Fill… Spill… Thrill…

Pastor Martin Russell
Assistant to the Bishop
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

The church does not have a mission - the mission of God has a church! God is in charge of God’s mission to the world.

We do mission. Mission is the very identity of every Christian and every church. As Bishop deFreese likes to remind us, congregations should be ‘centers for mission’ both in local communities and worldwide. The world yearns for the life-giving message of Jesus. You, your congregation and all of us together as the Nebraska Synod are called to be Jesus’ partner in proclaiming the Gospel through word and deed. Our mission statement as a Nebraska Synod, “Together, we live love with the grace and courage of Jesus” unfolds this understanding.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

It was Saturday, June 26, and we had loaded into five coach busses earlier that morning, bound for Minneapolis and the 2010 Nebraska Synod Youth Mission Trip. Our bus was scheduled to stop for lunch at a particular fast food restaurant in Sioux City, Iowa, and wisely, each of the five busses was assigned a different place to eat.

All 47 of us ordered quickly, as the restaurant staff members were doing their jobs well. Those in our group who finished eating early found themselves on a backyard-size lawn, behind the restaurant and next to their drive-through lane. Some youth started tossing around a football, and others of us launched into conversation, meeting new people with whom we’d be spending the week. It was a fun time. However, it appeared the manager of the restaurant was watching us.

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Mitch McCartney
Director of Communications and Development
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

I remember as a youngster growing up in central Nebraska looking forward to the field trip that my class would get to take at the end of the school year.

Heading into the year-end field trip, everyone was excited because it meant a day away from the stress of the classroom (as if being a third grader was really all that stressful in the first place). But the field trip always turned into something more than that.

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