Dear partners in ministry,
Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen!
Thank you for your congregation’s faithful and generous sharing of mission support with the synod and churchwide expressions of the ELCA during our 2024 fiscal year, which ended on January 31.
Mission support is the undesignated dollars your congregation directs to the synod to support the work we do as “church together.” Your faithful commitment throughout the past year helped us reach 98% of our goal and we are so grateful. Your gifts help us touch lives in countless ways and offer hope for people near and far.
Throughout the last months, you’ve been reading stories about the concrete ways your mission support dollars impact our 106 congregations, our rostered ministers and our lay leaders and beyond. You help amazing things happen, like ministry development in a Spanish-speaking congregation, young adults finding a faith home through campus ministry, the Gospel being proclaimed and heard in Guatemala and Tanzania, support for future pastors and deacons through candidacy, congregations being served by interim pastors in times of transition and so much more. I invite you to take another look at these stories (appropriately titled “We Are Church Together”), found here on the synod website under the “Stories of the Synod” blog.
Being church together means we can do so much more than we ever could alone. And we, as a church together, must show up. I wonder if your congregation would consider increasing your mission support by one percent…one penny on every dollar you receive. This small but faithful step would allow us to continue to show up and also expand the work we can do together. Please prayerfully consider it!
In closing, I again say thank you—for your partnership, your trust and for being church together in this synod. May God bless your ministry and the work we do together!
The Rev. Justin Grimm
Director for Evangelical Mission and
Assistant to the Bishop for Congregational Vitality
