Hello All!
We had our mission district meeting on March 5 at San Miguel Lutheran Church in Fort Worth. One of the items we discussed was starting some sort of mission district newsletter. I’m going to start that now. I will confess that this isn’t an ultimate or professional version of a newsletter. But I thought I’d start with this and we can make improvements as we go. And there are some things that need to be shared and celebrated!
Great Mission District Meeting!
We meet as a mission district on March 5. It was a great day! We had 45 people for worship and over 30 for our meeting. All 9 of our congregations were represented. Guest speakers included Bishop Dan Selbo and General Secretary Amy Little. And thank you again to San Miguel Lutheran Church for such an incredible job of hosting us!
Here are a few things that happened at the meeting:
*We welcomed two new congregations to our mission district – Peace Lutheran in Edmond, Oklahoma and Joy Lutheran in Rockwall, Texas.
*We lifted up some of the great ministries we share in our district. In upcoming newsletter articles we will highlight these ministries. They include having 4 places that house/share in Disaster Relief Work, 3 Hispanic ministries, and two seminarians (Ricky Richards in Clifton and Blaine Davis in Tyler). There is incredible work going on in our district.
*We discussed, and will continue to discuss, renaming our mission district. We now include Oklahoma and our name needs to reflect that. Suggestions for a new name include the Red River Mission District and the North Texas/Oklahoma Mission District. We will use the later for the time being, but please be thinking of how we should name ourselves.
*A regular pastors meeting for bible study in Dallas is being set up.
*We had an incredible worship service with Bishop Dan Selbo preaching and lead by Pastors Pedro Portillo and Juan Portillo. After years of being apart because of COVID, it was a blessing to worship together again! A picture from worship is included at the end of his newsletter.
Mission District Newsletter
We decided that a newsletter would be helpful for our mission district. This is the first attempt at that, please share your insights and thoughts as to how to improve. If anyone with some technological expertise would like to help with this, please let Mark Braaten (mbraaten@oslctyler.org) know. One thought was to post an online newsletter that congregations could link though their regular emailings.
If you know of people who would like to be included in our mission district communications, please let Mark Braaten know.
If you have events in your congregation that our mission district should be aware of, please share those. Celebrations, new ministries, things you are excited about, please share!
Donations for the Mission District
If you would like to share a donation with our mission district, please send the donation to All Saints Lutheran Church, 4325 SW Green Oaks Blvd, Arlington, TX 7601. Please earmark the donation for the North Texas/Oklahoma Mission District.
If your congregation would like to directly support one of the smaller congregations in our mission district, please let Mark Braaten know. One-time and ongoing arrangements are all welcome. We will set you up directly with a congregation so that you can know the people you are working with and pray together with them.
Pastors Study
We are looking at a study and gathering for our pastors on April 21 at 10:00 a.m. at Hope Lutheran Church in Cedar Hill, Texas.
Mission District Mission Team
One item to think about, should we develop a mission team for our district, a half dozen people who work to develop mission, deepen mission, and focus us on mission in our area? We do have some of our members already serving on the Texas Mission Region mission team. But it might be helpful for us to also have a mission team that focuses on our district. Would you be interested?
