Moments 4 Mission April 2025

A Monthly Newsletter of the Southwestern Washington Synod - ELCA

April 2025

Synod Staff

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Synod Events

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Transitions

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On The Road With the Staff Archive

Find out what our staff has been doing throughout the year HERE

In This Month's Edition:

A Word from Bishop Rick Jaech

On the Road with the Staff

Storytelling - Bethany Lutheran and Lay Leaders of Lower Columbia Conference

Ministry Voices - Living Stones Prison Congregation approaching 20 years of ministry

ELCA Churchwide - Presiding Bishop Eaton Issues Transgender Day of Visibility Video Message

A Word from the Bishop

Dear Friends in Christ,

On Easter Sunday, our songs and voices rise to celebrate Christ’s victory over death. The gift we receive on Easter is the gift of life and hope returning to our seemingly hopeless world. When the three women went to the tomb early that first Easter, their hope had died. They were certain that Jesus was in the tomb; the stone was in place; Pilate and the religious authorities were now firmly in control; death had won. It seemed foolish to hope for more.

Yet God broke through the power of hopelessness and death with new life. Jesus rose from the dead and called forth a new community and a new reality filled with God’s own Spirit of life.

In our church calendar, Easter is not a one-day event. The Easter season continues for seven weeks leading up to Pentecost Sunday, which this year is on June 8. It strikes me that these seven weeks of Easter are a good time to practice and nurture the hope that Jesus brings to us on Easter Sunday.

Like the women going to the tomb, many of us struggle with hopelessness as well. The disorder and violence in the world seem relentless. The problems we face in our personal lives feel insurmountable. The hope God brings to us can soon wither in the face of huge problems. Hope is both a gift and a choice. Like a musical instrument, we must practice hope each day to keep it alive.

Here is a spiritual practice that I have found useful for strengthening hope. When Jesus visited his disciples the evening of the first Easter and saw that they were still feeling frightened, Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22) In the spiritual practice that I describe below, we are following Christ’s example and breathing God’s powerful hope into the places of our hopelessness. Here are the steps:

Find a comfortable and quiet place to sit for five minutes.
Think of a problem or issue about which you feel particularly hopeless. This might be a personal issue, such as health, work, family/relationship or a spiritual struggle. It might also be a world concern, such as hunger, warfare or political turmoil.
As you consider your feelings of hopelessness around this issue, sense where in your body you experience this feeling. For example, many people feel hopelessness especially in the area of their heart. Others will sense hopelessness centered in other places in their body.
Now begin to take slow, deep breaths and visualize your breath going to the place in your body where the hopelessness dwells. Breathe into the hopelessness. With each breath, visualize that you are also breathing in the power of God that raised Jesus to life. Like the disciples in the upper room, breathe in the gift of hope and let it fill the place of your hopelessness. There is no need for you to make anything happen in that moment. Simply be receptive to God’s promise of resurrection.
Breathe steadily and deeply for three more minutes. Do this once a day for the next 30 days.

By using this spiritual practice of breathing hope into our hopelessness, Jesus comes to us with his Holy Spirit and strengthens us where we need it most. May God bless you throughout this coming Easter season and may God come to you each day with the gifts of hope and new life.

In Christ,

Bishop Rick Jaech

On the Road with the Staff

March 17 - 20

Joey Ager, DEM, and Pastor Melissa Anderson Trust, Associate DEM, attended the DEM Gathering at The Lutheran Center in Chicago. They spent time in community with DEMs from around the country, collaborating with DEMs in Region 1, and learning about Fresh Expressions from Michael Adam Beck, a pastor, professor, author, and thought leader in the Fresh Expressions Movement.

March 27

Bishop enjoying a visit from the Confirmation Class from First Lutheran, Port Orchard, where Pastor Adrian Bonaro serves.

March 30

Preaching at Gloria Dei Lutheran, Olympia, where Pastor Julie Hutson and Deacon Beth Tobin serve.

April 6

Celebrating the Installation of Vicar Leslee Froehlich as Synod-Authorized Minister at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran in Stevenson.

Storytelling

Every month we feature a new story from and/or about one of our worshiping communities with the desire to inspire, inform and build community! Each story can be found on our website at https://swwasynod.org/home/news/stories-of-shalom/. Do you have a story to tell? Contact us at swwsynod@plu.edu.

Bethany Lutheran and Lay Leaders of Lower Columbia Conference

“It only takes a handful of people to experience abundance”

–Pastor Susan Dollinger, Bethany Lutheran Longview

Bethany Lutheran in Longview is part of a collaboration between local ELCA churches to get together and do cooperative projects. The exciting part of this collaboration is that the intention is for the projects to be congregation driven rather than clergy driven.

This collaboration started just before Covid in 2019. The hope and dream was simply to get churches together and connect as a larger community in one conference. There were a few reasons for this – first and foremost to be able to do bigger things than they could do alone, but included was an honest assessment that mergers between some of these small churches might be part of their futures. If congregations could build relationships together that were already positive and mission-based, that possibility could also be positive and mission-based.

The most recent project was a collaboration between Bethany and Stella Lutheran Chapel. Both churches have strong lay leadership and a desire to serve their community. They pooled resources to create winter vacation bags of food for families that relied on school meals.

They planned to pack 50 bags together during an Advent worship service – but Stella Lutheran brought a TRUCKLOAD of food. Together they filled the fifty bags and packed another car with an over the top, extravagant amount of food to bring to “Resource Closets” throughout the Kelso and Longview school districts.

Pastor Susan describes the experience as an amazing abundance of loaves and fishes in many different ways. They started with no idea how much food there would be or what level of participation – but decided to give and do what they could, trusting that it would be an important thing for whatever individuals they were able to serve.

They hoped for a group of eight – ended up a group of thirty. Fifty bags became a truckload. “The hope for the future,” Pastor Susan says, “is that the heartbreak of separation left over from the Covid era can be healed and that a small group of committed people, continuing to meet and see where the Holy Spirit leads, can move mountains together.”

~ by Chavaleh Forgey, Synod Storyteller

Ministry Voices

Living Stones Prison Congregation approaching 20 years of ministry

Greetings from the Washington Corrections Center (WCC) in Shelton! I wish to first thank all of you, individuals and congregations who have, and continue to support, Living Stones financially, prayerfully, and encouragingly. This ministry has been a vital source of hope and grace to the men of WCC.

We have recently shifted fiscal management from Faith Lutheran, Shelton, to our Synod. We give thanks to Faith for their years of service. Gifts to Living Stones can be sent to the SWWA Synod, 420 121st St S, Tacoma, WA 98444, "Living Stones" in memo line.

The good news. We are meeting on Thursday evenings from 6:30- 8:30pm for worship. Grace is being dispensed, Word and Sacrament are being had, and the worship band continues to drive our praise-filled worship with enthusiasm. I continue to mentor the worship band of 9-15 members. They play at all the other Christian worship services during the rest of the week. Watching the growth, commitment, and mutual encouragement of one to another has been inspiring.

The challenging news. Covid took its toll at WCC. We only have half as many men attending, compared to before Covid. We can still only have three volunteers from the outside come into the prison. This is limiting. With a faithful board member and myself, that doesn’t leave any space for a congregation to come, as before Covid. I am working as a 1/4 time person. Before Covid, we had a full-time pastor and half-time administrator. The Living Stones staff has been reduced, but the ministry continues. We are a well-established ministry of almost 20 years now, having started in 2006.

Fiscally, we are good through at least 2025, to continue this ministry in its current configuration. While our outside board has diminished over the years, they are still supportive and active. If you indicated wanting to be involved with Living Stones, either coming individually, or becoming a board member, please contact me again, either by email or cell phone. With so many staff and policy changes at the prison, and some health issues for me, I lost track of the information for those who wanted to be more involved. I am sorry about that.

God is still at work at WCC. Grace abounds! I am blessed to be there. We are hanging in there! As Luke’s Gospel suggests, we are called to reach out to the least, the lost, and the lonely. As with our congregations on the outside, God is finding those folks through Living Stones, and lives are being changed. Blessings upon blessings.

Thanks be to God, and thanks be to all of you.

In Christ’s peace,

Pastor Eric Utto-Galarneau

Living Stones Prison Congregation

Shelton WA

(360) 591-9949 cell

madanvil@aol.com

ELCA Churchwide

ELCA Presiding Bishop Issues Transgender Day of Visibility Video Message

CHICAGO (March 31, 2025) — ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton has issued a video message for Transgender Day of Visibility. In her message, Eaton speaks out against the inhumane actions by legislatures and executive orders while also speaking directly to the transgender and nonbinary community.

“God created you in God's image and loves and cares for you exactly as you are. ... You deserve to be safe in our communities. Bullying and discrimination have no place in the body of Christ,” Eaton said.

Watch the video.

The ELCA’s commitment to civil and human rights can be found in our resources for the LGBTQIA+ community at ELCA.org/lgbtq.

Another way to learn more about the church's commitment can be found at reconcilingworks.org, an independent Lutheran organization.

Bishop Eaton Issues Video Message for Transgender Day of Visibility