Nebraska Synod ELCA

By Deacon Timothy Siburg, Director for Evangelical Mission, Innovation and Stewardship

Can you feel it? The calendar has turned to August. The heat of the summer is here. The school year for many is mere days away. The ministry program year in your congregation is days or a few weeks from kicking off. It’s time. We are all invited to cultivate love through all that is new.

We cultivate love through new questions. What might God be up to? What might God be inviting us to be a part of next? Questions that are at the heart of the Nebraska Synod’s Vitality Initiative for Congregations. Perhaps your congregation is being called to discern applying this fall for the initiative’s third cohort that will launch in early 2025?

We cultivate love through new ideas. What is something new that you have been meaning to try? New perspectives to test? What kind of new experiments might you embark on? Through these new experiences and experiments, what might you learn about yourself? About your neighbors? About whom God is, and what God might be inviting?

We cultivate love through new dreams and imagination. What are the deepest and biggest dreams that are on your hearts and minds? What are the deepest and biggest dreams on the hearts and minds of your neighbors? Perhaps God is calling us in this season to ask questions, to listen, to wonder, and to imagine. For all that is new comes when we open ourselves up to imagine what might defy our expectations but be possible because in God all things are possible.

As we enter into this starting point as the calendar turns, the days get a little shorter, and the school, ministry and work calendars fall more into regular rhythm again, what might it look like to lean in this year with the mindset, hope, and even expectation that with and through God we are called to cultivate love through new _____.

You fill in the blank. This might mean new: questions, ideas, experiments, dreams, and imagination. It might mean taking advantage of new opportunities like the Vitality Initiative or learning opportunities through Emmaus: Lifelong Learning. It might mean taking a deep breath and making a commitment to yourself, your colleagues and God, that you are going to try something new this year and focus on something.

Whatever you fill the blank in with, know that it’s not just you filling in the blank. God is at work. God is inviting you to be a part of something. God is inviting you to grow as a disciple and serve and walk together. God’s invitation comes through God’s deep love, which today is as real as it has ever been, calling forth new beginnings, new hopes, and new joys, which are grounded in God’s promise that God is with you, for you, and loves you. Always.

How might God be calling you to cultivate love through something new?