, mission is glocal.” The event’s theme was accompa- niment—the idea of mission as an Emmaus journey of partners and a conversation among equals. Keynoter Rafael Malpica Padilla, executive director of ELCA Global Mission, offered his take on the story of Jonah and the theological implica- tions of the animated movie Happy Feet. The question before us, he said, is “how do we engage the other?” Too often, he said, we draw lines between ourselves and people who are different, but “mission happens when we can see God’s face in the face of the other. God’s mission is to restore community. The mission of the congregation is to restore com- munity among ourselves.” Another keynoter, Sunitha Mortha,
ELCA director for global formation, warned against underestimating the cultural context of mission, globally and locally. In other words, allow for the culture—beliefs and assump- tions—of all parties in a conversa- tion. If culture is an iceberg, “belief is part of what is under water,” she said. According to Wikipedia, that’s roughly 90 percent of an iceberg. Saturday morning, J. David Vásquez, campus pastor at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, put mission into both a global and local context: the May 12, 2008, immigration raids at a Postville, Iowa, meatpacking plant. Immigration officers arrested and deported 389 migrant workers; no company officials were arrested. “Migration,” he said, “blurs the dis- tinctions between mission and minis- try, global and local.” Vásquez cited the Central Ameri-
can Free Trade Agreement as a major driver of migration from the South- ern Hemisphere to the north. The agreement provides manufacturers with tax breaks for five years when they locate to Central America. The
Find a list of ELCA Glocal Mission Gatherings across the country this sum- mer and fall at
www.elca.org/globalmission.
plants, usually barebones facilities, attract many workers, he said, but owners usually find it cheaper to close their plants and move to other sites for another five-year cycle. Unfortunately, the process leaves whole villages with no source of employment, Vásquez said. Work- ers then head north to low-paying, unskilled jobs in the U.S. As a result, migration “is the largest civil disobe- dience movement in the history of the U.S.,” he added. “We need to change the way we understand this.” Change has to begin at the street
level, and that was the goal of most gathering workshops. Dick Spreitzer, a member of Mayfair Lutheran Church, Chicago, chose a workshop titled Mission 101. It addressed the components of accompaniment: mutuality, inclusiv- ity, sustainability, empowerment and vulnerability.
Mayfair is a “turnaround congre-
gation,” Spreitzer said. He chose the Mission 101 workshop to “help us do mission in our community as well as ministry among ourselves.” May- fair’s turnaround began two years ago. “We had to change the way we were doing things or we might as well close our doors,” he said. Mayfair sold its parsonage, called
a first-call pastor and is beginning to attract younger worshipers. “Last Sunday we had 18 kids in Sunday school,” Spreitzer said. Several participants said their congregations have difficulty keep- ing multiple generations engaged in the life of the congregation and with each other. Another workshop helped them explore generational diversity, through educational games and inter- generational teamwork.
Elliott is a freelance writer in Chicago. July 2011 27
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