and 37 miles east of San Antonio), led a community response to a brush fire that destroyed 1,600 homes in September 2011 in the Bastrop com- munity, 38 miles away. The wildfire started on Labor Day, and by the next day Lutheran Mission had set up collection points and started publiciz- ing a prayer service to gather relief supplies. “We led a major effort, taking a few tons of relief supplies and about $2,000 in cash and gift cards to sup- port the area,” said Larry “Tim” Bau- erkemper, pastor.
Among other initiatives, 20 volun- teers from the mission stepped up to keep a previously closed food pantry open two Saturdays each month. “We’ve learned the church has to be very responsive to the com- munity’s needs, and to be nimble and quickly mobile,” Bauerkemper said. “There are times when we are flying by the seat of our pants. That’s OK because we’re trying to keep up with God’s mission in the world.” Lutheran Mission took off after 40 former members of Faith Lutheran in Seguin processed out of the church after singing a final hymn on Dec. 5, 2010. The members had already asked Bauerkemper to start a new congregation, and they didn’t want to deal with Faith taking a third “first” vote—believed to be the denomina- tion’s only three-time effort at a first vote—to leave the ELCA over the gay/lesbian issue. The first two votes failed. Ultimately, 130 joined the mission start-up.
Making the issue more difficult was the death of Faith’s founding pas- tor, Bill Lang, in June 2010, just eight days after he had been diagnosed with leukemia. Lang, 74, had served Faith for 44 years.
“The congregation was in grief, conflict and turmoil,” Bauerkemper said of 1,500-member Faith, where 300 to 350 people regularly wor-
shiped prior to the assembly vote. “It was terribly painful for everyone on all sides. ... And yet, with some inten- tional effort, we worked to say that we were going to reinvent ourselves.” Lutheran Mission started regular Sunday services on Jan. 2, 2011. Members intend to give the church a new name and buy property on which to start a community-based mission, possibly providing free land for permanent fields for the local soccer association.
The experience so far is both scary and exciting, Bauerkemper said. “Moving out of our comfort zone, moving out of a building and walk- ing out, trusting God and in faith, has been invigorating,” he added. “It has taught us not to just trust God but to follow God’s lead.”
Our Savior ‘springs’ up The much smaller Our Savior Lutheran Community in Leon Springs, a subdivision just north of San Antonio, counts 20 members who previously worshiped at St. John in Boerne, which withdrew from the ELCA in June 2010. St. John had 1,500 people on its membership rolls. Our Savior meets at the Boerne
YMCA and aims to focus on serving the needs of the poor, outcast and dis- enfranchised. It’s located in an area that has transformed from a farming community into a young, affluent suburb of people who live in gated neighborhoods that offer views of the area’s hills, woods and rangelands. “The older, rural poor are suffer-
ing. They are pushed to the edges with prices that have increased and the disappearance of their old com- munity support structures,” said Steve Rode, 62, a fourth-generation Lutheran pastor who was asked to lead the mission. The ELCA is pay- ing Rode to be a full-time pastor for two years in hopes that the group will grow and become self-sustaining by
the third year.
The group is interested in starting a day-care or child-care center to help the area’s families who commute 60 miles round-trip daily to jobs in San Antonio.
Rode said the 20 people who wanted to stay with the ELCA are committed to the church’s work on anti-hunger campaigns and peace and justice issues. They want to show people how the Lutheran value of diversity can thrive.
The group had to first work through its feelings of pain, hurt and grief that they had been ignored and essentially kicked out of St. John, Rode said. So far, the mission has contributed $600 to a food pantry, raised $1,000 toward the ELCA’s anti-malaria cam- paign (
www.elca.org/malaria) and “adopted” a young woman in Kenya to support her food, clothing and edu- cation expenses.
The group has little interest in finding a church building or land. “We want to spend our resources on people,” Rode said, adding that they’re OK with not having a perma- nent place to call home for the fore- seeable future.
Grace in Giddings
The third mission, Grace Lutheran Church, Giddings, got its start on the same evening in March 2010 that Martin Luther Lutheran Church voted to leave the ELCA. Fourteen members disagreed with the con- gregation’s vote and met with the bishop of the Southwestern Texas Synod to seek their own worshiping community.
“The [new] congregation is made up of people who’ve been ostracized or alienated from other congrega- tions, and people who’ve been burned by overzealous Christians and judgmental people who’ve said unkind things or insisted that [Grace
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