These prayers of intercession from the Lutheran World Federation may be of interest to our congregations. They may be a helpful resource in the midst of these uncertain times.
A Pastoral Letter Concerning Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Communities of the ELCIC
Dear friends in Christ,
God’s grace and peace to you. Recent news about the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has raised concerns
for many of us for the wellbeing of people across the world and potentially in our communities and neighbourhoods.
This may be raising fears and questions.
In response, we first want to ask you to pray for all who are affected by this disease. God be with those who
grieve, are ill, isolated and afraid, and the many people involved in medical and emergency care. We pray particularly
for the people of China and other nations where the disease is spreading rapidly. And we ask that together we
stand with and publicly express our support of Asian neighbours and communities in this country, that racism
and prejudice be confronted among us and in our nation.
We also ask that we resist allowing our fear to overwhelm us. We trust in “God with us,” and in the revelation
of God in Christ Jesus who speaks often in the Gospels the words of promise, “Do not be afraid.” We are called to
reassure others in this same promise.
It is also important to inform ourselves of the risks and precautions, and our national, provincial and local
government health authorities are our best source of information. Please consult the Health Canada website:
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection.html or your provincial
or local health authority for up-to-date information.
We want to ensure best practises in our worship and community life together, especially for the sake of those
most vulnerable to this and other diseases. The following are recommended in our communities, based on best
practises of health authorities, for preventing the transmission of the disease.
• People experiencing cold or flu-like symptoms, especially a fever, should stay home and avoid contact with
others until symptoms cease. Thoroughly washing hands and avoiding contact between unwashed hands and
mouth, nose and eyes, and sneezing or coughing into your sleeve or a tissue, are the most effective ways of
preventing infection.
Concerning specific worship practises, the following are recommended in our communities that should ordinarily
govern our public worship:
• Greeting one another, including sharing the peace, should be expressed in ways that are comfortable for each
person, that may or may not include shaking hands or embracing, but also, a bow, nod, or smile.
• Hand sanitizer should be readily available in and around our worship and other gathering spaces for
everyone’s use.
• Cleaning and disinfecting surfaces according to local health guidelines in our public spaces of worship and
gathering, especially washrooms, door handles, handrails, is recommended.
• Those preparing Holy Communion should thoroughly wash their hands with soap and hot water and all
vessels and containers must be carefully washed before and after worship as well.
• Presiders and Communion ministers should thoroughly wash their hands with soap and hot water just before
serving Communion.
• Medical advice tells us that the common cup, when properly administered, continues to be a hygienically sound
means of receiving the wine in Holy Communion. A metal chalice wiped inside and outside and turned between each
person communing is the best practise. Ceramic chalices are not as hygienically sound.
• Parishes that use individual glasses for Communion should ensure that good hygienic practises are followed by all
persons who handle the glasses both before and after worship.
• The practise of intinction (dipping the bread in the wine) is not recommended. But if used, worshippers need to take
care that hands are clean and touching the wine is avoided.
• People who are uncomfortable or anxious about receiving the wine in Holy Communion, regardless of the means,
should be reminded that it is entirely appropriate to commune by receiving the bread only.
• As we continue to monitor the situation, an extreme risk of transmission in a local community may require the
temporary practise of communing with bread only. Local health authorities should be consulted in making this decision.
In addition, appropriate food safe practises, including thorough hand washing, washing of dishes, careful preparing and
serving of food and beverages should be followed for all gatherings for hospitality and community together. Consult local
government health authorities for best information and training as appropriate.
Our hope and prayer is that our appropriate concern for public health and well-being in our communities does not
diminish our full and enthusiastic participation in worship and community life together. We trust in God’s continuing care
for all in response to this health challenge before us.
God bless us all with a Holy Lent and a springtime of hope in Christ Jesus.
Yours in Christ,
The Rev. Susan Johnson, National Bishop, ELCIC
The Rev. Dr. Greg Mohr, British Columbia Synod
The Rev. Dr. Larry Kochendorfer, Synod of Alberta and the Territories
The Rev. Dr. Sid Haugen, Saskatchewan Synod
The Rev. Jason Zinko, Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario Synod
The Rev. Michael Pryse, Eastern Synod
Supporting Our Rostered Leaders
Dear friends and colleagues,
Grace and peace be unto you!
Next Monday I will begin the fourth in a series of zoom calls with our synod’s rostered leaders in our 17 Ministry Areas. In our most recent series of meetings I highlighted the need for our rostered leaders to practice good self care and to maintain a proper work/life balance. This of course includes taking adequate time off on a weekly basis and to make sure to take vacation days.
Our rostered leaders have been doing a magnificent job of leading and caring for God’s people in the midst of these extraordinary circumstances. They have quickly adapted and learned new ways of engaging their ministries. They have been working very, very hard and they need our support and encouragement to take care of their own physical, spiritual and emotional well-being.
The article found at this link, which by the author’s own admission may “overstate the case”, is nonetheless a helpful caution to us all concerning the potential toll this pandemic time might take on our rostered leaders. This is what we need to prevent occurring. https://johndobbs.com/the-coming-pastoral-crash/
In an attempt to help ensure that our rostered leaders plan for and take summer vacation days, our ELCIC Bishops and Assistants to the Bishops will be preparing sermons for congregational use throughout the summer: June 14 to September 13. The sermons will be provided in both text and video format. Each week, the materials for the coming week will be loaded to a folder in BOX by Tuesday at the very latest. BOX is an easy to use application for facilitating file sharing. For instructions on how to access these resources, rostered ministers are invited to please email tgallop@elcic.ca (subject line: Summer Sermon Series).
Thank-you dear brothers and sisters, for all that you have and are doing to make plainly evident that “the church has not closed.” Through God’s grace and your work as congregational leaders, pastors and deacons, you have ensured that our church is alive and well and engaged in ministry; extraordinary ministry! I am so grateful. I am so very proud! Soli Deo Gloria!
A Birthday Wish
Wind, fire and a group of fearful friends. And then suddenly the Spirit descends and all is utterly, eternally, irrevocably changed. The once fearful disciples cringe no longer. Wishful thinking and timid whispers yield to a bold proclamation of passion and resurrection. Jesus’ disciples are quite literally given a “second wind” and in that instant the Church of Jesus Christ is born.
Pity the poor lector who’s assigned for Pentecost Sunday! Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Cappadocians etc. etc. What a strange combination of participants! But we shouldn’t be surprised. The Christian community as described within the New Testament is characterized by some amazing combinations of people; Jews, Samaritans and Romans, rich and poor, slave and free, male and female. And for some, both then and today, this is a frightening prospect.
Some years ago I was at a continuing education event where Susan Briehl shared the story of a friend whose two daughters were preparing for the impending birth of a third child. The youngest of the two seemed to be adapting to the idea of an expanded family quite well, but the eldest seemed to be focussed on this coming birth in an excessive way. She was always asking questions. “Where will the new baby sleep? Where will the new baby sit when we eat supper? Where will the new baby go in the car?”
Finally the mother sat down with her daughter and asked her if anything was bothering her about this new baby. “Are you worried about something?” And it was then, that the real question came out. The little girl said, “Well, whenever we go out, you hold my hand and daddy holds Sonja’s hand. So when the new baby comes, whose hand won’t get held?”
There’s a sense in which this describes our natural response to the kingdom’s radical inclusiveness. Part of us feels that if God’s embrace is defined too widely, if it were to really include those who are different from ourselves – both young and old, black and the white, men and women, gay and the straight, weak and strong, rich and the poor – we might somehow end up with nobody holding our hand.
In the Gospel accounts Jesus promises that he will never leave us orphaned. He will never let go of our hands! But those same accounts also call us to reach out and grasp the hands of others. Indeed, this is one of the primary themes of the Gospel narrative. Over and over again we encounter a kingdom wherein people who are in the darkness of separateness and aloneness and are called out of isolation and into the light of a new community.
Each Pentecost Sunday, as the party is ended and the candles are extinguished, we are sent forth to help fulfil God’s birthday wish for the world! In part, that involves becoming a more visible sign of the kingdom’s wonderful diversity. It means expanding the circle and grasping hands that have previously been spurned. It means going beyond the safety of our comfortable definitions of who is in and who is out, and to follow the light of God’s presence to whomever and wherever that light might take us. May God grant us the faith and courage to make that journey.
A Message from Bishop Pryse to Our Eastern Synod Pastors and Deacons
This Easter Triduum will be unlike any we have experienced. Three short weeks ago, most of us expected we would be back in our churches by now, basking in the familiar patterns of rite and ritual, grateful to have concluded these enforced days of separation. Now we wonder about Pentecost and even beyond. What began as an annoyance has become an existential threat. Holy Week has actually become the narrative trajectory of our lived experience.
A chorus penned by John Lennon has been looping through my head the past few days. “Nobody told me there’d be days like these. Strange days, indeed!” It actually makes me smile because, in truth, I’ve been told plenty of times; and throughout my life. In Sunday School I’d been taught the story of the people of Israel with its attendant tales of plague, woe, misery and hardship. From my mom and dad I’d heard the stories of the Great Depression and what it meant to live in times of fear, uncertainty and scarcity. I still remember the cold war era “duck and cover” drills we experienced in early grade school. I had been told the story of my maternal great grandmother who had died when the Spanish flu had ravaged the community of Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1918. I had been told there’d be days like these, lots of times! I’d simply forgotten.
But there’s no forgetting now. Nothing feels the same. Everything seems different. The world really has changed, in ways we are only beginning to know and understand. But some things haven’t changed. And the truth of some things have, indeed, become clearer and more focussed. The love of family. The need for community. The faithfulness of a loving God. Our dependence on these things has become crystal clear, as indeed they always have for those within the human family, both past and present, who have found themselves living, like us, in uncertain and fearful times.
Many people, me included, have also been depending on you to help us spiritually navigate these strange waters. As your bishop, I need you to know that I have been deeply moved and powerfully inspired by the faithfulness and creativity with which you have engaged that work in recent weeks. Whether low tech, hi tech or no tech! You have faithfully lived out your vocations in beautiful ways that are appropriate to your respective contexts! I am so very proud of you!
Dear sisters and brothers, as you lead our people through the Great Three Days, I want you to know that I have never felt more connected to you; in prayer, in faith, in practice. You are a blessing to me and you have made my heart full. Looking ahead, we know that things may well get worse before they get better. But we also know that in faith, we will – indeed and in time – get through this. Remember, strange days can also bring strange blessings. But they are blessings, nonetheless. May you experience
such blessings in abundance as you lead our church during these holy days! Resurrection is coming!
Count on it!
Classics or Jazz?
In his book Free At Last?: The Gospel in the African-American Experience, Carl Ellis talks about theology through musical metaphors. He writes, “Like classical music, the classical approach to theology comprises the formal methods of arranging what we know about God and his world into a reasoned, cogent and consistent system. Classical theology and classical music reflect God’s oneness. The unity of God’s purpose and providence is reflected in the consistent explanations and consonant harmonies of classical music and classical theology. “
“But God is not just classical. God is also jazz. Not only does he have an eternal and unchanging purpose, but he is intimately involved with the difficulties of sparrows and slaves. Within the dynamic of his eternal will, he improvises. God’s providential jazz liberates slaves and weeps over cities!”
He concludes, “Theology bears analogy with music in that it too can be approached as formal or dynamic.” Classical theology is concerned with “propositions” while Jazz theology is concerned with what happens when those propositions interact with pain, life and the moment! “
I think the church’s theological vocabulary needs both classics and jazz. In life as in music – it’s only by having spent time in the woodshed learning the old standards – doing our scales – that we develop the dexterity which allow us to syncopate, improvise and respond to the call of Divine Love! Likewise, in life as in jazz, no moment is just a moment. Every moment is pregnant with the possibility of God being revealed to us. Each instant of life has the potential of God using us to make something beautiful; broken strings and all! Our theological language need to reflect both these realities.
The same God whose Spirit song called this world into being, is still preserving and sustaining it, still improvising with us, in us and through us. And because of that we are able to do wonderful things with the instruments that have been given to us! As such, I would ask you to consider the possibility that the Holy Spirit might be composing yet more beautiful music for the Church to sing. It may well be that the very best of humanity’s collective song has yet to have been sung!
So long as our bass line continues to be a strong and abiding faith in God our creator. So long as our common melody is expressed in lives lived in praise of Jesus our Saviour. So long as the harmony of our song remains grounded in the continued presence of the Holy Spirit working in; among and through us for the world’s salvation; this can and will be most certainly true! AMEN