Hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. – Psalm 130:7-8 The other day, I was looking for a particular place in a particular book for a particular thought that I needed to complete a particular sermon. The exact place was marked with an old bulletin from a service I shared with an Episcopal colleague in my first congregation 16 years ago, and I had marked this prayer and wrote in the margin, "profound."
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by Bishop Bill GohlIs the Lord among us or not? - Exodus 17:7 On Sunday, I baptized Colten James White at St. John Lutheran Church in Linthicum, Maryland. He was the first person I’ve baptized since I entered this call as bishop of the synod in September. Admittedly, I was pretty excited. St. John is experiencing a brief pastoral vacancy, and Colten’s mother, Melanie (who joined St. John in February) is special to me – I confirmed her in my first congregation some years ago. I was honored when she – and the Council of St. John – invited me into Colten’s baptismal journey.
by Bishop Bill GohlAs promised, here is a summary of the work of the Conference of Bishops Spring 2017 meeting. As I was a day late to the meeting (I arrived on Thursday afternoon, March 2, owing to Ash Wednesday obligations at Trinity, Taneytown) and left a day early (homesickness, see my On The Way Together email), my report is largely stolen from Bishop Ray Tiemann, Southwestern Texas Synod.
by Bishop Bill GohlThe harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few... – Matthew 9:37b As the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America met over the course of this last week, we gathered under the theme The harvest is plentiful, the laborers few. It is a timely theme, since this was the weekend of the Spring assignment process. There were 96 graduates from our ELCA seminaries and affiliates of our seminaries and there were 308 requests from across this church for those 96 candidates meaning that 212 congregations will go without a new pastor, take on part-time pastoral leadership or will need to be arranged for pastoral ministry sharing. What is especially concerning is that this trend is accelerating; that is, the needs and the availability are becoming more and more distant from one another.
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