“Sparking Hope for Leaders in Challenging Times” October 11, 2025 at Zion Lutheran Church, Grand Rapids
We invite your council members, committee chairpersons, team leaders, and anyone else from your congregation who is interested to join us!
Registration — Click Here —
Schedule for the Day:
9:00 Check in and fellowship
9:30 Opening worship with communion
10:15 Workshop 1
11:30 Workshop 2
12:45 Lunch
1:30 Workshop 3
2:45 Workshop 4
4:00 Closing/Sending Worship
“Sparking Hope” is our synod theme for this year, and we hope that everyone who attends will be sparked with ideas that come from this event. Our workshop choices will follow the four values of our synod (Welcome, Connect, Reform, and Support) and will be filled with hands-on ideas and tools for attendees to take back with them to your congregation. Here is a sneak peek at some of the workshops. Each participant will be able to choose 4 workshops to attend.
Our workshops will be filled with hands-on ideas and tools for attendees. Choose four to attend.
Welcome
Title: Gathered to Lead: Running Faith-Filled and Effective Council Meetings!
Description: Church councils do good and difficult work of faith. Some members feel prepared and called to do this work and others may say, “who, me?!?” Wherever you may fall, we thank you for saying yes to the nudging of the Spirit! In this workshop we’ll explore ways to create effective, grace-filled meetings to help you and your church council thrive!
Title: We’re a Reconciling in Christ Synod – What Should We Be Doing?
Description: At our most recent Synod Assembly, it was overwhelmingly voted to become an RIC synod. This vote came after a 2-year long process of study and discussion across the synod. Maybe you have questions about what this means for your own congregation, or you might be curious about what the next steps are if your congregation wants to explore the RIC process more deeply. Come and hear from the synod Welcome and Reconciling Team who seeks to be a resource for congregations who want to have important conversations around welcome, sexuality, and an openness to investigating the RIC process.
Title: Wading Deeper in the Welcoming Waters: Living into your congregation’s commitment to RIC (Reconciling in Christ)
Description: In this workshop we begin with the assumption that your congregation has formed or will be forming a Welcome or RIC team. We will talk about the resources that Reconciling Works offers, walk through training options for your team, and share the opportunities available in our synod to network with each other as we walk this welcoming path together.
Title: Circle Keeping for Hope
Description: By promoting Seven Core Assumptions, the Peacekeeping Circle process builds strong and trusting communities by empowering and equipping individual community members. In this workshop, participants will experience an abridged Peacekeeping Circle, learn some of the basics of Circle Keeping, and explore resources for bringing Peacekeeping Circles to your context.
Connect
Title: Engaging Lay Leadership
Description: This workshop is hosted by a team of lay leaders and their pastor who tell the story of pastoral transition, congregational needs, and lay leader utilization during transition and critical times. Answering the call; feeling appreciated and competent, and growing a lay leadership team are discussed. Group participation and dialogue will be encouraged.
Title: Transcendence and Transformation: ChatGBD as A Critical Primer for the Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery
Description: The decentering of the human is sometimes called the nonhuman turn or the more-than-human turn. Could it be that by shifting our focus away from the human, to the more-than-human, we actually summon an ecological imagination that better safeguards humans? What you will find in the work of scientists like Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass) and Suzanne Simard (Finding the Mother Tree) is a questioning of that frame of reference. And at the heart of their inquiry is a suspicion that what we are dealing with is not humans encountering a world of inert objects, but that these plants, animals, and maybe even those things we label inanimate are persons, subjects like us, and yet significantly different. Come along and learn by practicing Gospel-based Discipleship for the Transformation of each Soul who yearns to Go Beyond into that Peaceable Kinship of All My Relations.
Title: How do we start a Cooperative Ministry?
Description: As a pastor in the ELCA for over 30 years, Pr. Tim Ehling is facing a leadership challenge that is not for the faint of heart, because Pr. Ehling chose to be a Mission Developer who is not serving a 6 pointed-call for 6 congregations, but one call to form a cooperative beneath, between, behind, and beyond what each one is alone. This is the first time in the history of the ELCA, whereby a mutual ministry agreement between a mission developer and a synod has not defaulted back into a multipointed-call where the mission developer is the pastor to individual congregations. Come along and learn how this could be the future of the church flowing into more convergence as the Kettle River Conference in the Northeastern Minnesota Synod witnesses to the wider church about what is possible.
Title: Banana Ball as Reimagining America’s Pastime
Description: As a pastor in the ELCA with a heart for Evangelism, Pr. Josh Blair is drawing cross cultural correlations between America’s Pastime (the game of baseball) and America’s Religious History. What Pr. Blair has found in much of his research and reflection might surprise many of you. One truth that he will verify during this workshop is that America is not now and never has been exclusively a Christian Nation. He will then make the case through several illustrations and examples, that America is inherently and indelibly pluralistic in both its Pastime and Religious History. Many of Pr. Blair’s will be quite light-hearted and humorous, so come along with your sense of humor in order to reimagine our sense of presence in this Coming Advent of the Sacred in our American culture.
Reform
Title: Best Practices for Onboarding New Leaders and Running a Church Council Meeting
Description: Description: We explore leadership within a congregation and how leaders can lead, recruit, equip and empower others in leading and ministering, and make council meetings more effective, productive, and meaningful.
Title: It’s Time for an Early Christmas Present! Updating Your Congregation’s Constitution!
Description: This workshop will look at the purpose of having governing documents in a congregation, when it is time to update our constitution and bylaws, and resources that are available to congregational leaders in this task. The recent ELCA Churchwide Assembly produced a number of required and recommended amendments to the Model Constitution for ELCA Congregations; we will look at these amendments and talk about possible next steps.
Title: Stewardship is More Than Getting Offering in the Plate
Description: What do you think of when you hear the word stewardship? I hope you don’t cringe! And I also hope that you don’t think of stewardship as simply paying the bills. Stewardship is a wonderful word that describes how a follower of Jesus Christ faithfully travels through this life. Stewardship is the way that we use the abundance that God has entrusted to our care to love God and our neighbor. Come and hear how stewardship is all-encompassing. It is not just about offering plates or budgets. Stewardship is about love – it’s about generosity. Generosity is a virtue of giving good things to others freely and abundantly – it’s about sharing grace – and we know that grace abounds! We’ll cover resources that are ready to use as your congregation emphasizes stewardship as a way to help one another walk the walk of faith and discipleship.
Support
Title: How to Develop a Congregational Mental Health and Wellness Team
Description: This workshop will help you build and empower a dedicated team to foster a culture of mental health and wellness in your congregation. It will offer the tools and frameworks necessary to create a more resilient, compassionate, and healthy community.
Title: Faith Community Nursing
Description: This workshop aims to equip leaders with the tools to identify and address health-related stressors, including those related to mental health, within their congregations. This interactive session will focus on the role of Faith Community Nursing, helping participants examine the interconnectedness of health with various dimensions of a person and identify practical ways a Faith Community Nursing ministry can provide support and resources.
Title: Alone on the Island of Mutual Ministry
Description: Participants will set sail on an adventure exploring scripture and real-life statistics to deepen their understanding of what authentic, mutual ministry leadership involves for the health and well-being of the entire church. This workshop provides strategies for fostering a culture of shared responsibility and collective care, encouraging a practical and supportive community.
