MNO Synod Bishop's Message

Reflections from Sweden

Day 4

In his message to the LWF Council, President Mark Hanson, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, used three words to express what it might have been like to attend the first LWF assembly in Lund 60 years ago. He mentioned hesitance, urgency and joy. Hesitancy due to the post war environment, especially for those on opposing sides during WW2. Urgency because the world needed healing in the midst of a human crisis. Joy because they had an opportunity to combine common service work and common theological efforts.

Today we rarely pay attention to the work of the LWF or even notice its place in the world. In fact most of us probably don’t know that some of our benevolence dollars go to LWF efforts (from congregation to synod to national church to LWF). This week I have met people and heard stories of the impact LWF has on their lives. This week I am reminded of the horrors of the HIV/Aids pandemic in Africa and some of the people who are working to make the lives of orphaned children much better, or how water (something we flush, drink and spill at will in Canada) is rationed in refugee camps.

Women Bishops and Presidents working on message to
LWF Council regarding women's ordination

This week I am reminded that I am a part of something greater- a movement that changed the world 60 years ago and still could change the world even more today. But even as our world has shrunk in terms of communications and the internet, making our neighbour as close as an email away, we have become more insular and more internally focused to meet our own needs and not to see beyond ourselves and our small corner of the world.

We often hijack the world’s concerns to talk about our own. It was very evident in the North American regional meetings held over two days while in Lund. Did we talk about the world issues around terrorism, the rising “empire” south of our own borders, the growing climate change issues? No. We spent a great deal of our time analyzing the governance model of the LWF. What concerned us was how process was followed and how it might be improved.

The best links to what is happening in the world happened at the dinner table, where “family” sat down together over a meal and told stories, where I learned about schools in Africa that are educating young people to build a new world, where theological education made a difference in the life of the women in Peru and where urgency, hesitancy and joy were three words that spelled LWF today, with me in the middle of the ACTION.