by Bishop Bill Gohl
During Black History Month, I’ve been thinking about the African descent leaders at whose feet I have also learned the faith of the church.
by Bishop Bill Gohl"Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you." – Philippians 4:9, NRSV When I tell my call story, I often trace my faith journey through my mother. My mom patiently taught me the catechism when I feared flunking out of confirmation class, she was a Sunday School teacher and Vacation Bible School leader, she was the one who reminded us by her own example that being a part of the church was more than a Sunday morning commitment. I learned the faith, our faith, at the feet of my mother.
During Black History Month, I’ve been thinking about the African descent leaders at whose feet I have also learned the faith of the church.
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by Bishop Bill Gohl"Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing." – Joel 2:12-13 Valentine's Day, which this year the church observes as Ash Wednesday and the ensuing forty days of Lenten preparation often bring with them a lot of bad childhood baggage (my Mom's side of the family is Roman Catholic and there are some definite ideas about Lenten denial and discipline from that side of the house!); as well as a true invitation to wholeness and renewal. Still, Lent is not about making us good after a year of bad behavior, not about adding or taking away some spiritual or dietary discipline in order to make us healthier or more worthy of salvation. It is not even really about journeying with Jesus into the wilderness. Indeed, Lent is about a journey, our own journey with God, a journey towards the very heart of God. The disciplines of this journey are spiritual tools helping us to remove the distractions which draw us from the love of God.
by the Rev. Dr. Amsalu GeletaYou are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior. I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses, says the Lord. Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? – Isaiah 43:9-12, 18-19 Today, I yield my blog post to the Rev. Dr. Amsalu Geleta, Executive Assistant to the Bishop and Director for Evangelical Mission, who introduces our five new mission starts in the Delaware-Maryland Synod for 2018-2019! My heart is full of gratitude and hope! +bg God is actively mobilizing our synod to do new things, to change lives, to transform communities, and to renew the church for the sake of the world. One of the overall synod mission strategies is investing in potential new starts. After strategic consultations with our bishop, local leaders, and ELCA Domestic Mission, we are pleased to announce five Synodically Authorized Worshiping Communities (SAWC) and SAWC explorations in 2018-2019. These ministry sites were identified with careful consideration of area potential, compelling vision, clear ministry plan, and potential leadership resources and support mechanisms.
by Bishop Bill GohlThis is a portion of my homily at RoadTrip, our synod's high school youth event, held in Ocean City, Maryland on January 19-21, 2018. We gathered under the theme, "Reform School," as part of our synod's Reformation 500 Commemoration. My assigned topic was "grace;" this is a snippet of what I shared. What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? – Romans 8:31-32 If God is for us, who can be against us?
You might feel like family have turned their backs on you, your BAE or your BFF may have disappointed you, an important dream may have disappeared into thin air, the way you hoped and worked hard for something to turn out just right might have gone bad, quickly...but the promise is sure: God is for you. Not was, not will be or might be, but is, right now. There is no waiting. There will be no probationary period. There is no small print, no early termination fees, no small charge for shipping and handling. Right now, God is for you. God's availability to you is not dependent on whether you've been good or bad, God's not Santa Claus checking his list twice, to see how you've been naughty or nice. No, this God is for you, right now! by Bishop Bill GohlNow the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” – I Samuel 3:10 This homily was preached for the Second Sunday after Epiphany and in observance of the Commemoration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Renewer of Society & Martyr at the Church of the Nativity and Holy Comforter in Baltimore. It borrows heavily from a portion of a powerful sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Stephen Paul Bouman, then-bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod, ELCA in the Bronx, NY for the 2006 King Commemoration. Dr. Bouman now serves as the Executive Director for the Domestic Mission Unit of our ELCA Churchwide Organization. +bg Our scripture speaks of a time, a familiar time, when the Word of the Lord seems far-off, and the vision of our leaders seems small and petty. And in one of those times, a little boy becomes a light sleeper, he hears a voice calling his name: "Samuel, Samuel..." The old and increasingly blind prophet Eli feels the presence of the boy at the foot of his bed and hears him say, "Here I am for you called me."
by Bishop Bill GohlA reflection delivered by Bishop Gohl at the 25th Annual Baltimore Interfaith New Year's Service, hosted by Archbishop William Lori and the Faith Community of St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, Baltimore. O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity. – Psalm 98:1, 9 A colleague once served as a chaplain at a prison and described spending ten-hour days behind the walls of a maximum security men's prison, where everything was gray - the walls, the floor, the food, the mood; where people were no longer treated as human beings; where some men were bitter and unremorseful but others wrote poetry or created incredible artwork. Then, at the end of the day, she would come home to a shocking contrast: ordinary life. Cooking, cleaning, chores, then plopping down on the couch for a glass of wine and a bit of TV. But a question dogged her day after day: How can I turn away from and shut down what I have just seen and simply get on with my life?
Down in a lonely manger, the humble Christ was born; and God sent us salvation that blessed Christmas morn! My beloved, all:
Christmas is a time of joyous surprise as we receive God’s gift of hope yet again. The darkness, though threatening, has not overwhelmed us. In bread and cup, body and blood, the gift of Christ comes given and shed for you, for me and for all. In a simple, almost hidden way, hope breaks into our hearts, our lives and our world anew. by Bishop Bill GohlThe beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. - Mark 1:1-8 For as many years as I have been ordained, I have led a Bible study series for different church or community groups on the biblical birth narratives of Jesus. It’s a favorite topic that I approach as if I were G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown character, piecing together how we amalgamate the Matthew and Luke birth narratives into a single, synthesized nativity scene with the magi of Matthew hobnobbing with the shepherds of Luke. With that discussion comes the inevitable peek at favorite Christmas carols and how they fit as pieces of a puzzle into helping reveal a larger meta-narrative about Christmas, delighting some with the rich Christological imagery of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing and its allusions to the John narrative, devastating others with the news that Joy to the World is actually Advent carol paraphrase of a psalm. Each of the narratives, too, has "its" day – Luke on Christmas Eve, John on Christmas Day (and a rerun on one of the Sundays in the Christmas season) and Matthew on Epiphany Day.
by Bishop Bill Gohl"Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place." – Jeremiah 22:1-5 Will you give faithful witness in the world,
that God's love may be known in all that you do? I will, and I ask God to help me. from The Rite of Installation for a Bishop by Bishop Bill Gohl"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus..." - Philippians 2:3-5a On Saturday, November 18, I was a guest of the Westminster Conference as they gathered for a Mission Strategy Conversation. The idea for that kind of conversation emerged from a conversation I had with Pastor Amsalu Geleta, Executive Assistant to the Bishop and Director for Evangelical Mission, and Pastor Robin Simpson Litton, Assistant to the Bishop for the Western Cluster. Westminster Conference is one of our larger conferences and has a considerable number of pastoral vacancies. Within those vacancies are some historic multiple-point parish arrangements and a number of congregations who are not a part of parishes, but have been at some point in their histories. The premise of the gathering was, while so many congregations are in transition, does it make sense to have conversations about shared mission and partnership on the ground rather than "the synod" trying to arrange partnerships simply to share rostered leadership support expenses. Establishing what our churchwide organization calls a Mission Table ensures that everyone is, literally, at the table: congregations, lay leaders, rostered ministers, synod staff and institutional ministry partners.
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