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Spirit & Life
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version 4.0
•••"The
words I have spoken to you are spirit and life"
-- Jesus, John 6:63
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| A New Lutheran Association -- Live, From Milwaukee! | | Date Created: 19 Jan, 2006, 11:20 PM |
My hiatus has ended, and I thank you for your patience during my absense. After all these years, you faithful readers all know well enough I'm prone to such untimely (and at times rather prolonged) absences from the blogosphere.
I write to you live from Milwaukee, WI on this the third and final night of the Lutheran Association of Missionaries and Pilots -- U.S. conference. Our LCMS Council for Lutheran American Indian Ministries (C.L.A.I.M.) is being merged with the aforementioned Lutheran Association in these times, and I've spent the last three days learning the who, when and why's of the organizational transition.
A full understanding is beyond my grasp as of yet, so I'll wait for official word from the director and board when all is pretty well said and done in a few months. My partial insights thus far include that the Synod seems to desire a corporate-styled streamlining, where one neither wants nor needs two distinct organizations in the same church body each working independently to minister to Native Americans in North America (though previously most all of CLAIM's work has been in the lower 48, while the Lutheran Association dealt almost exclusively with Alaskan and Canadian ministries). Likewise, of course, there's some fiscal reasons in the mix, for the love of monies is somewhere near the root of most mergers.
Finally, I think some fallout from the recent divorce between LAMP-Canada and the Lutheran Association of Missionaries and Pilots-U.S. lies quietly behind the initial impulse to combine the two. Again, lots of the details lie in stories that haven't been fully taught or told. But the long and the short of it is that the independent body once known as CLAIM now lies dead, and soon will be legally and corporately buried.
Perhaps this conference served in some sense as the funeral, though for a somewhat solemn occasion it wasn't particularly somber.
Or rather than a funeral, maybe the conference has been something more akin to an arranged marriage. CLAIM simply now changes her name and becomes 'one flesh' and somewhat assumed into the reorganized Lutheran Association...
You see, in these last few days, we CLAIM workers are first introduced to the new associates to whom our denominational parents have informed us we will now be married, and under whose collective roof we will now proceed to live and dwell. Likewise, the Lutheran Association meets their appointed intended, understanding CLAIM will do a little cooking and cleaning and complementing like an able helpmeet should. This seems a better, rosier picture to paint.
Honestly, I think I expected more the funeralesque scenenario. I dreaded the conference and came more than close to refusing to attend. Had not the CLAIM executive director called me personally a couple of months ago and spent the better part of an hour persuading me, I wouldn't have committed to attend.
Not even the promise of round-trip airfare (my very first flight, mind you) and four nights in an all-expenses paid Radisson's private room proved mildly tempting. I had pretty compelling reasons, after all:1. Absolutely hate meetings of every kind, 'cept for worship and study.
2. Dearly love my gorgeous and witty wife, brilliant and entertaining kids and everything else about being home with them (and my delightful sister, of course :D)
3. Pretty sure nobody cared to hear my opinions of it all anyway.
4. Had lots of other things to do.
5. Could easily dig up plenty more to do.
6. Even if I had *nothing* to do, I'd rather enjoy simply *doing* that nothing than go to meetings.
7. Agenda looked like an extravagant waste of my time and someone else's money.
8. Don't at all like the touchy-feely, missionspeak groupthink Jesus-jargon, or any sort of fluffy-lite vanilla-tofu flavored diet-theology.
9. Two Words: "No Smoking."
10. Really, really utterly dislike business meetings. Through much prayer and hoping against hope that Clark really meant it when he said he did really want me there, knowing beforehand the kind of questions I planned to ask about this merger and my concerns about the theological direction of the organization, I repeatedly talked myself out of cancelling the month before, the week before, and the day before it was time to go.
So Tuesday came and I kissed my lovely wife goodbye for a few days, stepping onto my first airplane flight in Sioux City, bound for Milwaukee by way of Minneapolis. Flying is good. Like the flying part, even better on the jet plane than the twin-prop plane. I always wanted to fly (even considered becoming a pilot when I was young), but never really had reason or opportunity to do it. To think, of all reasons to fly it had to be paid tickets to a three-full-days of meetings that would finally bring it about.
Much to my great surprise, I think the time here has been quite well spent, much more than I figured it coulda been. I've thoroughly enjoyed meeting the Lutheran Association staff, workers, missionaries and pilots from Alaska and Canada. They're good folk, God's folk, and worth seeing even in meetings. I'm the better for knowing them. It's also been good to touch base again with the other CLAIM workers I've known over the years.
And tomorrow morning, well, I get to go home to my wife and kids. God, thanks for not making me live in hotel rooms and go to meetings all the time. Thanks for the new Lutheran folks with whom I'm now associated. And thanks for proving me wrong once again. Amen. |
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