Eastern North Dakota Synod

by Rev. Keith Zeh, Director for Evangelical Mission, EaND & NW MN Synods

Cooperative ministry is happening among many congregations in many places throughout the Eastern North Dakota Synod territory. According to a report given by the ELCA Research and Evaluation Department, 63.8% of the congregations in the synod were in multiple point parishes in the year 2005. This percentage has most likely grown in the past couple of years, and will continue to grow in the years to come.

Many rural and small town congregations are experiencing change that offers both opportunities and challenges. Communities declining and aging populations are contributing factors. Yet, there are significant numbers of people in these communities who are not involved in the life of any congregation. Bishop Mark Hanson, presiding Bishop of the ELCA, declared at a rural conference a couple of years ago that over 40% of the people living in rural and small town settings are without a church home.

The biggest opportunity and challenge for congregations is to find ways to develop and support ministry that addresses these changes with a focus on vision, mission and outreach, rather than on survival or maintenance. One significant way that congregations are encouraged and equipped to take on these opportunities and challenges is through area mission strategies. Clusters of congregations agree to take a journey together to discover anew their identities as God’s mission outposts with a renewed awareness of their mission fields and revitalization of their sense of a purpose or role in participating in God’s mission in the places they have been planted.

The changing rural and small town context means that rural ministry must also change. One big change that I am seeing as rural people respond to the changing context is a renewal of a sense of mission. In some areas that is happening rapidly, like a fire sweeping through a grass field. In other areas, it is happening more slowly. Rural people are asking more and more, “What is God’s mission in this place? What is our part to play in that mission?”

Within the synod there are a rich variety of models for how congregations are cooperating together to be about God’s mission in ways they could never do as single congregations. There are a number of Area Mission Strategies beginning to emerge where congregations are exploring creative ways of sharing pastoral leadership or working cooperatively in such areas as community outreach, youth and family ministry and lay leadership development.

Encouraging and supporting multiple point parishes and cooperative ministries in evangelical mission is a priority for the synod. Cooperative ministries and multiple point parishes can be so much more than a means to survival. Congregations connecting with one another for sake of God’s mission are a recipe for renewal.