​“The church of Christ, in ev’ry age, beset by change, but Spirit-led, must claim and test its heritage, and keep on rising from the dead.” (ELW 729—Fred Pratt Green)
 
Change is afoot. And one of our Synod’s benchmarks addresses change: “Meet the future boldly!” The Synod staff are committed to working with your congregation as you, too, meet the future boldly, whether it is forming a call committee, writing a mission statement, starting a new emphasis, evaluating your ministry. 
 
 For Congregations:  One resource that we are providing, thanks to NRIT, is a series of short videos to help orient new and continuing church council members. "Serving on the Congregation’s Council” is available on the NRIT website (www.nrit.org, or see article below). You can show all five sessions in a retreat. Or you can use one per meeting, as board development. The sessions are:
 
 

• Introduction—NRIT Director Jenny Kunka
• The Constitution: How it Informs Your Work—Bishop Jessica Crist
• Leading Effective Meetings—Pastor Jason Asselstine, Associate to the Bishop
• Being Church Together—Pastor Peggy Paugh Leuzinger, Director for Evangelical Mission
• Connections—Crist, Asselstine, Paugh Leuzinger
• A Walk Through the Synod Website—Colter McCarty, Director for Information Technology

 
For the Montana Synod:  The Research and Evaluation Team of the ELCA is assisting the Montana Synod with a survey to help determine the future direction of the Montana Synod, given the election of a new bishop. The survey is for individual members of congregations to reflect on their congregational hopes and experiences, and their hopes for the synod as we meet the future boldly. An email was sent to every congregation and every rostered leader, with an invitation to fill it out, and to share the link electronically with members of the congregation.
 
In order to reach congregation members who are not comfortable with online surveys, Research and Evaluation will be sending out paper copies of the survey to congregation who do not opt out by today, Wednesday, January 30.  The hope is to turn around by March 1, and then give feedback back to the Synod Council and the Synod about what kinds of things the members of the Montana Synod are looking for in new leadership. We should be able to share the results at the Pastoral Conference at Chico this year, as well as in the Synod’s enews. I hope that you will participate.
We are stronger together as we meet the future boldly!
 
Jessica Crist, Bishop

​If you are a pastor or deacon, and you went through candidacy any time from the ‘90’s on, you’ll remember the document, Vision and Expectations. And perhaps even more than that, you’ll remember the mystique around the document.
 
For those of you who are not familiar with the story of Vision and Expectations, it is a document that every candidate for ministry was required to read and attest that s/he had read it and would comply with it. Three times during the candidacy process we were required to ask each candidate if s/he had read it, and would comply with it. Unless they said “yes,” they were not permitted to continue in candidacy. We lost an excellent candidate from the Montana Synod, because he was not able to say yes truthfully.
 
Three times during candidacy we ask if the candidate has read and will live in accordance with Vision and Expectations. But when we get to ordination, there is no mention of it. The ordination rite speaks of the Holy Scriptures, the Creeds, the Confessions, but no mention of Vision and Expectations. The installation rite asks the person being installed to promise to do everything in accordance with the constitutions of the church, but no mention of Vision and Expectations.
 
So, what is the content of Vision and Expectations that made it so important that it be raised up three times during the course of a future pastor’s preparation ( and then never mentioned again)? Was it like Jesus’ three-fold question to Peter after the Resurrection: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Was it affirming the three parts of the Apostles and Nicene Creeds? Was it knowing the names of the tree creeds we say we teach and affirm? Was it being able to say yes to the scriptures, creeds and confessions? 
 
No. Vision and Expectations put into writing what were, at the time, some of the do’s and don’ts of conduct becoming a minister. Although the document listed both do’s and don’ts, most of the objections to the document arose from the don’ts, and those in particular in the area of human sexuality. Written in 1990, Vision and Expectations originally took a very clear stance on sexual behavior for its clergy. Outside of marriage, it was unacceptable. At that time, same-sex relationships were not recognized in most states, and not in the church officially.
 
In the years since 2009, when the church agreed to disagree on publicly accountable lifelong monogamous same-sex relationships, and the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal in every state, Vision and Expectations has been revised to reflect current reality. 
 
I used to ask first-call pastors at our first call theological education retreat if they were familiar with Vision and Expectations, to tease them. They would roll their eyes and groan. And then I would go on to remind them that it wasn’t all about sex. It was about leading lives of prayer and service, about caring for God’s people and for the earth. It was about leading lives that were exemplary, supporting the congregation and the Synod and the ELCA, being fiscally responsible. So much more than sex. And then they would perk up, and look interested.
 
But, in the end, it was sex that was the downfall of Vision and Expectations. For too many people, that’s what it was about. So now, we are, in the ELCA, on the verge of replacing Vision and Expectations with a new document (as yet unnamed) that tries to do several things:
 
+put into one place the constitutional and disciplinary requirements for pastors and deacons, to let candidates know succinctly what the established rules are, and how to find them; and
 
+carefully focus on the aspirational expectations, the “thou shalts,” after having established (above) the “thou shalt nots.” The aspirations focus on such things as: evangelism, compassion, confession, hospitality, peacemaking, justice, stewardship of the earth and more.
 
And if you are wondering why I am so interested in this in the last 7 months of my last term, I’ll tell you: I am on the committee tasked with coming up with something better. And we hope to have something by the February 28 Conference of Bishops.
 
I am committed to supporting pastors and deacons as they do the very challenging and very rewarding tasks of ministry day in and day out. And I am committed to supporting congregations as they work with their pastors and deacons and LPAs to provide ministry in their community. It is my hope that this new document will be a helpful tool throughout the candidacy process, and in the life of the church.
 
Jessica Crist, Bishop

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” (I Corinthians 12: 12)
 
It is the season of Epiphany, when we celebrate the light shining in the darkness and the darkness not overcoming it. Traditionally, the season of Epiphany has been a time when the church highlighted the global nature of the church. And, back home, most of our congregations utilize the season of Epiphany to have annual meetings. ( A letter to congregations from the Synod Bishop is next in this e-newsletter, and is also on the synod website.)
 
Annual meetings. Ideally, when we get together as congregations, we look at what we have done in the past year, and plan our ministry for the next year. As ELCA congregations, our ministry is not just to ourselves and to those who happen to come through our doors. Our ministry is our community, our Synod, and the wider church. And that wider ministry happens through the ELCA. 
 
We are a connected church. We know that we are able to do more ministry and more effective ministry because we are partnered with one another. The annual meeting is a time to approve a budget, which includes mission support. Congregations send money to the Montana Synod, and the Synod sends approximately 40% of that on to the wider church through the ELCA.
 
What does the Synod do with the rest of the money? We support campus ministry at the University of Montana and Montana State University. We support the Northern Rockies Institute of Theology, which provides continuing theological education and lifelong learning to clergy and laity in the Synod. We support Lutheran Social Services. We support Freedom in Christ Prison Ministry, Our Saviour’s Rocky Boy and Spirit of Life on the Fort Peck Reservation. We provide the LPA training program to equip lay preachers and deeper faith and witness. We support first call pastors with First Call Theological Education. We shepherd candidates through the candidacy process, and we work with congregations and pastors during pastoral vacancies. 
 
We foster relationships with our companion synods (Bolivia and the Cape Orange Diocese of South Africa.) We work with congregations in transition and in conflict.
The wider church is able to reach out on our behalf across the globe, through the world hunger program, through Lutheran Disaster Response, through ELCA seminaries and colleges, through global partnerships, through ecumenical relationships. We live in a connected world, and we have a connected church. Because of that we can share lay ministry curricula with our companion church in Bolivia. We can learn best ways to support the hurricane recovery for the people of Puerto Rico. We can learn about famine in Africa. We can learn about unaccompanied minors at the southern border, and efforts to care for them.
 
This week I returned from a gathering of ELCA Bishops focused on the care of creation—from biblical, theological and advocacy perspectives. We visited a congregation that meets outdoors year round, and has a community garden to share with their neighbors. Jason Asselstine, from our staff, has been at a church-sponsored training on family systems—how to live together as congregations, as communities and avoid the kinds of conflict that paralyze. Peggy Paugh Leuzinger, also from our staff is at a church-sponsored training, along with 3 other pastors from the synod, on faith-based community organizing, finding tools for more effective outreach ministry in the communities we serve. We use these opportunities to learn and grow, so that we might better serve the Montana Synod.
 
And then we return from these trainings to do ordinations and installations, and meetings with congregations that we serve.
 
May God bless your congregation as you meet in your annual meeting and discern together what God is calling you to do! And please let us know. We learn from one another.
 
In Christ,
 
Jessica Crist, Bishop
 
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” (I Corinthians 12: 12)
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