Fall Leadership Gathering
October 21 – 23, 2024
Holiday Inn, Kearney
This gathering is for leaders serving in the Nebraska Synod as pastors, PMAs, deacons, Faith Formation directors and other key staff positions.
“Mainline denominations are showing drops of 15 percent, 25 percent, and even 40 percent over the span of the last decade.”
“New projections forecast just 16,000 in worship across the entire ELCA by 2041. Why is this happening and what can be done?”
“What is wrong with the ELCA?”
You’ve seen this script before. Some of you can quote it from memory. Whether we hear it out loud or in our inner monologue, it’s a litany of anxiety about the future and nostalgia for a romanticized past, a script of scarcity, guilt, and failure.
“Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past, See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18-19 – NIV)
It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to follow the old script. We can be different. We can start flipping the script.
Come to this year’s Fall Leadership Gathering ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work flipping the script. Let’s be curious about what’s going on in the communities we serve. Let’s be honest about what’s holding us back. Let’s be brave and imagine a different reality than the script we’ve inherited. Let’s be kind to each other as we engage in this hard work together.
Let’s start flipping the script, together: urban and rural, large and small, lay and rostered – all of us bring something to the writing table. Let’s come together to worship, pray, learn, and begin.
– Bishop Scott
