September 28, 2005

CHICAGO – She may look like just another tourist, or it may seem like a family on vacation, but there's something more meaningful and more spiritual going on here. A congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and its pastor are participating in the National Clergy Renewal Program of the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

The Lilly Endowment announced Sept. 20 that this year 23 ELCA congregations were among 124 congregations that received grants of up to $45,000 each for the support of renewal programs for their pastors. Up to $15,000 of each grant may be used for congregational expenses associated with a sabbatical.

Since 2000 the Endowment has invested more than $23 million in the National Clergy Renewal Program for 755 congregations and their pastors. It awarded 20 of 132 grants to ELCA congregations in 2004, 10 of 117 in 2003 and 26 of 135 grants in 2002.

The Lilly Endowment is an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation that "seeks to strengthen Christian congregations by providing an opportunity for pastors to step away briefly from the persistent obligations of daily parish life and to engage in a period of renewal and reflection," the program's promotional materials said.

In August the Lilly Endowment announced that 2006 will be the eighth year for a similar program just for congregations in Indiana. Two ELCA congregations – Risen Lord Lutheran Church, Bargersville, and Salem Lutheran Church, Indianapolis – were among 36 congregations that received grants in the 2005 Clergy Renewal Program for Indiana Congregations.

"I have the privilege of talking with many pastors who have received grants from the Lilly Endowment for their sabbaticals and with leaders in their congregations," said the Rev. Richard J. Bruesehoff, director for leadership support, ELCA Division for Ministry.

"Almost without fail each expresses gratitude for the gift of this time of personal and professional renewal," Bruesehoff said. "Pastors will go on to talk about their profound gratitude both to the Lilly Endowment and their own congregation, and the renewed vitality and commitment with which they return to pastoral leadership," he said.

"Congregational leaders will talk about the new clarity and vision with which the congregation engages in its ministry after the sabbatical," Bruesehoff said.

That's not usually where they start out, Bruesehoff said. Pastors don't see where they'll find the time; pastors and congregational leaders worry about the finances and about the congregation without a pastor.

"The Lilly Endowment grants really have addressed these concerns by making money available not only to cover the pastor's sabbatical expenses, but also to cover the congregation's costs of contracting with interim leadership. The grant also can be used by the congregation for its own long-range planning and development work during a sabbatical," Bruesehoff said.

"One of the surprises expressed by pastors who have received Lilly grants is the effect of completing the grant application. The process has helped them and the congregation's leadership focus on the short-term and long-term goals of the congregation and their plans for addressing them," Bruesehoff said.

Saint Peter Lutheran Church
Greenwood Village, Colo.
The Rev. David J. Risendal
http://renewal.home.att.net/

"The health of a congregation is fundamentally intertwined with the health of its pastoral leadership," said Lee Dehmlow, president of Saint Peter Lutheran Church in suburban Denver. "I have learned that there can be no wiser congregational investment than a regular, fully supported pastoral sabbatical program to maintain the energy, focus and faith of its pastor."

It was tough for the Rev. David J. Risendal to follow in the footsteps of a charismatic pastor who had served the congregation for 13 years, Dehmlow said. The former pastor had taken two sabbaticals during her tenure with the congregation. "Congregational leaders speak of the benefits both the pastor and the congregation received from these experiences," the president said.

Worship, music and Sabbath rest were priorities for both the congregation and its pastor in sabbatical planning. Three notable conflicts in the congregation during Risendal's seven years there were demanding on the pastor, staff and members of Saint Peter, Dehmlow said.

"Pastor Risendal has challenged Saint Peter to reshape its leadership development, worship and music styles, and adult and youth education while retaining our theological and liturgical integrity," Dehmlow said. "I believe that the next phase of congregational development will be well served by Pastor Risendal's proposed sabbatical," he said.

The three-month sabbatical will begin with piano lessons, a music theory course at the University of Colorado School of Music in Boulder and visits to four churches known for their creative worship life. The visits take Risendal to Arizona, Minnesota and Washington.

Risendal and his family will spend the last month of the sabbatical in Europe. "This will be a time of rest and renewal for their family, as well as a time to visit and worship in a number of historic houses of worship," including "some of the sites where the Lutheran Reformation had its beginning," the grant application said. The month comes to a close with a week of spiritual renewal at the Iona Abby in Scotland.

During the renewal program Saint Peter will host a weekend workshop on worship and music, open to other area worship planners and leaders. Workshop leaders will demonstrate Lutheran worship traditions and how to create worship experiences that could transform the worshipper.

"A post-sabbatical time of reflection and re-evaluation" is planned for Risendal and Saint Peter for 13 weeks after his return. The pastor will prepare a written report to the congregation, a newsletter article series, a Web site and a study for worship leaders. Risendal will also attend the Alban Institute's "Clergy Development Institute" in Allenspark, Colo.

"My love for music goes back to the purchase of my first guitar when I was 10-years-old," Risendal said. "During my 20 years of ministry I have found my role as a worship planner and leader to be among the richest experiences in my ministry. I love exploring how the ancient traditions of our church can be given new life, and working to see that newcomers and youth are honored and included in worship."

"As one who has never traveled to Europe, I am thrilled at the prospect of visiting the great cathedrals of Europe. I expect it to stretch my vision of what we can become at Saint Peter," Risendal said.

"I have never taken a sabbatical leave," Risendal said. "I am especially excited about the aspect of rest and renewal that it promises."

"I am hopeful that Saint Peter is a congregation in which I can experience a long-term ministry," the pastor said. "I trust that periodic sabbaticals will help me stay enthused, vibrant and committed to this ministry over the long term."

Pilgrim Lutheran Church
St. Paul, Minn.
The Rev. Carol J. Tomer
http://www.pilgrimstpaul.org/

"Although it was many years ago that we initially committed to the idea of a seventh year sabbatical, the time is ripe now for so many reasons, said Kris Hogquist, the president of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, St. Paul, Minn.

After a strong round of chemotherapy and radiation for six months, the Rev. Carol J. Tomer wanted to be more than a breast cancer survivor but a breast cancer initiate into a new way of life.

Kenda Creasy Dean advanced the idea of "pilgrimage as spiritual dehabituation" in her book "Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church." Breaking routines and opening oneself to guidance of the Holy Spirit became the theme for sabbatical planning at Pilgrim.

"Pilgrim experienced tremendous growth in the past five years. This has been stressful and challenging, and I cannot imagine Pastor Carol taking a leave during those times," Hogquist said. "We now have an additional full-time pastor and many administrative features in place; a leave feels exciting now and does not provoke anxiety," she said.

The congregation has been "progressively transitioning from a pastor-centered to program-centered church. We are now hungry for the means to extend our outreach as ‘ministers of the people' and to deepen our inner journeys with centering prayer and biblical study," Hogquist said.

Tomer is "an extremely gifted and motivated pastor. We all feed on her energy and passion, but frankly all that giving is exhausting for her. She is ready to receive and be nourished. We are ready to support her in this, and we know that her nourishment will ultimately strengthen all of our ministries at Pilgrim," Hogquist said.

"Pilgrim Lutheran Church is a well-named congregation. We are a congregation on the move, growing markedly in numbers and faith. In recent years, many of those who have joined Pilgrim have been people who are reclaiming or deepening their faith and involvement after a long absence from any church," the pastor and congregation wrote in their application for a sabbatical grant from the Lilly Endowment.

"This congregation is filled with very educated, creative and busy people who are longing for Sabbath and renewal of the inward journey. We are looking for patterns that are sustainable for the long haul," they wrote.

Tomer led the congregation through five years of study and renewal, and Pilgrim was adapting to its mission "to be a home for hungry minds and souls." Developing a Celtic communion service and a Nordic evening prayer service provided contemplative worship.

"I will go on three pilgrimages: in the desert of New Mexico, to my ancestral roots in northern Norway, and along the medieval ‘Pilgrim Way' route to the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway," Tomer said. "These pilgrimages will be anchored by times of reflection and reading about pilgrimage, learning and practicing centering prayer, sharing with other breast cancer initiates, walking, studying Nordic liturgy and music, beginning a relationship with a ministry coach, and deepening several special personal relationships."

"The cultures I have chosen operate with a sense of pace and balance that sometimes seems more humane than the pace I follow in my very typical North American city. I hope to rest and dehabituate while I am on sabbatical, but even more importantly, I am eager to bring back ideas and to have begun new habits that will make my service as a parish pastor sustainable in terms of pace, health and energy," Tomer said.

The sabbatical grant provides financial support for the congregation's renewal as well as the pastor's. The congregation planned a number of activities to build community among old and new members, "engage in biblical enrichment and learn to tell the story of Christ for a new day," and strengthen its outreach to neighborhood academic communities.

Christ the King Lutheran Church
Houston
The Rev. Robert G. Moore
http://www.ctkelc.org/

Members of Christ the King Lutheran Church, Houston, remembered the previous pastor's sabbatical as a time of "freedom and permission to see what we as a congregation could do for ourselves without a pastor to guide us at every turn. The people learned that we could indeed minister to each other in many important ways," said David Hollrah, the congregation's president. An added bonus was that the pastor "was strengthened to faithfully serve out his career with us."

Christ the King is located adjacent to Rice University and in the vicinity of the Texas Medical Center. "This location has influenced the formation of the congregation's identity and informed its commitment to theological education, music, liturgy, caring ministries, hospitality and international involvement," Hollrah said.

Houston established a sister city relationship with Leipzig, Germany, in 1993 to foster friendships and business exchanges between the citizens of the two cities. Christ the King struck up a sister congregation relationship with St. Thomas Church, Leipzig.

The Houston congregation has a German heritage, offers a German-Language service the first Sunday of each month and established the Melanchthon Institute as a center for theological education. In its relationship with the Leipzig congregation it has hosted visits by the St. Thomas Boys Choir and various officials, musicians and theologians, including two visits by Pastor Christian Wolff of St. Thomas.

During his 10 years with Christ the King, the Rev. Robert G. Moore developed a complex network of contacts and friends in Leipzig. He organized two tours of Houston Lutherans to St. Thomas Church.

"The accents particular to Pastor Moore's leadership have included theological education, congregational care, stewardship development, German-language ministry and alternative worship respectful of the Lutheran tradition," Hollrah said. "Both the congregation and Pastor Moore are at a point that could provide ‘breathing space' to focus on new opportunities, let go of unnecessary activities, and prepare and dream for the future," he said.

Moore came across an ad for the Lilly Endowment's National Clergy Renewal Program and began discussing the idea of a sabbatical with the executive committee of the congregation's council. Council members told him to apply.

"Structuring the Lilly Endowment application was the framework that put meat on the bones of Pastor Moore's idea. The application is complicated and requires a fair amount of detail," Hollrah said. Filling out the forms involved discussion across the congregation, he said. "By the time we had fleshed out the application, we were ready to go to the congregation for its approval."

"A good Lutheran congregation functions as a team, with everybody contributing to the good of the whole," Hollrah said. That teamwork was evident in the application process, and it is an expectation that the sabbatical will result in "a sense of renewed commitment to the idea that our congregation is a team in ministry of the gospel, to ourselves and to others," he said.

Moore will live in Leipzig with his wife and dogs for four- and-a-half months. The sabbatical will begin with a three-week German-language course at the University of Leipzig-Herder Institute. Moore will serve as guest pastor at St. Thomas Church, while tackling a reading list of German theology. He will spend one week with the faculty of the Institute for Ecumenical Research at the University of Tuebingen and another week on a spiritual retreat in the community of Taize, France.

St. Thomas Church is one of the world's centers for Bach and other baroque studies. Christ the King hosts a Bach Society that performs masterpieces of the Lutheran musical tradition in a liturgical setting offered to the Houston community free of charge.

"It can be difficult to get above the frenzy and find the horizon to which we aspire. That is also the case with personal goals. Time away to develop my language ability will help to fulfill a life-long aspiration," Moore said.

"The greatest benefit the congregation will receive from a sabbatical leave will be a renewed affirmation of their call to serve in this community with a new sense of energy and direction for the years to come," the pastor said.

"Pastors are not unlike other leaders who get so wrapped up in their work that they cannot imagine things working without them. The time away will demonstrate that Christ the King Church was running before I got here. It will be running while I am gone, and it will run when I return," Moore said.

Messiah Lutheran Church
Vancouver, Wash.
The Rev. Kathleen J. Braafladt and the Rev. Peter C. Braafladt
http://www.messiahvancouver.org/

After a decade the wounds of its last pastoral sabbatical were beginning to heal at Messiah Lutheran Church, Vancouver, Wash. That sabbatical served as the climax of a dispute that split the congregation in two.

The congregation called a clergy couple – the Rev. Kathleen J. Braafladt and the Rev. Peter C. Braafladt – from a rural congregation in central Oregon. The call committee scratched references to a sabbatical from their letter of call.

Messiah Lutheran experienced growth, increasing worship attendance from 140 to 370. The congregation hired a consultant to maximize the use of its facility and came up with a long-range plan that included possibly starting a satellite ministry in a fast-growing part of town.

"Peter and I knew that we would need to be rejuvenated and re-tooled for the journey ahead. We also knew that we needed to know and manage our limits as leaders so that the work ahead did not consume us," Kathleen Braafladt said.

"In our 18 years of ministry we had never taken serious time away from the daily demands of ministry to identify our ever- changing pastoral roles as the size of our congregations grew, our head-of-staff roles evolved, and the cultural dynamics of our congregations changed," she said.

"Leaders in the congregation knew that if they were going to present a proposal for a sabbatical to the congregation they would have to introduce the idea carefully. They would need to provide for congregation-wide involvement and would have to offer forums through which members could process their feelings and fears in healthy ways," Kathleen Braafladt said.

Messiah's Leadership Team dealt with its own anxieties about sabbaticals through study and discussion before developing a similar process for the rest of the congregation. Team members led four adult forums on Sunday mornings, and the president of the congregation met with each of the congregation's groups – from the choirs to the seniors group.

A congregational meeting approved unanimously a sabbatical for the Braafladts. The Leadership Team wrote a three-month sabbatical every 5 years back into its policies for the congregation's full-time staff.

The Braafladts planned their sabbatical with help from the Leadership Team and other congregation committees, as well as from a pastor with some grant-writing skills and the Alban Institute. The Alban Institute is an independent nonprofit organization based in Herndon, Va., that provides congregations with research-based information to enhance the effectiveness of their ministry.

The sabbatical involved a cruise through the inside passage of Alaska, meetings with their "coach" from the Alban Institute, a guided-reading course on the use of media in the church and visits with four congregations that started satellite ministries. The Lilly Foundation grant covered every aspect of the sabbatical, plus the three-month stipend of a part-time supply pastor and the grant's tax liability.

During the sabbatical the congregation developed several programs that strengthened Messiah's continuing lay-led ministry.

Since their sabbatical, the Braafladts reported back to Messiah's Leadership Team and to the congregation through several small group presentations. The congregation has taken the first steps in starting a satellite ministry and made a major investment in using a variety of media in the sanctuary.

"The greatest personal benefit to us has been our improved sense of well-being and a feeling that we are equal to the tasks ahead," Kathleen Braafladt said.

Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Evanston, Ill.
The Rev. Frank C. Senn
http://www.ilcevanston.org/

The council at Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in suburban Chicago approved the idea of a pastoral sabbatical. The Rev. Frank C. Senn had never taken a sabbatical in his 30 years of ordained ministry – more than 12 years at Immanuel – and considered this an opportunity to finish the book he was writing. He had already written several books and articles on Christian worship and liturgy.

The Lutheran Church of Australia invited Senn to give keynote addresses on "Worship and Culture" at its Worship Conference in Brisbane and offered to pay his travel expenses. Similar speaking requests arrived from Melbourne and from Luther Seminary in Adelaide, and several congregations in Australia asked him to preach.

"If I could get a sabbatical grant, it would be possible for my wife and daughter to travel with me, and I would have time away from parish responsibilities to prepare the presentations to be given in Australia," Senn said.

Senn and Immanuel's council assembled a six-member sabbatical task force to consider all the implications of the pastor being away for three months. Two of the members had taken academic sabbaticals; one was familiar with applying for a Lilly Endowment grant.

Senn completed the grant application, including a study program that would allow him time to prepare his Australia lectures. He worked at home the first two months of the sabbatical and took the opportunity to visit neighboring churches for Sunday worship.

"My family and I spent three weeks in Australia and one week in New Zealand. We had an opportunity to do tourist things in between my speaking engagements," Senn said.

Grant money covered the expenses of Immanuel's supply pastor – a professor of homiletics from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago – and the congregation's own lecture series on "Worship and Culture" with five notable liturgists and musicologists from the Chicago area.

The congregation also engaged itself in self-study. "As a result, we are far more intentional in addressing the extent to which our congregational life opens doors and the extent to which it inadvertently erects barriers to those of differing cultural backgrounds," said Dr. Gregory H. Singleton, a member of the sabbatical task force.

Back at Immanuel, Senn found the congregation still buzzing about the study and lectures, "which, as I understand it, have really honed in on the culture of the congregation – how we communicate within the congregation, how committees work, how community is built up," Senn said. "We will develop a process by which to consider how best to implement the ideas generated in these discussions."

"Pastor Senn is in a position to apply insights he has gained to a wide variety of ‘worlds' in which the liturgy is set. Thus he is able to go beyond the usual pious incantations about diversity and actually address the issues directly and in an informed way," Singleton said.

"I have returned refreshed and ready to give new leadership to the congregation," Senn reported. "The congregation is developing some energy to be renewed. These seem to be the chief benefits of a well-considered sabbatical program," he said.

"We are not done yet," Senn added. Remaining grant money helped make follow-up activities possible for both the congregation and the pastor, sharing what was learned from the sabbatical activities.

The Lilly Endowment, Inc., is different from the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation. The Lilly Endowment was established in 1937 by members of the Lilly family as a vehicle by which to pursue their personal philanthropic interests.

The home page for the National Clergy Renewal Program of the Lilly Endowment is at http://www.clergyrenewal.org/ on the Web. The Lilly Endowment news release listing 2005 grant recipients is at http://www.lillyendowment.org/pdf/NCRP2005Winners.pdf on the Web.

ELCA News Service