Welcome, Bishop Jessica Crist

This Sunday we welcome our bishop as the guest speaker in Adult Forum (9:00am) and as our guest preacher in worship at 10:00am. Please greet her and welcome her to Bozeman and Christ the King!

 

The Rev. Jessica Crist is Bishop of the Montana Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  A resident of Great Falls, she is married to Turner Graybill, a retired attorney.  They are members of Bethel Lutheran Church in Great Falls, Montana.  They have two adult children—Rhiannon, who is a professor in the religion department at Rhodes College in Memphis, and Raphael, a recent graduate of Yale Law School.  Bishop Crist grew up in Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Divinity School.

 

Prior to assuming the office of Bishop, Pastor Crist served as Associate to the Bishop for 5 years, and Director of the Northern Rockies Institute of Theology for 18 years.  She served congregations in Great Falls, Montana, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started in ministry as a campus pastor.  She served on the Transition Team that helped put together the Montana Synod from the predecessor churches, and was elected Synod Secretary at the Constituting Convention.  She served in that capacity for 12 years.  She has worked with the Montana Association of Churches for many years, including serving as President, and as part of the teaching staff for the Lay Ministry Institute. She has served on the Board of Lutheran World Relief.
Her community service over the years has included chairing boards for the local YWCA, the PTA and the hospital’s Women’s Health Board.  She writes a monthly column for Montana Woman Magazine.

Bishop Crist was elected Chair of the ELCA Conference of Bishops. She currently serves on the Board of the Montana Association of Churches, on the Board of Luther Seminary.

She is a member of the ELCA Task Force on Communal Discernment, the Bishops’ Liason Committee for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations, and the Bishops’ Domestic Ready Bench.    

“I am honored to serve as the Bishop of the Montana Synod.  As I travel the Synod and visit your congregations and ministries I get to function as an ambassador.  I get to meet you and listen to your stories.  And I get to share the story of the wider church with you.  I pray for every congregation and every pastor and AIM each week.  And I hope you will join me in praying for the whole church.”

Advent Midweek Worship and Words from the Bishop

Tonight is the last Wednesday of Advent!

We'll gather for soup supper at 6pm. At 7pm we'll move into the sanctuary for Holden Evening Prayer, a lovely sung vespers service. There will be time for quiet reflection and prayer - just what so many of us need in the midst of this busy season of preparation!

 

Words from the Bishop: End of Life Decisions

Each week, the Bishop of the Montana Synod, the Rev. Jessica Crist, writes an article for the Synod newsletter. Here it is for this week:

 

 

Words from the Bishop:  End of Life Decisions

 

As people in the United States are living longer, there are more and more discussions on quality of life issues. Many of those discussions focus on end of life issues. Patients' rights issues mingle with death with dignity issues. Nobody wants to suffer a prolonged, painful death. And the conversation moves eventually to the right to die. Some states, like Oregon, have incorporated it into their legal system, and have physician-assisted suicide as a legal option.

Montana is a legal no-man's land in this issue. The Supreme Court determined that there is no law prohibiting physician-assisted suicide. But neither is there a law that allows it. In past legislative sessions Montana has seen bills introduced both to allow and to prohibit physician-assisted suicide. Both have failed. But the issue is not likely to go away.

Society has changed a lot in the last several decades. Medical advances enable people to live much longer with debilitating conditions. And at the same time there is a movement to allow people more agency in their own health-care decisions. Every time I drop by the hospital lab across the street I am asked if I have a living will.

Families are not always in agreement with each other on end of life issues. The tragic situation of Terry Schiavo a decade ago brought to the public eye the tragedy than ensues when family members are at odds with each other about the best course of action (or inaction.)

So what can we say as Christians? The ELCA has a social message on "End-of- Life Decisions," adopted in 1992. It affirms 6 basic principles:

            +Life is a gift from God, to be received with thanksgiving.

            +The integrity of the life processes which God has created should be respected: both birth and death are part of these life processes.

            +Both living and dying should occur within a caring community.

            +A Christian perspective mandates respect for each person. Such respect included giving due recognition to each person's carefully considered preferences regarding treatment choices.

            +Truthfulness and faithfulness in our relations with others are essential to the texture of human life.

            +Hope and meaning in life are possible even in times of suffering and adversity, a truth powerfully proclaimed in the resurrection faith of the church.

The statement explores artificially-administered nutrition and hydration, and the refusal of beneficial treatment. And it addresses physician-assisted death. It states:

"As a church we affirm that deliberately destroying life created in the image of God is contrary to our Christian conscience. While this affirmation is clear, we also recognize that responsible health care professionals struggle to choose the lesser evil in ambiguous borderline situations-for example, when pain becomes so unmanageable that life is indistinguishable from torture."

"We oppose the legalization of physician-assisted death, which would allow the private killing of one person by another. Public control and regulation of such actions would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. The potential for abuse, especially of people who are most vulnerable, would be substantially increased."

The entire statement is five pages, and you may find it helpful to read. You can find it at www.elca.org. I commend it to you as part of your moral discernment for the legislative issues that face Montana and Wyoming in the coming months.

In Christ,

Jessica Crist, Bishop

Words from the Bishop

Each week, the pastors of the Montana Synod of the ELCA get an email of news updates from our Synod Office. This week's email included an article from our Bishop, Jessica Crist. It explains a bit how we, as Lutherans, think about our life together in the world - especially in campaign season:

Words from the Bishop-Lutherans and Public Policy-New for September 17

It has been said that the 2 topics you shouldn't bring up in polite company are politics and religion. (I don't agree.) So what happens if you mix the 2, and bring them both up? Toxic or redemptive? It all depends, doesn't it?

 

It is September, and the political signs are cropping up on lawns, and the billboards, TV ads and robo-calls are multiplying like spotted knapweed. Some of the messages out there are a sincere attempt to state a position or point of view. Some seem simply to be aimed at instilling fear and tearing down opponents.

 

How do Lutherans respond to politics? Martin Luther talked about "the two kingdoms," as a way to describe it. The "kingdom on the right" is God's realm, and the "kingdom on the left" is the earthly realm. Luther never suggested that Christians get to function only in the kingdom on the right. Only cloistered monks could claim that lifestyle. We live and function in the world, the world that God created, and the world that God so loved.

 As Lutherans, we take seriously our call to live out our baptismal promises in love for God and love for neighbor. And living out love for neighbor sometimes involves taking a stand for justice. The ELCA has social statements voted on by Churchwide Assemblies, and social messages voted on by the Church Council. ELCA advocacy staff work in Washington, at the United Nations and in state capitals on issues that we have agreed upon as a church.

Is it possible for Lutherans to disagree? Absolutely. While we do our best as a church to discern through prayer and study and research what the most appropriate positions and actions are to a broad issue, we never claim that ours is the only way. Learning to disagree graciously and still be part of the same church is a gift that Christians can share with the larger community.

 

We do not endorse candidates. We may support positions and issues, but we do not support candidates. That would, among other things jeopardize our tax-exempt status.

God has called us to live in the world, and to care for our neighbors. There are many issues in our legislatures, and in our national government that affect the lives of our neighbors. Christians of good will may differ in their responses to the world's challenges. But let us do it with civility, treating those who disagree with us as the children of God that they are. Every legislative session in Montana we have Lutherans on both sides of the aisle. That is good.

Jessica Crist, Bishop

Reflections on the Death of Nelson Mandela

From the Rev. Jessica Crist, Bishop of the Montana Synod of the ELCA:

 

Reflections on the Death of Nelson Mandela

 Nelson Mandela died yesterday at age 95. He had spent 27 years of his life as a political prisoner on Robben Island. After his release he was elected President of South Africa, the first black president of the post-Apartheid South Africa. It was an historic day in 1994 when black people were allowed to vote for the first time. I remember seeing photos of lines over a mile long of people waiting to vote for the first time in their lives.

White South Africa was not sure what would happen when there was majority rule. Many feared that there would be a terrible backlash, a kind of eye-for-an-eye system of revenge. But instead, Mandela invited black and white and mixed race into his government. And, with the assistance of Bishop Desmond Tutu, he channeled the emotions of a nation recovering from decades of violence into the Truth and Reconciliation Process. It was a bit like Confession and Forgiveness, with which we are so familiar. Truth and Reconciliation was designed to give people an opportunity to speak of the atrocities, speak of the losses, learn what happened in all its shocking detail, and then to move on.

And South Africa has moved on. Not that there are not problems. Official Apartheid is over, but economic apartheid is alive and well. But South Africa did not explode into the kind of violence and genocide that everybody expected, and that happens so frequently when there is a change of government, such as in Rwanda. South Africa did not become a bloodbath, and for that we can thank God for Nelson Mandela.

The Montana Synod has a companion synod relationship with the Cape Orange Diocese in South Africa. Over the years many people from our Synod have visited South Africa and met our partners there who went through the Apartheid years. We have heard the stories of oppression, of racism, of violence. And we have seen the role of the Church in South Africa. The last time a group from our Synod visited, it was the 20^th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from Robben Island prison. We were able to tour the prison, with a former prisoner as our guide. Everyone we met on that visit to South Africa had a story of how they had been affected personally by Apartheid and its aftermath. We were struck again and again with the resilience of the people, and with the prevalence of hope.

Many of you may recall that Bishop Bill Bowles and Mr. Joe Jongolo visited our Synod last summer from the Cape Orange Diocese. This morning I sent a letter of condolence to the Diocese on behalf of the Montana Synod. I expressed our sympathy at the death of Nelson Mandela.

In this season of Advent I am reminded of the vision from Isaiah, of what is often referred to as "The Peaceable Kingdom," from Isaiah 11: 16-18 (this Sunday's text.)

"The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox."

In this piece of prophecy, the improbable becomes reality, the impossible becomes the norm. This passage from Isaiah was the basis for Quaker artist Edward Hicks' series of painting of "The Peaceable Kingdom." You may have seen them on Christmas cards-lovely depictions of predator and prey in perfect harmony. Some of the pictures that Hicks painted have some human beings in them in the background. If you look closely you can see William Penn with the Lenne Lenape Indians, negotiating a peace between the two cultures.

Nelson Mandela spent his life resisting injustice. And when the tables turned and he became President, he did not choose revenge. He did not seek retaliation. Instead he led a country full of wolves and lambs, of bears and cows, and showed them a better way. And the world is a better place because of it.

May he rest in peace. And may South Africa come together in his honor.

Bishop Jessica CristDecember 6, 2013

A new Presiding Bishop - video of the Bishop Elizabeth Eaton's installation

The ELCA has a new Presiding Bishop! The Rev. Elizabeth Eaton was installed this past Saturday, October 5th, at the Rockafeller Chapel in Chicago. Below is the video of the service of Holy Communion with her installation.






If you want to skip ahead to the sermon, preached by the Bishop of the Montana Synod, the Rev. Jessica Crist, the video is here:



Enjoy!

ELCA Churchwide Assembly

This post is from the Bishop of the Montana Synod, Jessica Crist. It comes from the August issue of the Montana Synod Newsletter.

When you read this article, the Churchwide Assembly will be in session in Orlando, Florida. Twelve voting members, elected at the 2010 Montana Synod Assembly, will join approximately 1000 other voting members from around the Church to do the business of the Church. These volunteers are giving up a week of their summer to vote on resolutions and budgets, constitutional changes and a social statement. Please keep them in your prayers, and thank them if you get a chance. And feel free to invite them to your congregation and your fall cluster meetings, in order to hear from them directly.
If you are reading this, pass it on. Pass on the newsletter, pass on the article, pass on the information about accessing the Churchwide Assembly. Here is our group: Pastor Carol Karres is a retired pastor living in Sidney and serving on the Synod’s Candidacy Committee. Jim Allen of Great Falls, is about to start his freshman year at Concordia College, Mike Young, newly-elected Synod Vice President, is a Billings-based health care consultant. Pastor Dan Heskett serves Northridge in Kalispell, and is Dean of the Flathead Clus-ter. Sandy Lange of Choteau, is on the Churchwide Board of the Women of the ELCA. Wayne Saverud, of Kalispell, works for Immanuel Lutheran Corporation. Trudi Schmidt is a State Legislator from Great Falls, and a member of the Synodically Authorized Worshipping Community, New Hope. Tonia Fisher-Clark, is an LPA and a member of King of Glory in Billings. Lee Christianson is an active member of First Lutheran in Havre, and works for Thrivent. Pastor Tim Tostengard serves American Lutheran in Billings, and is Dean of the Shepherd Cluster. Amanda Gerber is a college student from Libby. As Bishop, I am the twelfth member of the group. And Pastor Phil Wold, of Sheridan, Wyoming, will be there as a member of the ELCA Church Council.
You can keep track of what is going on at the Churchwide Assembly several ways. One way is to watch the streaming video feed at http://www.elca.org/. You can watch in live time the presentations, debates, bible studies and more. Another way is to follow the blog that our synod group will have. Go to http://www.soulcafe.org/, sign up, and go to the Montana Synod page, where you will find a link to our blog. Soul Café is an experiment in communications we are engaged in in the synods of Region I (the Northwest). It is a great way to get information and make connections not only across the syn-od, but across all our synods in the northwest. Check it out.
So what will we do for five days at the Assembly? We’ll have daily worship and prayer. We’ll study scrip-ture. We’ll listen to presentations from staff, from volunteers, from visiting dignitaries. We’ll grapple together with the theme: “Freed in Christ to Serve.” We’ll look at the report of the LIFT Task Force, prayerfully consider what kinds of structure and governance will help us be effective witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our complex world today and in the future. We’ll debate and vote on the genetics social statement, and discuss why we as a church have social statements. We’ll adopt a budget, look at constitutional changes, hear memorials from synods, elect people to churchwide boards.
The Churchwide Assembly is people like you and me, clergy and laity from across the country, elected by their Synod Assemblies from congregations across the whole church. We are as diverse in our backgrounds and opinions and experiences as this whole church is.
But we are united in our love of the Church, the Body of Christ. We are united in our commitment to be faithful witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are united in our desire to serve God and neighbor.

God’s work. Our hands.

Your partner in ministry,

Bishop Jessica Crist

I encourage you to check out the ELCA webpage and watch some of the Assembly. You can see streaming video here. It's always interesting, and a good way to stay connected with what our church is doing - "church" is a whole lot bigger than just an individual congregation!

Staying in Touch with the Churchwide Assembly - the MT Synod Blog

We received this email from the Montana Synod office earlier today. Please do keep our Churchwide Assembly in your prayers as they meet next week.

Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Montana Synod,
The ELCA Churchwide Assembly starts on Monday, August 17. I have asked our Synod to join the Presiding Bishop's call for 50 Days of Prayer preceding the Assembly, and I am grateful that so many of you have participated. I ask you to continue your prayers for the Churchwide Assembly, the Montana Synod's Voting members, and the whole Church throughout the 7 days of the Assembly, and afterwards.
A Churchwide Assembly is many things. It is the highest legislative body of the denomination. It is an opportunity for people from all across the church to get together and pray with one another, learn from one another, work with one another. It is a time to hear from the ministries in which this church is engaged--from disaster relief and refugee resettlement, to early childhood education, to global mission. It is a time when carefully thought out documents and proposals are debated and revised. And it is a time when new ideas come forward and sometimes bear fruit.
At this upcoming Churchwide Assembly, human sexuality is one of the issues being discussed. We will consider a social statement on human sexuality and vote on whether or not to adopt it. That is how these things happen in our denomination--not top-down. Voting members at a previous Churchwide Assembly asked to have a social statement on human sexuality, and voting members at this assembly will vote on whether or not to adopt it as policy. (If you have not read it, you can find it online at http://www.elca.org/.) And voting members will also consider proposals to change the ELCA's standards for rostered ministers. (Again, if you have not read the proposals, do so.) If you look in the newspapers or on TV for news of the assembly, they will probably only report on these issues.
But the Churchwide Assembly is so much more. We will be considering a full-communion agreement with the United Methodist Church. This could have real impact in Montana. After Lutherans, Methodists are the largest Protestant group in Montana. A full-communion agreement with United Methodists could help both our denominations serve our communities better, through sharing. We will be considering the Lutheran Malaria Initiative, an ambitious program dedicated to tackling one of the most prevalant and preventable diseases in the world. We will adopt a budget, elect members of boards and committees, worship, pray, study, and so much more.
I am asking the 12 voting members from our Synod to be available to clusters and congregations to give reports and reflections on the Churchwide Assembly. Invite them! Thank them. Listen to them.
There are ways to keep in touch with what is happening at the Churchwide Assembly. I will be doing a daily blog from the assembly. You can find it at http://montanasynod.org/blogs/blog2.php.
And the ELCA will be providing streaming video of the Assembly as well. http://www.elca.org/livevideo. Below are a whole host of links for assembly materials.
Feel free to contact the Synod Office if you need additional information or assistance.
Thank you for your prayers and your support. It is good to be the church together. And we will continue to be the church together, embracing our differences in God's expansive love.

Your partner in Christ,

Jessica Crist, Bishop


Here are some URL shortcuts for the 2009 Churchwide Assembly Web pages.

2009 Churchwide Assembly links:
* Assembly main page: http://www.elca.org/assembly

* Blessing and Sending for CWA09 participants: http://www.elca.org/assembly/blessing

* Live Web stream: http://www.elca.org/livevideo

* Memorials Report: http://www.elca.org/assembly/memorials

* Multimedia section: http://www.elca.org/assembly/multimedia
CWA09 blog: http://blogs.elca.org/assembly
ELCA Twitter stream: http://twitter.com/ELCA
ELCA Facebook page: http://facebook.com/Lutherans
* Pre-Assembly Report (includes all reports and memorials): http://www.elca.org/assembly/report

* Schedule: http://www.elca.org/assembly/schedule

* Summary of Actions: http://www.elca.org/assembly/voting

* Voting Results (when the assembly starts rolling): http://www.elca.org/assembly/actions


Other relevant links:
You can find an alphabetical listing of topics with URL shortcuts at A-Z Index. But here are a few highlights:

* ELCA News Service: http://www.elca.org/news

* ELCA Studies on Sexuality: http://www.elca.org/faithfuljourney

* Lutheran Malaria Initiative: http://www.elca.org/malaria

* HIV and AIDS: http://www.elca.org/aids

* Full Communion partners: http://www.elca.org/fullcommunion

* Justice for Women: http://www.elca.org/justiceforwomen

Letter from Bishop Jessica Crist

This letter arrived in our office last week, a little too late for the July newsletter. I read it aloud at the beginning of worship on Sunday, per the bishop's request. Please do keep the whole church in your prayers! LBC


"Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body... Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." 1 Corinthians 12:14-16, 27.

June 29, 2009
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
In fifty days the ELCA Churchwide Assembly will begin. Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson has called the church to 50 days of prayer preceding the Assembly, and I invite you as well. During these fifty days there will be a lot of preparation for the Assembly. Worship will be planned, resolutions will be fine-tuend, guest speakers will be confirmed, meetings will take place. But what happens in Minnesota is not all we are as a church.
In the next fifty days, the work of the church goes on. Weekly worship will take place in congregations large and small, rural and urban. Food banks will provide food for the hungry. Nursing homes will care for the elderly. In the next fifty days, new missionaries such as Josh and Susie Magyar will have their initial training and orientation. Outdoor ministries and camps will proclaim the Gosepl to campers young and old. Campus pastors will prepare for the opening of school in the fall. In the next fifty days, Vacation Bible Schools will stretch congregations and young people to find new ways to hear and tell the old, old story. "Jesus, Justice and Jazz" will engage tens of thousands of teenagers in a church that is bigger than all of us. In the next fifty days, Lutheran Disaster Relief will respond to crises, Lutheran Social Services will create forever families. In the next fifty days we will be the Church in many places, and in many ways.
Paul's image of the church as the Body of Christ is meaningful for us, especially as he reminds us how much we need each other. I ask you, in the next fifty days, and beyond, to pray for the whole church, to seek wisdom for the whole church, and to seek the unity of the whole church. I ask you to listen to one another, especially those with whom you disagree, and not to jump to conclusions about what the Church may or may not do in Minneapolis in August.
At the end of our Synod Assembly, when two pastors who had been on opposite sides of the sexuality debates read a joint resolution of mutual trust and harmony, it was a powerful moment, and the assembly concurred. I shared that moment with other ELCA Bishops, and one used it as a "snapshot of new creation," in his closing sermon at their Synod Assembly.
Friends, let us work together on being that new creation, by God's grace, proclaiming the Good News to all creation. "Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it."
You are in my prayers.

In Christ,
Bishop Jessica Crist