What are we here for?

To go where love leads;
To serve where love calls.

– new Purpose Statement of the New England Synod

It’s almost shockingly brief, and at first glance, it might seem too vague to even begin to describe what we, as the 188 congregations that make up the New England Synod, are here to do—particularly since it doesn’t actually mention God. But this past weekend, the Doing What Matters facilitation team unveiled our new Purpose Statement, crafted over the past several months through the input received from many individuals at the Mission Area Assemblies held throughout the Synod this spring.

As words on a page, they might not seem like much. But after spending this past weekend in Springfield with around 600 Lutherans from all over New England, excited to be together, putting their faith into action through acts of love and service, and making connections between what we do here on a congregational level and what we do together as the New England Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I began to see that there is much more meat to these words than meets the eye.

A “Purpose Statement,” after all is not meant to be an exhaustive description of what an organization does. It isn’t even meant to give specifics or goals. It’s meant to give an over-arching theme that answers the question, “Why do we exist?” And as Lutherans, who approach everything we do from the place of God’s lavish, unconditional grace and mercy, it does seem to make sense to ground everything we do in just that: love. Love, after all, is not just a feeling. For Christians, love is always an action—but more importantly, a person. For us who are the baptized people of God, we know Jesus as God’s love incarnate…and ourselves as Jesus’ love embodied in the world today.

There was a palpable energy at this year’s Synod Assembly that said to me, “we are really starting to understand this.” It’s one thing for me to preach about love; it’s another thing for us to do it. Jack King and Gabby Richard, who represented FLC extraordinarily well, can tell you about the faith experiences they had in making this connection between what we believe and how we live—especially when we do it together as the church in the world.

It is my hope that a lot of the energy and enthusiasm that we experienced at Assembly can be brought back here to Lynn to help others make that connection as well. Already, at our Council meeting last Monday, we began taking action on one of the resolutions passed at the Assembly that called for congregations to consider developing community gardens as a way of providing fresh, local produce to the neighborhood and helping us consider our relationship to the earth that God made. Resolutions on developing pastoral care and liturgical resources for ministering to interfaith families, and calling the church to take a public stand against bullying also passed overwhelmingly—thanks in part to Gabby Richard, who had the courage to speak of her own experience of bullying (in front of over 600 Lutherans) in favor of the resolution! Here at FLC, the concert we hosted earlier this spring to support the anti-bullying work of nAGLY was already a great start to fulfilling this mandate to speak out. Look for more opportunities to get the word out that God loves everyone and that FLC is a safe, welcoming church for all people in the coming months.

As we celebrate the festival of Pentecost on June 12, I am excited to see how the Holy Spirit will move among us in the coming months. I sense a renewed vitality among more and more people in this congregation, and I look forward to seeing how we will “do what matters” by loving and serving the world in Jesus’ name.

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +