How would ministry priorities change if we didn’t rely on offerings to fund ministry?
So much of church life revolves around talk of mission. Who should we serve? What causes might we adopt?
However, we serve no one without offerings. Maintaining the offering base can quickly replace our lofty mission plans.
We camouflage this search for offerings with rhetoric. The “D” card is played—demographics. When church leaders talk about demographics changing they mean that the people who are most likely to tithe are gone. There may be twice as many people living in the zip code, but they are not seen as offering givers. Better to close the church than reach out to new demographics. If those people of the new demographics actually started coming, they might cost us more than they give. We can’t have that.
We really don’t want to reach new people. We are looking for people like us or like those who are gone.
The first thing offerings go toward is funding the structure for the collection of offerings— the weekly church service, the passing of the offering plate, and the annual pledge drive.
Consequently, we fund ministries which we think will guarantee offerings. Often they benefit only the people funding the offerings. We tend to think this is families, but we are probably wrong about that.
In most churches, the percentage of offerings that actually go toward mission work is very small. Some even rely on special offerings or fee-based Vacation Church Schools and mission trips.
We set out with the best of intentions to change the world. We end up working to keep our collective heads above water.
What if there was a way to fund ministry without offerings?
We’d still expect people to give, but we might start looking at our members differently. We might restructure staff and priorities. We might see people for their skills, passion and talent. Our ideas of ministry might change in major ways.
It’s a question worth asking even if it’s unrealistic. How would your church minister if money were no object?
Some things never change. Some things change a lot.
A problem in today’s Church is that we aspire to be modern and boast of “doing something new.” The truth is —and this is not necessarily bad—our feet are planted firmly in the past. Try as we like, we just can’t take the exit ramp that leads to the future.
We want to find that ramp. We’ve pulled over on the shoulder with the exit sign in sight. We are checking and rechecking our maps, plugging a new address into our GPS, waiting for the GPS voice to give us instructions . . . but it just keeps saying “recalculating.”
We are lost.
Or are we just afraid of what we may face if our over-stuffed luggage flies off the car rack on the sharp turn?
The Interconnected Church
One term for our era is the “The Interconnected Age.”
The Church has been big on that concept for centuries. We should be thriving.
However, today’s interconnection is different. We approach it not from need and dependence but for empowerment—long-overdue empowerment.
In the past our interconnectedness defined who we are and who will fit in. It gave us structure, complete with rules.
The result is hierarchy. There is much less need for hierarchy today but hierarchy does not like to be messed with!
In the beginning, hierarchy was cost-efficient and helped many lowly churches do great things in a big world. The rank and file didn’t have to be educated. They just had to follow leaders and things would be fine. This continued long after the Renaissance and public schools and any need for such strict structure. But change is slow and in the Church is slower.
The currency of this system was threefold—offerings, prayer and volunteer labor.
This isn’t working any more.
Today’s people will give, but they prefer to give directly — not out of rebellion or disdain for authority — but because people know it is more efficient to give directly and because for the first time, WE CAN. The established hierarchy actually stands in the way of innovation.
The result?
The Church is not ready for today’s world.
Individual congregations are not ready for today’s world.
Individuals ARE ready but won’t sit in the pew for long waiting. They feel more useful outside the Church.
The effectiveness of both the greater church and the congregation is weakened.
Congregations are like small bubbles within the larger bubble of the church. All are fragile.
Lutherans are proud of their interdependent structure. The structure doesn’t really exist. Congregations for the most part work in isolation. They know very little of what is going on in the next parish or even in their community. Each congregation is its own little bubble.
Structure becomes a pacifier.
As long as we worship and commune weekly, as long as we meet a budget that provides for a pastor and building, as long as we have a choir and some semblance of a Sunday School (even if it’s just sending the children away during the sermon) a congregation can be content.
The same thinking goes on at the regional and national level. Higher levels feel that they are pivotal to church life. In fact, they are far more reliant on the congregations than the congregations are reliant upon them. Shh! Don’t tell.
They work hard at maintaining staff and function but they are well aware that the congregations they serve can no longer afford the expense—especially since it is growing less effective and may soon be obsolete.
Interconnectedness means popping bubbles—one by one, until we are not just interdependent one with another but also with the world we serve.
How do we find that exit ramp into the future?
One way is to start using the communication tools of the future. The Church tends to look down on media evangelism. We are reminded of evangelists who beg for money to support media costs and lavish lifestyles.
But media costs today are negligible. 2×2’s annual operating budget is under $100. We will reach 40,000 people this year with our ministry.
It is true that the Church of tomorrow will be different.
It will have more local flavor. We can trust people with that now.
It will have less denominational loyalty. Admit it. This is holding us back. We work so hard at being Lutheran, Catholic, etc., that we forget how to be Christian.
It will align itself with outsiders—business, charities, community groups and other faiths—and it will be refreshed in doing so.
It will rely far less on structure. There just is no need and it costs too much.
Media is integral to modern life—the lives of the people you want to meet, the work of the organizations you want to work with and support, and the community the congregations hope to serve.
A church that has no internet ministry or only a self-serving internet presence, is wasting the key evangelism tool of our age. It may be the exit ramp that leads to the future the Church so desperately prays for.
These photos were sent to us by the Christians of Faisalabad.
They are in shock and mourning for the 85 killed when a large Christian church was bombed last month. They are trying to help the families of some 250 who were badly injured in the first bombing and a second bombing a week later.
Christians are under attack because Muslim extremists equate Christianity with America. In fact, most Americans have little or no connection with Pakistani Christians. Pakistan may as well be on the moon!
The dedicated Christians of Pakistan are serving where it is hardest to tell the Christian story. It is life-threatening for every man, woman and child.
2×2 has been trying to raise awareness. Small as we are, we collected $250. We had the money converted to rupees and wired (the most cost-effective way, we learned).
This was not easy! It took four trips to the bank to get the transfer through, but we (and the bank!) now know how to do it and it should be easy for us from here on.
If you would like to contribute, send a check marked Pakistan Relief, and we will make sure every penny will be sent to help the seriously injured and their families.
Our address:
2×2 Foundation
care of Judith Gotwald
591 Hermit Street
Philadelphia, PA 19128
I have been blogging on behalf of my congregation (Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls) for nearly three years. It has become a discipline which has created many interesting mission opportunities for our little church without a building. It is something our members follow and discuss when we get together. It is our church blog.
There is always something new to learn! In 2011 we inched our way up from one visitor each month to 500 a month. In 2012 we improved our statistics about tenfold and doubled that again in 2013. We have used no gimmicks or strategies—no Facebook ad campaigns, no contests or elaborate opt-in schemes. We just created and posted content almost every day.
But how do our statistics measure? I had no idea.
Today I saw a recommendation for a utility that analyzes a website in comparison with others in a similar field. I think it does this by analyzing key words and results of key words. How would three years of work stack up in an independent, purely statistical, algorithmic review?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Nevertheless, I started exploring.
The results are amazing.
2×2 is in the upper 20% of most church social media ministry categories and is NUMBER ONE in the category of church blogging. The lowest we ranked in any category was 47%.
Within the next two weeks we will tally our 40,000th unique visitor. We now have about 200 readers everyday (about half unique and half followers).
We are putting our four years of exile from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to good use. What we have learned could help many! Statistically, we may be the largest church in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod — measuring modern statistics!
But we are shunned. Our skills, our loyalty, our faithful mission, and our people are worth nothing in the ELCA. Our property and the protection of the people who created this mess are priorities.
Lutherans teach that the church is not a building. The church is the people.
But Lutherans don’t really believe what they teach. They have our building and evicted the people. They declared us closed—with no consideration for the people. A new church is now worshiping at the same time we once worshiped — right across the street from our locked building—proving that ministry is totally possible in our neighborhood.
But we knew that all along.
Will the ELCA ever see us as viable?
Not without some help.
Redeemer is not closed.
We are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod.
Today, we can learn from Jewish neighbors and colleagues.
A problem with religion in general is that we all live in our own worlds. We approach problems as if they are unique, threatening only to what we in our self-imposed isolation are doing.
In fact, most churches, denominations, and faiths face the same challenges.
We just don’t identify the challenges correctly.
We all live in the same world with the same changing demographics, the same societal changes, the same economic dilemmas.
Churches die before they can adapt. They die because they are chasing the transformational dream. They die because they are encouraged to change while lacking the tools or structure that will foster change.
It is time to admit that the emphasis of the of last 20 years has been wrong. Churches do not need to transform. We don’t need to change who we are or our message. We DO need to adapt to the world we all live in if we hope to reach the world we live in.
What we need to pursue is adaptive ministry.
The Church’s two-decade old quest for transformation has failed because we all have been looking at each other, waiting for someone else to do the transforming. We isolate the few successes—without really analyzing why they were successful or waiting to see if the success is sustainable. We try to copy one trendy methodology after another.
The last thing we would think to change is the structure of the Church. Heaven forbid!
This approach blinds the church to truly adaptive ministry.
Rabbi Hayim Herring addresses this in his blog today. He talks about many of the things 2×2 discusses—the need to reach people where they are in ways they can actually relate—and sustain.
He calls it “building a platform.” Platforms are structures!
What is an organizational platform (and I can highlight only a few dimensions in this space)? A platform is an enabling space for people to interact and act upon issues. An organization that becomes a platform enables individuals to self direct their Jewish choices and express their Jewish values within the organization’s mission. That is a radical shift from organizational leaders directing people how, when, where, why and with whom to be Jewish—in other words, the dominant paradigm of more established Jewish organizations and synagogues!
Becoming a platform is also a mindset. It means embracing the desire of individuals to co-create their experiences, opt in and opt out of Jewish life, do new things and old things in new ways-of course, within the organization’s mission. This mindset operates within the building, outside of the building, on the website, and anywhere else. It also requires a much more creative and intentional use of technologies to tell individual stories and organizational stories and a redefinition of professional and volunteer leaders’ roles, new governance models and even new professional and volunteer positions.
There is little need for traditional church structure in today’s world. People know this. Church leaders don’t. That’s why churches, large and small, are failing. That’s why the population in the sanctuary is quickly aging.
This failure of the Church to adapt its structure will continue to strangle the breath from the Church. If we can adapt structure, we can avoid a sure and certain death.
Redeemer was leading the way in this regard—still is. We didn’t really know that we were building a platform—but we were!
Redeemer was doing many things in ministry right. We hadn’t gotten there without stumbling a few times, but we had learned a lot in facing problems. We had identified a niche ministry that was growing quickly. We had faced the economic challenges of small church ministry head on. We came to realize that associating with just one pastor was impeding ministry—limiting us to one vision while sapping our resources. We had found pastors willing to work within the new paradigm that was needed for success, while our regional body had only one position: there were no leaders willing to serve us.
The ELCA, while stumping for transformation, couldn’t deal with transformation when it bit them on their Achilles heel. Ouch! What was that?
Regional bodies have serious problems of their own and they have only one way out—getting fewer lay people to give more. If that doesn’t work, take it.
That’s what they did in East Falls. They took what did not belong to them, attempting to destroy ministry to salvage structure. It hasn’t worked very well.
Redeemer’s transformation continues. Our online ministry teaches and involves people who would never bother with Sunday School or religious education. We are discovering our own world view—not waiting for a national church to point out needs and remedies to select problems. We continue to pursue the economic challenges of all neighborhood ministries and we think we have some answers. There is no reason to lock the members of Redeemer out of Church life—except the desire for our assets.
We have built a platform. We work at it every day. We work at it with no help from the structured church. We have learned a lot about ministry in today’s world.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for the most part, is not listening. They are worried about their retirement years. Their ears are growing old, their eyesight is growing dim. But we, their faithful children, still love them.
Every thousand years or so the Church should reexamine the way it works. Something might have changed that might influence our methodology and our success in mission.
The Church has survived the early days of Greek democracy, Roman Imperialism, feudal governments, monarchies, papist states, the re-emergence of democracy in a New World, and Western Colonization. That’s just a sampling.
You’d think the experience would have made us flexible.
So here we are at the dawn of a new age—the Information Age or the Connection Age.
The Churches of the Western World are largely spectators in our changing society. A new era arrived while our lamps were unlit.
Part of our thinking is skewed toward the habit of culturally dividing the world into Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Today’s world is more culturally divided by Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
The dividing line is actually slightly north of the Equator. The Northern Church is fading. The Southern Church is growing.
The Northern Church is used to being in charge—the leaders. Ultimately the Northern Church will follow the Southern Church. Where is the latest pope from?
What’s the difference between the two hemispheres? The Southern Hemisphere carries less baggage. Christianity is new and refreshing. The language, music, and customs of the North didn’t relate. There was little expectation that they would.
The Northern Church carries a ton of baggage. We don’t know where to begin in unloading it!
The current methodology for reviving mission is to concentrate on individual congregations. Dealing with the baggage of the past is one of the first steps church leaders take when working with congregations in transition. This can come in the form of discussion, or it can come from strong-arming congregations—even evicting them and taking property with the excuse that a new foundation for mission with no baggage is needed. Out with the faithful. In with . . . . who knows?
Either way, we avoid the reality that where change is most needed is in broader church structure. Talk about baggage! Most of the baggage in the church is in the overhead compartments!
Being the target for mandated change is a frustrating process for congregations. We are asked to perform the same old way, a lot better and faster, and with less encouragement and fewer resources. Meanwhile, Church leaders do nothing to change.
Truth be told, change is even more frustrating for regional bodies. They are desperate for success they can control and measure and that will sustain them. At the same time, they feel they must maintain the image of leadership—even as the economic foundation for their existence is eroding.
Congregations can exist without hierarchies. Hierarchies cannot exist without congregations.
Sadly, the latest methodology is a symbol of desperation. The Church actually kicks people out, announcing that they will start churches over under their superior management. This hasn’t been working. The show of superiority and force is a turn-off in today’s world. . Promising starts have faded within a decade. Mission churches fail at an alarming rate!
How do we change 2000-year-old thinking?
We have to be mindful that church involvement is a habit. The Church cannot survive without the cultural habit of weekly attendance and offerings. It’s these figures that we use to measure success.
We have relied largely on tradition to reinforce attendance and giving habits. Unfortunately, new traditions have replaced them. The Church probably has to concentrate on developing new opportunities for spiritual habits.
Habits are triggered by need. The Church has to identify the needs of modern society.
Why do people go to church? Why do they stay home?
People don’t go to church to be counted or to fill offering plates.
People don’t go to church to be loyal servants of clergy.
Habits are based on some trigger—some personal need.
Triggers might be:
Tradition
Personal Need
Imperative of Faith
Curiosity of Faith
Social
Compelling Emotion
Too often, we concentrate on triggers that no longer exist.
Love of organ music and 18th and 19th century music.
A desire to listen to one person’s interpretation of the Word.
A love of ritual.
Maintenance of property.
90% of most church resources are devoted to sustaining things that people no longer relate to.
The first step in reviving ministry is to identify the current triggers in your community. What triggers might change spiritual habits?
Stop sifting through baggage. A baggage-free church is an empty church.
Baggage will always be with us. That’s what the cross is for.
photo credit: loungerie via photopincc
There is nothing more frustrating than standing in the voting booth and reviewing the slate of names for judge. It’s an important role, but the average voter has no interaction with judges and knows nothing about list of candidates. They rarely campaign.
Choosing a bishop is just as challenging.
Every six years about 500 Lutherans in the Delaware Valley gather to elect a bishop. The process is repeated in 64 other ELCA synods.
About a third of the delegates are clergy. The majority are lay people. Clergy know other clergy that they went to seminary with or with whom they might have served on a committee or in a regional cluster. Laity tend to know few pastors other than their own. Very few delegates know much about the people who will be nominated. Our interdependence is built on isolation.
How does this eclectic group make a wise decision that will affect everyone’s ministry for the next six years?
A few people will throw some names into the ring. Some might be part of an organized nomination effort. Some will be favorite sons and daughters, usually of more influential congregations. A quick short (very short) bio will be circulated. The bio will list where they’ve served but not much more. From that point it’s a crap shoot. Lay people faced with a slate of unknown names are likely to turn to their pastor for advice. That amplifies the voice (and responsibility) of the clergy.
Often, the successful candidate will have name recognition. They may have served on the bishop’s staff and circulated among congregations for six years or more. They may have never served a congregation but worked with a church agency and had the responsibility for visiting with congregations. Their names are known to a wide audience.
In either case, the actual shepherding experience is limited. They are accustomed to seeking and celebrating short-term successes.
Parish ministry is for the long haul. So is the work of a bishop.
If you’ve been a dedicated pastor, serving one congregation for any length of time, you are not likely to ever rise in the ranks of church leadership.
But interim pastors . . . they get around. Over the course of five years, an interim pastor might meet with six or more congregations. They are gaining recognition without ever committing to anything but short-term advisory status—an extension of the synod staff with the paycheck coming from the parishes.
They are not likely to have worked through a long-term ministry challenge. They have never had to balance congregational dynamics for more than a few months. A six-year term is likely to be the longest commitment that might be added to their résumé.
But they will have what it takes to become bishop. Name recognition.
Pastors who commit to serving one congregation and do an excellent job of shepherding and leading—they haven’t got a chance.
Do Your Congregation’s Goals
Mask Mission
or Measure Mission?
Small churches are often asked to draft mission statements.
This is a common step taken in the corporate world. Things are a bit different there.
Most corporations are founded on the dreams of one person. The mission statement, in the corporate world, is often an effort to get everyone on board with what the management has already defined as the Corporate Mission. The people owe their paychecks to management.
The process is different in congregations. Congregations are more grass roots. The people drafting the Mission Statement are also the people providing the funding.
It helps to have an understanding of goals before a Mission Statement is drafted. It may be too late for that. But it is never too late to set goals.
In churches you have “management” in the form of clergy and regional offices. They carry a lot of weight even when the constitutions give the laity the job of management. In more hierarchical denominations, there is some remote leader who has some ultimate say.
The larger Church has goals for congregations. They may not be the same goals as the people who fill the offering plates—and the people who are given the task of drafting the mission statement.
Mission statements are different from goals.
Mission can be worked at incrementally and can withstand setbacks—even failure.
Goals are measurable and potentially more critical for survival.
Goals change from year to year. Mission statements can change too but have a longer life.
You can achieve your mission without achieving your goals, but you are likely to be judged for failing to achieve goals.
Mission statements are lofty.
“To preach the gospel to every nation.”
“To make the name of Jesus known in our neighborhood.”
“To serve the needy with the love of Christ.”
Goals are practical.
To make this year’s budget.
To accept 20 new people each month into membership.
To improve worship attendance.
To hire a second pastor.
To replace the boiler or roof.
To engage families.
Congregational goals are often at odds with goals of church leaders. The goals of church leaders might read like this:
To find employment for pastors.
To make sure benevolence is a budgeted item.
To protect congregational assets.
To make sure that congregations are faithful to doctrine.
Ideally, there is some commonality between a congregation’s goals and a regional body’s goals.
Work for a balance between mission and goals.
One can become the means to the other. This presents a confusing message to members and potential members. ”Is this church about mission or is it about goals?” A sure sign that a congregation is confusing mission and goals is when you hear this gripe: “All they are interested in is my money.”
You can acheive your goals and fail to achieve your mission. Many churches that are considered successful are very good at reaching goals with no mission direction.
Take a look at your ministry. Did you meet your goals this year? Did you have any goals? Did you fulfill your mission?
Churches never close for lack of mission.
Churches close because they didn’t reach goals—their goals or someone else’s goals for them.
Oddly, mission failure will probably be cited as the reason. It won’t matter how wrong this is. Damage will be done.
Do you see where the trend for growth is? It is in SMALL CHURCHES!
Pastoral Churches with 51-150 members have a much slower rate of decline than all other categories.
Small Churches are actually showing growth. Significant growth.
Small Churches and Pastoral Churches together comprise a significant percentage of all churches. Things aren’t as bleak as we sometimes think. We are just defining success inaccurately.
This report was published in 2008, the year lawsuits were filed in our church case. The chart shows the change in worship attendance from 1990 to 2006—the year Bishop Burkat first approached Redeemer with a copy of her constitution in hand.
Redeemer was one of the churches showing growth when this report was published in 2008. In fact, in 2006, we were the only small church in SEPA Synod that church statistics showed as growing. Most congregations in every category were showing decline. These records were altered during the court battle. There SEPA represented our congregation as having only 13 members at the same time they were holding us to a quorum for 82 members. In fact, we had tripled our membership between 2006 and 2008 to more than six times the 13 SEPA was counting.
More interesting are the figures for Mission Churches. SEPA was hot to make Redeemer a Mission Church. As it ends up, we were smart to resist this proposal.
The status of Mission Church sounds like leaders are trying to help—but the status of Mission Church actually changes the relationship of a congregation to the Synod. If they accept the status they forfeit rights to their property. It is really just a sneaky way to gain control of congregational property. They tell congregations that’s it is about starting fresh without the baggage of the past. That’s a ploy. It’s about property. Once Mission Status is assigned, the congregation will not be able to leave the ELCA with its property — EVER!
Churches with Mission Status are failing faster than any other category save Mega-Church. When they fail, property issues are already decided.
We discovered this for ourselves when we visited Spirit and Truth in Yeadon a few weeks ago. Their story was cited as an example of what SEPA could do for us if we would only cooperate.
In 2006, Spirit and Truth was a freshly chartered church. SEPA had started this congregation by closing the existing congregation and making it a mission church. New name. New management. New rules. The people of Yeadon—old and new—lost control of their property. Now, eight years later, their numbers are lower than when they were chartered.
If SMALL CHURCHES are where the best potential for growth lies, why are they targets for closure? Why are they encouraged to enter a failing model? Why are members expected to transfer memberships to churches that face tougher challenges?
The answers lie in the needs of hierarchy to control property and manage the stable of professional leaders. Members and mission are lower priorities. When budgets are failing, there is little incentive for SEPA to help small churches succeed. Small churches are their security blanket, their bank, their nestegg for their own rainy day.
The thinking is shortsighted. Small churches have the best chance at making a difference, but there is no plan to provide the necessary leadership. The lucky ones have able lay leaders. Failing that, they will soon be on the list of churches that synod feels must be closed. (But first your synod might pretend they are going to try to reopen the church as a mission church, so they’ll benefit from the property.)
Time for the ELCA to pay attention to its own data!
Time to find answers for strengthening small churches.
That’s where your best potential for long-term mission success lies.
The ELCA has always been proud of its disaster witness. As for evangelism—the ELCA has divided the world in 65 pieces with each synod adopting a mission region. I looked online at the list of “Companion Synods.” Tanzania has multiple ELCA companions. Pakistan didn’t make the cut. That whole part of the world is missing from our mission efforts.
Here is a country where ministry is very difficult—life threatening. Every day. And we are absent from helping—even from the security of sanctuaries of freedom half a world away.
The Church tends to live in a bubble of bureaucracy. Someone somewhere else will deliver on our prayers and cares. We’ve done our job by repeating “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”
Of course, there is always the fear that our help will be misused. We want the help to get to the right people. Often, that means we don’t help at all.
We at 2×2, the remnant of Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls, know all too well ineffective church assistance. We can’t count the number of pastors who tell us they pray for us. After six years of persecution, we know very well the power of prayer with no action. We’ve had a lot of attacks, many very personal. But at least no one has blown up our whole congregation.
The bombers were angry at the United States. They still equate America with Christianity.
The Pakistani Church is desperate for help in recovering from this attack. One pastor wrote to us this morning in frustration. “Now is the time for practical help. Now is the time to show that ministry is more than words.”
Pakistani Christians are an unwelcome minority in a Muslim culture. They know their lives are dangerous. They are not sure they will get good medical attention because of who they are.
Many are not affiliated with western mainline denominations, although the bombed church was Anglican. They have asked for food, medicine and clothing. They have not asked for money, although money is the most practical way to help them. We don’t know what medicine to send, we don’t wear the same clothes they wear and food is difficult to send. So money is the practical answer.
The ELCA took all Redeemer’s money. But still we will try to help.
If you can help Christians who are actively dedicated to Christian ministry in the hardest part of the world for Christians to serve, please consider sending a gift to the addresses below.
2×2 Foundation
c/0 Judith Gotwald
591 Hermit Street
Philadelphia, PA 19128
Join Bishop Ruby Kinisa as she visits small churches "under cover" to learn what people would never share if they knew they were talking to their bishop.
Undercover Bishop will always be available in PDF form on 2x2virtualchurch.com for FREE.
Print or Kindle copies are available on Amazon.com.
For bulk copies, please contact 2x2: creation@dca.net.
MISSION INSPIRATION OFFER
A visual and biblical guide to help congregations define their missions.
Contact Info
You can reach
Judy Gotwald,
the moderator of 2x2,
at
creation@dca.net
or 215 605 8774
Redeemer’s Prayer
We were all once strangers, the weakest, the outcasts, until someone came to our defense, included us, empowered us, reconciled us (1 Cor. 2; Eph. 2).
Be calm. Wait. Wait. Commit your cause to God. He will make it succeed. Look for Him a little at a time. Wait. Wait. But since this waiting seems long to the flesh and appears like death, the flesh always wavers. But keep faith. Patience will overcome wickedness.
—Martin Luther
