Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. – Matthew 5:6 For nearly twenty years, I have had a portrait of Dr. King hanging in my study. It was a gift from a field education experience where, for the first time in my largely sheltered upbringing, I was an "ethnic minority." It was that gift and its implicit reminder that we are in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, not years beyond it, that has given shape and strength to my sense of call and ministry. While most of us have been taught to look up to Martin Luther King Jr. as a national hero, and most white folk like to think that we would have been courageously at his side during the beginnings of the modern civil rights movement; the fact remains that the majority of Americans didn't support the Civil Rights movement as it was unfolding, white allies were sparse and the vast majority of white America only came to see King as a hero after he was martyred.
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by Bishop Bill GohlGod called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." - Exodus 3:4-5 I have been profoundly shaped by our Lutheran outdoor ministries. Summer camp as a kid at Koinonia, youth retreats at Camp Wilbur Herrlich, Camp Ma-He-Tu and Cross Roads (NJ), summer camp as an adolescent at Pinecrest Lutheran Leadership Ministries, working in college back at Koinonia and then returning to Pinecrest after ordination as a faculty member. My life has been saturated with all of the good things – the God things – that happen in our outdoor ministries. In these last years, my own kids have gone to camp at Mar-Lu-Ridge, one of the crown jewels in the ministry we share as the Delaware-Maryland Synod (in partnership with the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Synod).
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AboutThe blog of the Delaware-Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Archives
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