This is Ben and this is Keith.

And this is Main Street Lutherans. And today we wanted to discuss a couple of reports that have come out fairly recently, earlier this year regarding the elca. One of them is an ELCA report itself that was created by the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church. We had an interview back earlier in our series with one person involved in that commission and the other is a report from Footwear Seminary with the barn organization regarding the elca. And we'll talk about both of those in a minute. But we also, just looking at these transition, you know, kind of documents got Ben and I thinking about some transitions ourselves. And so we just thought we'd reflect on kind of where we're at in our own lives and ministry at the moment. So, Ben, what have you got?

Yeah, so I have, I've filled out my candidacy paperwork and I'm not sure which way this is headed, but, but I'm looking at, I'm already a licensed lay minister in the Southeast Michigan Synod, which is similar to a synod authorized minister in the elca. Actually, I think with our last synod assembly, I think my, my title is now, well, licensed lay minister. And our synod authorized ministers are. Lay ministers are people who will be congregational pastoral presences. So people who fill in as pastors for congregations that don't have rostered leaders. But. So I'm already doing that and I felt a call to go to seminary and pursue some sort of education there, either ordained ministry or not. But I'm filling out the candidacy. I'm going through the candidacy process just in case it is headed that way. And it probably is, but I'm leaving some, some options open there.

Candidacy being that process by which, you know, in addition to the seminary education folks are sort of vetted and trained as rostered leaders in the elca.

Yeah. And. And you are on a candidacy committee for your synod?

I am. I am actually familiar with that. Yeah. I'm just beginning my second five year term on the candidacy committee for the largest Graham City. And it's a really awesome privilege to walk alongside people that are considering becoming leaders in the lca. So way to do it.

Yeah. So that's exciting. We'll share updates on that and probably do an episode on the candidacy process and how people become rostered leaders in the church in different ways. We will also be talking about lay leaders here soon. We've got some folks lined up to talk about a program of lay ministry training that is at Luther Seminary. And so once we get people nailed down for that, not literally, but when we get people on the schedule. We will make that happen. It's a difficult time to get those folks because of synod assemblies and then churchwide assembly coming up, but we're working hard to get those folks for you. Yeah. And so you've got a bit of a transition period ahead.

I do, yeah. Earlier this year, my friend and colleague, Pastor Kevin Shively, who's been the lead pastor at St. Matthew for more than 23 years, now announced his retirement. He is going to be stepping down from this role not all that long from now, actually later on in the month of June, in 2025. And so, you know, St. Matthew will be going into that transition of, you know, in a, in a congregation that's somewhere between 125 and 150 years old. Something like, I don't know, a hundred of those years have been served by three lead pastors, and Kevin is one of them. And so this is a really big deal for, certainly for him and for his wife and their, their family, but also for St. Matthew. And so we're going to be entering into that sort of interim time immediately. I'm going to, to be the interim lead pastor. And there is a possibility, a path, you want to call it, that, that I could become the permanent lead pastor. But that's a, a process that, that'll unfold as the, as the summer moves along. There'll be some meetings and visioning opportunities and conversation and a lot of discernment and prayer. So it's definitely not a given. And there would be a call vote, just as if I weren't already on staff of St. Matthew, and that would be yet to come. So we're just beginning to kind of dip our toes into that and see what that's going to look like a few more weeks.

And those might be topics that we'll cover here, too, is how a church chooses a pastor, a rostered leader for their ministry. And so you'll get to experience that once again. How many times have you gone through the call process here?

Officially twice. I was called as the associate pastor in my first call and call was the Associate Ambassador at St. Matthew. And in between the two, I served an interim under what's called a contract position, which was not called, not a called position, but was contracted in a limited time. So I was there for not quite three years.

All right, so those are our personal transitions that are coming up or things forward, as you said, the ELCA received these two reports here in the last last few months. The first one we'll Talk about is the CRLC report, the Commission for Renewed Lutheran Church. And one thing I guess I didn't realize, even though in episodes six and eight we covered a little bit of this with Pastor Elizabeth Friedman from Lord of Light Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She's the ELCA campus ministry for the University of Michigan. And so Lord of Light is that campus ministry. But so we touched on a little bit. What I didn't realize is that the crlc, the Commission for Renewed Lutheran Church, references the commission that was formed to create the ELCA. And so that's 40 some years ago, about 40 years ago. And so that was the commission for. For a New Lutheran Church or cnlc. And so I didn't realize until reading this report that it made that designation that way. This report was officially released in March of 2025. Some parts of it were given to the ELCA Church Council in November of 2024 because there needed to be some action taken by the ELCA Church Council. And remember if you've listened to our episodes from last year from 2024 where we talked with the Vice President of the ELCA, Imran Siddiqui, he referenced how things move to Churchwide Assembly. Churchwide assembly is coming up in August of 2025. And some of the things that the church council needed to get on the agenda for Churchwide assembly had to be done significantly in adv, I think six months. But I think their November meeting was the one that was sufficiently early enough to be able to vote on things and push them into the agenda for Churchwide assembly, which will happen this August. And so bits and pieces of this have been produced. But the commission ended in March and they released their report to Church Council. And the church council has acted on some of it already. They've given their responses to the rest to the Churchwide assembly. And they will be reflecting on this again in Phoenix in August of 2025. So that's sort of the things about it. If you want to hear what Elizabeth, Pastor Elizabeth Friedman said about it, you can listen to our episodes 6 and 8 which focus on one part is on the ELCA campus ministry programs and the second one is on where the future of the church is from the perspective of someone who works with you that are. Are forming at the. At the college university level. And so those are both really good episodes. I encourage you to go see that. We'll have links in the episode notes I'm pointing down because that's where they'll be. But nobody's going to see that. So, so It's a good thing I'm pointing. So I'm going to do a quick overview of what, what's in this. I would highly. I told Keith before, you know, as we were, we were planning this episode that this is not, this is not an episode where we read it so that you don't have to. This is an episode of. We're reading it and we're still digesting it a little bit, but we've read it and we think it's important enough. We want you to hear a summary, we want you to understand what it's trying to do so that you can go in and read it with a little bit of attention. Because I think these documents, at least this one, I think the Barna report is a little more readable. This has some main points that you have to dig in a little bit. And the structure of a report to church council has many layers to it. And so we'll talk about how that gets going. So they did a lot of research, they did a lot of surveys, they did a lot of talking with people about how things are going in the church for this commission for Renewed Lutheran Church. And they came up with 12 recommendations. And in addition to those recommendations, they were asked for one extra piece by the church council that was not given to them by the formation from a. Was that a memorial that would have been done at the 2022 church wide estate?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

So done by your synod, if I remember. Right.

Right. Yeah. So a conference in our synod or more than one conference, put forth memorials at our Lower Susquehanna Senate assembly and then those were forwarded to the churchwide Senate assembly in 2022. That's right.

Okay. And so there were certain things they were asked to do that resulted in these 12 recommendations. And then they were asked to do one more thing and we'll talk about that one at the very end of this section. So the 12 things, the first six are things that the churchwide assembly and church council, ELCA church council had to act on. And so those are things that were urgent for the ELCA Church council to take in in November and then do something with. And so there's some good stuff there. The first one is to deal with with racism and dismantle some of the things inside our structure that have systemic racism built into them. The second one is accountability. And that accountability is specifically about conflict resolution at the congregational and synod levels and changing documents to make sure that we have clear paths to work out problems with that. There will be another thing later on that will, in the latter, six or five different recommendations that will specifically address a couple pieces of that. But so within the documents clearly define how conflict resolution happens and make some structures to be able to do that work. Specifically having a committee available and having synods choose committees that deal with conflict resolution within the synod, within congregations, something that we haven't specified before. So each synod sort of has its own way of doing it that's not mandated. And so some synods people feel that it's too tight as far as the structure, and some people feel it's too loose. And so we're trying to get some consistency there and have abilities for congregations to make this happen. So those two things require changing ELCA documents within the constitution and within our leadership. Documents 3, 4 and 5 deal with task forces that the ELCA needs to do at the ELCA churchwide assembly in August. Those are task forces that are necessary for completing some things that the CRLC identified but were not able to execute. They weren't able to do the work on that on those topics in the time they had. And so they're recommending that new task force be made that specifically address these particular things. And those are interdependence and purpose. So that is to look at our purpose statements and looking at how and clarifying how those things happen. And then also analyze the structural independence, how the government structures support or hinder the furthering of the church's mission. And so those things. So it's sort of clarifying how our structure is. Let's see, the fourth one is financial coordinating task force. What they've identified is that a bunch of our institutions, so our congregations, our synods, our regions, the ELC churchwide organization, all have multiple funding streams that some of them duplicate each other. And so they're looking at a way to make them more efficient. When you have duplicating funding methods, it often helps to combine those together so that, so that it's more efficient. So you're not spending as much money managing the, the fundraising for one. And so they're talking about how to, how to do that and trying to streamline that process. The sixth one is one that, that impacts, well, that we, we talked a little bit about when, when we had our Deakin episode. We'll have a link to that episode here in the notes too. It talks specifically about how the roles of deacons, or as we call them, ministers of word and service, to standardize how those folks are, how they are treated throughout the church. Some synods have certain attitudes toward ministers of word and service. Others have different. Some synods allow deacons to commune folks when they lead a service because they're ordained, and other synods do not. They treat them as lay people when it. When it comes to the sacraments. And so this is an effort to try to standardize how that happens and standardize the processes for calling deacons to be on staff, as well as to define compensation guidelines because these folks have been left out. And that includes a specific mention of being able to have a housing allowance equivalent to what our rostered ordained pastors of word and sacrament are given. We have those guidelines for those folks. We do not have them necessarily for our ministers of word and service. And so that's an important part. Then 7 through 12, these are governing documents, changes that don't need to be. They didn't need to be acted on before the synod assembly. Well or they didn't have to be acted on before the preparations for the churchwide assembly in August. And so those are things like trying to broaden the tent, trying to so specifically dealing with diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, changes to the governing documents and being able to recognize some historically underrepresented groups in our denomination. And these are specific changes to the bylaws, specifically with the synod bylaws and making that easier. So those are resolutions that can happen at synod churchwide assembly, I believe. So that's that one. They want to clarify our relationships with other organizations which the wording that is in the current constitution and the bylaws are sort of unclear. They use words that aren't consistent with our current usage. A lot of the changes are switching agencies to ministries and so and then adding some, some extra words that better define those organizations we have relationships with. Then there's a recommendation nine is specific to empowering lay leadership. And this is something that has already started. The synod or the ELCA Church council has created an association of synod vice presidents. And so that association is the top lay leaders in each synod become members of that. And so they shall meet annually just like the synod bishops have their institution. And so it defines the role of this organization and what they're supposed to do and who gets to be there. And that's kind of an interesting thing. And then connecting back up to that accountability piece, recommendation 10 deals with cost sharing for professional investigations of misconduct, which gives the synods a 50, 50 cost sharing with the churchwide organization when it comes to investigating misconduct within the church. And so that that helps incentivize doing professional investigations to deal with conflict in particular. And so. So you can read more details on that and what that means for us. And then we've got more streamlining the process of documents, specifically of how the synods and the ELCA constitutions mandate certain things that maybe shouldn't be required and gives them a little bit more flexibility in how to do some things. And so mostly just how we do stuff on a legal basis. So the last thing is recommendation 13, and that is the one that they were not given, they were not assigned in their formation. That is an ELCA name change. And so church council asked them to consider this and they did, and they discussed it and they say they did not come to a consensus on the matter. And specifically they say the CRLC believes that this question reflects larger issues of identity, that changing the name alone will not address deeper issues within the denomination and may lead to unintended consequences for various groups. And so they think that if a name change is to be considered, it requires a much larger scope of voices when talking about this to make sure that. That it's the right thing and that the CRLC wasn't really a big enough organization. I think it was 32 people selected from across the church. And so they think that it needs more than just a couple years of consideration and that folks might want to look at that much more in depth, so they sort of kick that can down the road and let the church decide to address it more directly. So there we go. It isn't necessarily the most direct, simple sort of thing. The things are mostly changes within our documentation. It's not something that gets banners. You know, this isn't something that is going to have people up and cheering, although I think our Deakin community is certainly going to be happy that someone is stepping up and saying somebody really needs to do something to make this more consistent. And you work with quite a number of deacons in various ways.

Yeah, yeah, I do. And. And they have said all of them, that very thing to some extent or another, whether it's the parody in sort of compensation and benefits or an understanding, both for the sake of deacons and for the wider church, of what the role is of deacon, differentiating it from the role of pastor and other types of leadership in the church, especially in the identifying of potential calls for deacons, since every deacon is trained not only in church theology and scripture and tradition and. And history, but also in their own area of. Of passion and expertise, whether that's music or teaching or nursing or whatever it might be. And so every deacon, this, every deacon call, excuse me, is Somewhat unique. Unlike pastors where, you know, every congregational setting is a little different, but pastors pretty much do 90% the same job no matter where, where we are. So deacons do not. And that's, you know, an additional. It's part of what makes them excited about their work, but it's also partly the challenge that they have. And then for the church, identifying those calls and setting them up. So. Wow, that's the. Sorry, what's that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think of all the things on here, I think that's the one that hits me most. But I think, I mean, some of the stuff seems like it's just sorting some things out, clarifying some things, correcting some things that we've had, you know, 1988, when they formed this church, we're at nearly 40 years ago. And a lot of this is things where just terms have changed or methods have changed with deacons. Deacons weren't what they are now in 1980. And the document itself says they really didn't address these things because the three organization, the three churches that merged in 1988 all had different attitudes on ministers of word and Service. And what, 20 years ago maybe is when a lot of the, a lot of those. Well, when deacons became ordained. Right. When they decide that deacon ministry was ordained.

Yeah, I don't think it was timeline, but it's not all that long.

Yeah, right. And so, so but they, they did that and they didn't really address fundamental issues that, that still needed to be addressed. And so this, this takes on some of that. Yeah, but what I think this does is it sets us on a path to have our books in order, have our structure in order so that we can take steps forward without having some of the institutional baggage of words and requirements that don't make sense anymore, that we can unload some of that and move forward. Which I think leads us to the BARNA report.

Yeah, yeah. It's intriguing that we've, we're looking at these side by side. They are, they're, they're absolutely interrelated. They're also really different. So the CRLC was an internally created, you know, body with an internally created mission and an internally created report for them, the elca, to look at this report from Barna. And it was actually the BARNA organization and Fuller Seminary that worked together to create what's called Strategic Recommendations for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. So BARNA is a Christian faith based research company. They look at trends in the church. I've read books and reports by Barna for decades. Fuller Seminary is an evangelical seminary based in Pasadena, California.

Now they say that they're ecumenical.

Yeah, they absolutely are. I know lots of people from lots of different traditions that have attended Fuller Seminary. But it's interesting that neither of these organizations are elca. So this is an outward perspective on the ELCA to some extent, which I think was deliberate. You know, just as the CRLC was, was done from the inside deliberately. This one's looking for the outside. So this was released in February of 2025, so not, not long before the CRLC document came out. And it reflects two years of research by these organizations working together, studies, surveys, analysis, and lots of, of interviews. And so this was put together as I said it was, it was released in February. It was made public in May 8th of this year. And so people are beginning to look it over and it reads, I gotta say, you know, listening, Ben, to your description of the, the other report, you're gonna make me look bad. But the reality is that what you read was literally twice as long as this. It's also organized really differently. This is if you've ever been part of, you know, a nonprofit or a church or even a business for profit business that has done a strategic report especially that asked like a consultant to come in and lead you through a, A, a process of, like a, like a mission development process. Right? That's what, that's what this report reads like. So the first few bullet points in it, there, there's, there's four numbers that you're going to encounter early on in this doc. They are 3, 4, 5, and 5. All right? The first number, the number 3, are priority areas that were self identified by the ELCA. So the, the vision of the ELCA currently is a world experiencing the difference of God's grace and love in Christ for all people in creation. And so the sort of summarized version of that is the phrase God's love made real, which is the, the name of this document. So God's love made real is, is the ELCA's identified purpose in existence and, and is in this document to kind of look at that. So the priorities that the ELCA names for themselves leading into this conversation are these, these three bullet points. A welcoming church, engaging new, young and diverse people, a thriving church rooted in tradition and radically relevant and a connected, sustainable church. Raising the bar together. There's a little bit of information kind of fleshing out what each one of those means. And then the report itself begins by identifying some trends in the elca, but also, you know, kind of Looking at that in the context of the wider Christian church in America and the trends that it identifies in things like financial resources and attendance and membership, etc. Are very similar to trends across the board in the Christian church in America, in particular Protestant settings, but really throughout the Christian church. So they talk about clergy contentment and burnout. They talk about racial and ethnic diversity increasing in the church. They talk about generational patterns are changing for things like people getting married, having children, etc. And then it names four key challenges facing the ELCA right now. And again, these are similar in many different denominations, but they are challenges specifically for us. A decline in membership. From 2010 to 2022, we declined by over a million members. We went from 4.2 million to 2.9. We have had a significant decline in resources. Along with that, there has been challenges identifying clear priorities and executing strategies. I think that was reflected in the document, Ben, that you shared just a little while ago. Right. And then also was this one, the fourth one. Complex governance, hierarchical systems and multiple initiatives. So there's, I think those reflect that there is this sort of sense of dissatisfaction with our current state and an urge to do something about it, whether that's at the local level, the individual level, or in this case the corporate level. I think that's true.

And I thought from that fourth one that the thing about complex governance, it specifically says that when they talk to folks about the decision making process in the lca, that there was never or rarely was there a single person that could say yes, but there were always multiple people who could say no.

Right.

And so that is an interesting way to look at it and all that.

Right. One of the responses, especially from roster leaders, about just sort of the general malaise of, of struggle in ELCA was the need to reduce or eliminate bureaucracy and hierarchy. I think that was revealed in the CRLC document as well. Yeah, yeah. The ELCA is a very complex organization, you know, so those are the struggles or challenges. The strategic report also identified five key assets and opportunities. So one of them, the first was clear and abundant signs of hope and possibility that if you, you know, when you look at the overall structure as a whole, yes, you see lots of signs of decline. But if you, if you drill down to whether it's individual ministers or congregations or ministry leaders or ministry programs, you'll find all of these points of light and things that are doing really well. Places where innovation is happening, places where, you know, trends and benchmarks are growing, places where people are being engaged in new ways. And that's you know, to point out that it is not all doom and gloom. There's a lot of great things happening. And part of, I think all of these kinds of reports tend to be how can we maximize the good stuff that's happening? And if not replicate it in a cookie cutter fashion, what can we learn from it in order to create similar kinds of growth in a different setting? So, so that's the first one. Second asset and opportunity is rich, accessible, conversational, justice oriented, grace filled theology. We do feel strongly about that as Lutherans that are theological and historical foundations tracing all the way back to Martin Luther, you know, are a huge turning point for the church at large and something that we really hang on to. Interestingly, one of the places that that points that this document points to ELCA is to wider engagement with the LGBTQIA community, also recognizing that the ELCA is not 100% in agreement on the level of welcome and inclusion that we as a church body would feel comfortable in making towards the LGBTQ community. So that one's going to be a bit of a sticking point. I think the third opportunity are deep resources, significant donors and committed leaders. It's recognizing that there are, you know, people and bodies, entities in the ELCA or affiliated with the ELCA that have some, some, you know, some large net worth, whether that's people or institutions with property in particular, et cetera. And so it's a, it's a matter of trying to kind of leverage some of that investment into whether it's local congregations or specific institutions like seminaries and colleges or, you know, congregations or even the church at large. Another opportunity is an extensive network of camps, campus ministries, and youth ministry expertise. There have been a lot of conversations in the making of this document with leaders about areas of potential in the ELCA through those kinds of avenues, as well as the National Youth Gathering which we've spoken about on this podcast in the past. And yet, despite these immense opportunities for young people in particular to be shaped by these programs, we find that those folks often feel that they are undervalued and under resourced.

And we've certainly heard that when we talked with Elizabeth Friedman about campus ministry and, and Drew Tucker when we talked about camps. Yeah, that they're underused. I think that's the other part is they feel undervalued and under resourced because we don't use them the way that they have been built to be used.

Right. Yeah. It's another sign of kind of decline to see these camp resources not drawing in the numbers. And then you start thinking of that in isolation about, well, what can this camp do to bring in more camp? That may or may not be the most effective response when you see that this is actually part of a much wider trend throughout our organization. So the fifth and final not surprising is opportunity for the ELCA in this report is building on clear need and existing momentum. So again, finding those places where change is happening and trying to maximize it and also recognizing, like the CRLC report pointed out, that the ELCA is just not a ship that can turn on a dime. You know, it is not a canoe, it is an aircraft carrier. And trying to change direction, even for really good reasons and with really good intentions, is really hard to do. So that takes this report down to specific strategic recommendations, what it calls ELCA commitments that must be embodied. And so it takes all of this data and it suggests, in no particular order, it specifies five commitments that the ELCA according to this report, needs to take in order to reverse some of these trends. Grow and thrive. Commitment. Number one, cultivate congregations that are warmer, more inviting and more invitational in nature. Number two, enhance ELCA wide efforts to nurture and strengthen faith and spiritual formation. Number three, tangibly and significantly incorporate and empower young people in all levels of the church's life. Number four, provide greater empowerment, equipping tools, excuse me, greater empowerment, equipping and tools for lay leaders to carry out the work of ministry and be the church in the world today. And number five, rethink, refocus and reorganize the ELCA's educational systems and structures to serve the current and in parentheses rapidly changing needs of the elca. And each one of those is expanded throughout the document. And you know, and these are all excellent points and they've all got great research backing them up and some really good suggestions about what to do with them. But I'll tell you what, my, as I, as I read through them, the one frustration that I felt in, in looking these over is that many of them seem to revolve in creating a new curriculum and disseminating it. Like saying, you know, if you would, if you would take this course, basically we can teach you how to fix this only. Well, it's not even that. It's, it's saying that the ELCA needs to create a course that then can be utilized to, to fix these, these problems. It's not a bad knee jerk response, but it ends up feeling to me like you've got, someone's going to be spending a lot of time coming up with what with yet one More teaching tool, which will probably be excellent, but how it will be different than anything else that we've tried in the past, I don't know. And that's only mine, you know, very limited. $0.02 response to some of this. Again, I think that, I think that the, the points that the, that the document makes about challenges and resources are excellent. And I think that, you know, we are in a place where the ELCA is appropriately looking for some guidance and wisdom and direction. And, and I think both of these reports provide some of that. But as is often the case, it leaves a lot of work to be done.

Yeah. You know, you say that as far as developing a new curriculum, but yet it's true. You know, they specifically say that there hasn't been a teen and young adult curriculum made that is useful, that helps folks grow in faith after. After confirmation. Right. We sort of leave it up to each congregation to find things. And it's been that way for a very long time. I think of when I was in high school, it was basically a topic of the week that a younger adult who had maybe kids that were in elementary school, we actually had a couple of them and they would alternate, but they would have us talk about, you know, topics, often controversial topics, and it didn't have a church component to it. Right. It was just sort of up to them. And I know that we've got curriculums we have access to to do that sort of stuff, but I think our congregations are sort of letting our young adults just go.

Yeah.

And not providing an ability, a scaffolding for them to grow their faith with.

Right. And I think certainly this strategic report is pointing that out and saying that young people need to be a renewed.

Focus for the LCA probably should have been obvious to us before this.

Yeah.

I think one of the things that I didn't mention from the CRLC report was, was one piece of this, and it's sort of hidden in the details, is they suggest that one of the task forces that they recommend is to come up with documentation and training for people who are joining a church council for the first time.

Right.

And that's one of those training things that makes a lot of sense because our congregations and our synod constitutions are standard. And so it isn't hard to come up with something that fits every congregation. As far as understanding what, say, a mutual ministry committee does. I didn't understand that until I needed one at a congregation I was at. Right. Understanding how the church council is supposed to operate isn't real clear. You've been on other committees at work or. Or on, you know, you've been to school board meetings or you've been to township or county meetings or city city board meetings, and you understand how they're supposed to go. But adding the church component to that is kind of important, so.

Right.

So having a training for that, and that is part of what they consider to be lay leadership, right?

Absolutely.

Having training like that helps feel. Helps people feel empowered as ministers, even though what they're doing is approving budgets and hearing what the Sunday school program has done for the year and things like that. But still, it's part of our ministry.

Yeah. All right. The catechism questions.

Yeah, let's do that. All right.

So for the last episode, we asked what the meaning of the word samud is. This was based on conversation that I was able to have with Pastor Imad Haddad from the Lutheran Church in Jordan. We asked what. What samud is, which is the organization that the ELCA kind of channels their. Their relationship with the Lutheran Church in the Holy Land in Jordan. In the Holy Land through. So the meaning of the word samud is steadfastness. Steadfastness. And refers to the steadfast love of God and the steadfastness of our relationship with each other through God and through baptism into God.

Absolutely. So for this. This episode, our question relates to our ELCA churchwide organization. We often refer to the three expressions of the elca. We often don't say what those expressions are. And so for those of you who know you can answer this or those of you who don't, you can look this up and see if it is one of these things. So are the three expressions of the ELCA Holy Baptism, holy Communion, and almsgiving? Are they the local congregations, the synods, and the churchwide organization? Are they the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, or are the three expressions of the ELCA frowning, sneering, and glaring? And you can send your responses with your frowns, your sneers, and your glares to us by email and social media. And if you can find a way to put those expressions on our phone, feel free. Our phone number is in the episode notes.

Unfortunately, we can't take text or emoticons.

Actually, we can text. Take tests.

Ooh. All right.

So you can. You can also text that. That number. And I'm looking forward. I'm looking forward to any texts we might get on that number.

Absolutely.

And so I'm gonna. I'm. Well, I'm gonna look that number up. Real quick, because that's just who I am. Yes. So if you want to text us, you can text us at 734-250-9554. Or if you want to hear your voice voice on our podcast, you can give us a call and leave a message at that number. All right, so to close us out here, Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fote. The show is produced by Phote Media Productions in Gross Eel, Michigan. Find all our contact information, links and a transcript in the episode notes. And until next time, go and peace serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

All right.