Blog

Read the the latest news, announcements and articles from LCMC.

The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) (www.eecmy.org) hosts its second international conference this April, and LCMC Board of Trustees Chair Kip Tyler will be speaking at the event. Members of LCMC are invited to come together and connect with other Lutherans from all over the world at the Second International Mission and Theological Conference. Participants will have the opportunity to meet with Lutheran Theologians and ... More

This past Sunday, the congregation of Emmanuel Lutheran Church of Easley dedicated their new church home in Easley, a gift, through generous members, from a provident God. After two years of faithful worship at Partee Time, a children's play area, the congregation purchased this Tabernacle, moving in just in time to celebrate our second anniversary with Divine Worship and a pot luck dinner on Christmas Eve. The building, previously serving ... More

The Augustana District of LCMC has put together an online discussion group for anyone and everyone who is passionate about missions or interested in what is taking place in the mission field. The group will serve as a place for prayer requests, ideas, information, networking, and of course, a forum for sharing related stories about projects and experiences with one another. More

Registration is now open for LCMC Leadership Conference 2012. To carry out this year's theme of Engaging Our Culture: The Church is Mission!, this year's keynote speakers plan to explore with us how to relate to the people who are a part of our mission field without changing who we are or what we believe. The conference will take place from April 16-18, 2012 at Atonement Lutheran Church in Fargo, ND. The cost of attending is ... More

On Sunday, November 13th at 3:00 pm an installation service was held for Pastor Mark Brickzin, who recently accepted a call to serve St. John Lutheran Church of Hatton, ND. Pastor Curtis Tilleraas from North Immanuel Lutheran Church of rural Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, conducted the service and Rev. Mark Ellingson of Northwood, ND, Chaplain with Red River Valley Hospice, brought the message. Pastor Brickzin and his wife, Sherry, came to ... More

Rev. Mark Lund of Canby, formerly of Marshall, was ordained on Sunday, January 22 at Living Word Lutheran Church in Marshall. He was ordained by Rev. Mark Richardson, Service Coordinator of the Augustana District, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC). Rev. Lund is a graduate of Luther Seminary in St. Paul and is serving as pastor of Word of God Lutheran Church (LCMC) in Canby. He is the son of John and Marilyn Lund of ... More

Pastor James Lindgren was installed at First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Iron Mountain, MI on November 16, 2011. Pastor Charles Mzinga from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania preached the sermon. Pastor Steve Cowen from Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Iron Mountain, officiated. Pastor Lindgren has been in the ministry over 30 years. He and his wife Judy had previously served congregations in Nebraska and Minnesota. More

Lutheran Congregations in Mission For Christ is pleased to announce that our retirement savings plan is now live, allowing our members to conduct their business via telephone or web. Participants may view their account balances, add beneficiary information and make changes to their investment information by visiting www.LCMC403b.com or by contacting the Participant Service Center at 1-800-442-4015. Distributions may now be requested as ... More

On December 3, 2011, Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church of Smithfield, Nebraska ordained Pr. Tim Glendening. Rev. Keith Menter presided over the ceremony, which took place in the midst of a blizzard. This is Pr. Glendening's first call. Prior to his ordination at Hope Evangelical, he shared a ministry on depression titled "Out of Darkness" in over 1,000 churches aross the country, many of which now are part of the LCMC ... More

LCMC is pleased to provide its site users the ability to access listings of open staff positions and candidates who are seeking a call within the LCMC community. For the convenience of everybody who uses this service, it is our goal to keep our listings as current as possible. If you have an open position listed on our website, and it has recently been filled, please let us know. To notify us if your posting needs to be removed, please ... More

Good news, everybody! There is now a way to submit events for the LCMC calendar directly through our website! To do so, simply find the "Submit an Event" page listed under the Events menu, or click here. From there, all you have to do is fill out the form and submit it.  More

Is anyone interested in sharing photographs from the first two meetings in 2001? If so, please email them to Kristy Thomas, LCMC Communications and Public Relations Specialist, at kristy@lcmc.net. We would love to use these photos as part of a multimedia presentation to be given at some of our upcoming LCMC events. Thank you all so much for your help! More

As the saying goes, Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. That is why Rev. Dr. Harry Wendt, President of Crossways International, developed See Through the Scriptures, a visually based program designed to help people in countries around the globe develop a strong understanding of the meaning of the Scriptures and gain the ability to teach the Message to others. Rev. Jeanel ... More

This fall, the Iowa District of LCMC collected more than 1,000 teddy bears for Hope Ministries, an Iowa organization dedicated to serving the homeless. The teddy bears were collected at the LCMC 11th Annual Gathering in Des Moines, Iowa and used as centerpieces for the tables in the dining room during the gathering. Following the gathering, Iowa District Secretary Gayle Tate donated the mound of teddy bears to Hope Ministries, where they ... More

For those of you who are preparing for the upcoming Leadership Conference in April, I have changed the date of the event on our website. This year's conference will be held from April 16-18, 2012. You can find additional information on this event under Events > Leadership Conference or by clicking here. Additional details will be posted soon.

Good news, everybody! Videos from the first two talks at the 11th Annual Gathering are finished and posted. Feel free to check them out here. You can also find them on our website under Annual Gathering > Annual Gathering Presentations. I will be posting the rest of this year's Annual Gathering videos as I finish them, so check back regularly. I am hoping to have more finished next week.   More

I am happy to announce that I have received the video files from the 2011 Annual Gathering. I plan on uploading these videos to our website and our YouTube page as soon as the files are done being edited. Please keep in mind that the video editing process can be quite time-consuming, so it may take a while for me to be able to get all of the content put together and onto the internet. I still have some technical difficulties to work out ... More

On September 18, 2011, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Stendal, Indiana had cause for two celebrations as they installed their new Pastor and honored the founding of the congregation 150 years ago. Pastor Harold Heidegger, a former Pastor of the congregation, served as the Presiding Minister for the installation. Also involved in the installation was Dale Reller, Council President. Pastor Ed’s wife, Debbi, was also welcomed to ... More

Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies… --Proverbs 31:10 Mrs. Rebecca Meidinger, who will be speaking in Fargo, ND at the LCMC Annual Leadership Conference this April, is the director of Far Above Rubies, a program designed to help young women explore their true identities in Christ and teach them to build healthy relationships. Far Above Rubies is a one-day conference, created especially for teen girls ... More

For those of you who are interested in finding out more about Youth Encounter, I have created a page on our website under Networking > Partners to make it easier to find information about events for the national youth ministry program. You can also view the page at the following link: www.lcmc.net/youth-encounter/460.html. Youth Encounter events for the upcoming year have also been added to our LCMC Calendar. More

In response to the high volume of email requests that we have been receiving regarding video coverage of the presentations made at the LCMC 11th Annual Gathering, let me first apologize that it is taking a bit longer than expected to get these items posted to our website. Rest assured, we are working hard to ensure that video content will be made available on our website and on our YouTube page as soon as possible. The video editing process ... More

The members of the Word of Life Lutheran Church a LCMC congregation, have voted unanimously to move to Mt. Gilead. The church members have been holding services at 102 E. Main St., Cardington for the past year. During this time, they have been looking for the opportunity of relocating to Mt. Gilead. During the past week, a delegation ofmembers, including their pastor, Rev. Patrick Kelly, met with officials of the Gilead Friends Christian ... More

The LCMC 11th Annual Gathering concluded in the early afternoon on Wednesday, October 5. Bible Study Leader Rev. Carl Billings of Discover Church was the first to present on Wednesday morning. His talk was followed by a presentation by Keynote Speaker Rev. Dr. Gemechis D. Buba, Missions Director of the North American Lutheran Church. "Buba really set the tone well," commented Robert Thompson, who was in the audience during the morning ... More

Attenders of the Annual Gathering joined together at the Polk County Convention Complex on Tuesday October 4 for dinner and a dramatic performance by AWAKEN Ministries. The dramatic ministry group, mainly comprised of college students, acts out the story of God to contemporary music. More unique, the actors of AWAKEN carry out their entire performance without the use of words. As people piled into the The Plex's auditorium on Tuesday, many ... More

The 2011 LCMC Annual Gathering continued into Tuesday, October 4 with a full day's worth of programming. Attenders of the event appeared to be in high spirits throughout the course of the day. Rev. David Preus and Rev. TJ Anderson addressed the crowd on Tuesday morning. The day continued with a presentation on international focus efforts and business announcements, followed by the last two time slots for breakout sessions. Delegates from ... More

The LCMC 11th Annual Gathering continued Monday, October 3 at the Polk County Convention Complex with a full day of music, meetings, presentations and time to socialize. The registration table opened at 8:00 AM and received approximately 25 walk-ins over the course of the day. Reverend Elisa Ashley of Redeemer in Mission for Christ and keynote speaker Reverend Greg Ogden of Christ Church addressed the crowd during the morning ... More

Sunday, October 2 marked the first day of the 2011 Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ Annual Gathering, the eleventh of its kind. The event, which is being held at the Polk County Convention Complex (The Plex) in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, will take place for three more days, wrapping up on Wednesday afternoon. Today's festivities began with registration at 4:00 PM, followed by dinner at The Plex. The evening continued with an ... More

Greetings from Des Moines! The LCMC 11th Annual Gathering is just around the corner, and we're excited to get the ball rolling for this year's event, which will take place from Sunday through Wednesday at the Polk County Convention Complex here in Des Moines. We are happy to announce, for those of you who will be unable to attend this year's conference, that we are planning to stream coverage of the Annual Gathering live right here on our ... More

If you really want to speak effectively to a group of people, it is best to find a common ground of understanding on which you can relate to them. At least that is what the members of Shepherd of the Falls Lutheran Church thought when they decided to design a float for the American Falls Day Parade, part of an annual county fair and homecoming festival that takes place every August within the tiny farming community of American Falls, Idaho. ... More

Reverend Wilson Metz was ordained and installed at Word of Hope Lutheran Church in Ashland, NE on July 24, 2011. Reverend Oliver Olson, President of the Omaha Bible School, presided at the ordination service. Members of the Word of Hope family and visitors participated in the laying on of hands as they gathered around Pastor Metz to pray. In addition to his pastoral duties, Wilson is the director of the Heartland Men of Faith, a field ... More

In the creation of our new site, we've given LCMC site users the ability to post staff openings and resource items for other LCMC members to view.   LCMC congregations can submit job descriptions for open ministry positions through our website.   Once these open positions have been approved by an administrator, they will be posted to our Open Positions page, where they can be viewed by interested applicants.   We have also ... More

I've created an official LCMC fan page on Facebook.     Here are 5 reasons why you should "Like" us: I'll be updating both our Facebook page and our Twitter account on a regular basis There will be nifty Facebook event invites (and reminders, for those who RSVP) for all of our LCMC events Have something to say?  You can post comments on our wall and on specific event pages.   You'll be ... More

If you still haven't registered for the 2011 Annual Gathering in Des Moines, we have extended the deadline for Early Bird Registration until September 9, 2011. The Early Bird special is still $90.00 for LCMC Congregational Delegates, Associate Members and others. While this change has not been reflected in our printable registration form, the extension date for this special will be in effect for gathering-goers who decide to register online ... More

Today Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ announces the launch of our new web site, which features several brand new features, as well as improvements to some of our existing ones. If you're reading this article, you've probably already discovered our blog.  Here you'll be able to find the most up-to-date news and announcements from LCMC and read full articles related to many of our tweets and Facebook posts.  We'll be ... More

A workshop designed to gather at least one pastor and one leader from each of our new ministries will take place at Zion Lutheran Church in Des Moines, Iowa following the Annual Gathering.     This workshop is designed for all LCMC congregations that have formed within the past five years, and will include discussions oh how LCMC can best support, encourage and help develop its newest member congregations.     There ... More

LCMC The First Ten Years tells the story of Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) — its origins and its first ten years as an association — told from the perspective of those who were participants and leaders on that journey. "The writers of this book have several things in common: All are united by a common faith in Jesus Christ. All claim a personal history that is rooted in a Lutheran understanding of the ... More

Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ is an association of congregations and individuals who are: free in Christ; accountable to one another; rooted in the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions; working together to fulfill Christ's Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations. LCMC is an association of congregations. We have a great respect for the reality that the church is where the people ... More

Some have said, "LCMC is a vibrant and faithful association of congregations, rather than a denominational church body." LCMC has referred to itself as "a post-denominational association of congregations," as a way of acknowledging that its horizontal structure is different than the more vertical structure of many classic denominations. But having said that, LCMC is recognized as a church body (denomination) by the IRS, by the ELCA, and ... More