Twenty-two congregations in six cohorts have participated in our synod’s LEAD Journey over the past several years. Through their learnings about adaptive leadership, which undergirds the whole LEAD Journey, many have been inspired to boldly experiment in ministry. The story below is what happened when The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Wilmington, Delaware put their new tools to work!

  The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd was one of the original congregations that entered the LEAD process in the Delaware-Maryland Synod. They learned so much during that time and believe that the things they learned about themselves as a congregation, their values and how to see neighbors positioned them to respond when COVID-19 struck and be a partner and advocate in addressing hunger. 

 This is their LEAD journey story:

 We have worked hard to center our church on our discerned values of Serving Joyfully, Connecting Gratefully and Growing Faithfully. Our Council was restructured and aligned around these values, in teams that work together. For example, our Serving Joyfully team has a council steward for well-established ministries within the congregation, a steward for service opportunities that ‘pop up’ and we can be a part of, and a steward that looks for wider connections in the community, something we might never have looked to before the LEAD journey. This structure allowed us to quickly see that needs were going to shift in our community with so many people newly unemployed and needing assistance. We have a long history with Lutheran Community Services and St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church, supporting the food pantry located there. As one of our adaptive experiments in the LEAD process we started a garden that supplies fresh vegetables to the pantry during the growing time.

 We built a donation cart to receive vegetables from the wider community as well. When it became apparent that many more people would need food assistance, we were able to quickly use our food cart as a neighborhood donation point for the food St. Stephen’s needed. Working with St Stephen’s, we use various social media and good old-fashioned signs to let our neighbors know what to drop off.

Each Wednesday our church and other volunteers from our community garden tend the cart in shifts from 10 am – 2 pm as neighbors from all over North Wilmington drop off donations. We thank them and answer questions.  Most of these donations come from people with no direct connection to Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd. They thank us for the opportunity to help others. Over the 14 weeks we have been collecting food, we have been able to deliver over 8000 items to the pantry.

Now that it is harvesting season with our community garden, more people in the community are bringing fresh produce as well. This all started with the question of how we can still support our ministry partners in a time of pandemic, and a whole new community was born. LEAD helped us to see that we can adapt what was to what is.”

 Our Connecting team began the Shepherd’s Vine during the second week of the pandemic. This is a ministry to connect in some way (call, email, text) with every member/friend of our congregation. We have stewards of this ministry that have a list of people to touch base with every 3-4 weeks. Initially, this we thought that this would help us identify anyone who might fall ill and need support, but we found that we are making new friends, finding out about life events and sharing with the pastors if there is a pastoral concern for them. The callers change periodically so that no one feels overburdened by the commitment. This has been a way to keep our congregation together in this most unusual time.

Our Growing Faithfully team planned around the value of being a community together to worship live throughout the pandemic. We looked at the process in small steps, debriefed and added new features each week. Technological problems have occurred but with grace, we work through them and continue to move forward. Technology shepherds helped some of our congregants get online and experience our zoom worship. Devices were gathered and shared with those who did not have access. Experiments with song, spoken hymns and individual musical offerings have enhanced our services and given us as much of a ’normal’ feeling as possible. As our re-gathering team meets, the value of community together continues to drive the plans.

 We have been able to respond this way because the LEAD process helped us identify our core values and organize ourselves around them.

Another way the LEAD process helped position us for success during this time, was looking at our building as an asset and updating the parts that we felt would serve us in the future. In late 2019 our property folks undertook an upgrade of our Wi-Fi system throughout the building. All areas became Wi-Fi accessible. We, of course had not foreseen how big of an improvement that would be in 2020, but we are positioned to be online from all areas. This has helped us in our online worship currently and will continue to help us as we determine how to re-gather in person and online. Social distancing protocols can be maintained with various areas of our building space being able to have live services streamed. We do not know exactly how this will play out, but with the core value of Growing Faithfully, we know we can do it.

We additionally benefited from our LEAD learning by having an online giving portal. We embarked on updating our website to make it a secure site at the end of 2019 and began using the Tithe.ly app during Advent of 2019. Having this portal has allowed the generosity of our members to continue in this virtual time. We are blessed to be able to continue to support our ministries through these times. We also uploaded our Church software to work over the cloud. At the time we did not know how advantageous this would turn out to be but work from home orders could be easily met with this change. We also began going green. We put all LED lights in the buildings, replaced our refrigerator and freezer with energy efficient models and put our old blower air and heat system on timers. This really allows control of our energy use. We have seen savings in our energy bills that has allowed us to divert money to programs now.

Just before the shutdown, we at Good Shepherd held a 1-day retreat, led by Synod Vice-President John Auger. We followed the Annual Roadmap for Congregations published by LEAD. This process helped us define 3 specific goals and accountable actions associated with each. This was our first time doing the Roadmap, and we shut down right after. But due to having leaders in place for each goal, we are still working toward them, albeit in different ways.

The community aspect of the Shepherd’s Garden continues to expand. In this time of stay-at-home, the garden has provided a safe place for people to get out and do something for others. Each community gardener (we now have 30 beds) grows their own produce and is asked to give 10% to the food pantry we support at St Stephen’s Lutheran Church. What started as a small LEAD adaptive experiment has grown in ways we never imagined.

 The outward focus and connection to our values has been an immense help to us. We are thankful for the work we did during our LEAD journey and look with hope to the future.

 

There has never been a better time to boldly experiment, being church in new ways. Reach out to learn more about LEAD – Living Every day As Disciples – in our synod. LEAD is our synod’s main tool for growing disciple-leaders who learn to listen to God in scripture and prayer, within the church and within the neighborhood to discern where God is calling and what to do about it!

 

 For more information about our synod’s LEAD Journey, contact Cindy VanVliet, Associate for Community, at cvanvliet@demdsynod.org, for more information about our synod’s LEAD Journey!