E-News, Event
Lin Carlson
Synod Assembly 2025

NWIM Synod will hold an ONLINE Synod Assembly this coming year, 2025. Saturday, May 3. Mark your calendars to save the date! Exact times TBA.

E-News, Event
Lin Carlson
Preparedness for Faith-based Organizations

A Zoom Event - December 2, 5:30-7-30pm Pacific, 6:30-8:30pm Mountain

Special Announcement, E-News
Lin Carlson
Compensation Guidelines for 2025

The linked 2025 compensation guidelines for clergy were approved by the Northwest Intermountain Synod Council at their September 2024 meeting

Event, E-News
Lin Carlson
ELCA Region 1 Discernment Event

Join us for a Zoom virtual discernment event.

E-News, Event
Lin Carlson
Byberg Preaching Conference

Registration closes December 15th, 2024. 

Bishop Kristen

We Gather

As I write this, we are in the process of preparing for our first-ever digital synod assembly! There are a lot of logistics to work out. In some respects, a digital assembly is easier than an in-person assembly. In others: there are added layers of complication. How do we allow for fair conversation when we don’t have numbered microphone & red, green, and white cards? Do we allow nominations from the floor? How do we make sure that any debate that takes place takes place fairly? What do we do in the event of technical difficulties?

It’s easy to lose track of the why in the midst of the how.

We come back around to March

We come back around to March.

March 2020 was when our worlds shifted dramatically, when horizons shrank, and much of our lives became ruled by something called “Zoom”.

I confess to you, people of God, I am tired. I am tired of Zoom. I am tired of my house. I’m even tired of only seeing my family face-to-face. As an introvert, I lasted longer than some. But the other day I found myself thinking longingly of airport security check lines, and that was when I knew that COVID had broken me.

We come back around to Lent.

The Sacrament of Holy Communion

I want to speak with you all today about the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Seven months ago, I asked congregations to fast from the Sacrament until I could get a liturgy pulled together for “virtual” communion, and I promised to have that available in time for Holy Week. I kept that promise, providing for the synod the resource “Spirit and Life Home Communion Document” designed to help support a home-based communion. Some congregations have made use of that document, some congregations continue to fast from the Sacrament—both are valid interpretations of our Lutheran Confessions.

Extending Grace

On our staff Zoom call the other day, we were remarking on the weirdness of time right now. It’s simultaneously stressful, boring, never-ending, and flies by. How is it possible that time can be all those conflicting things simultaneously?

We continue to live under the oppressive shadow of COVID-19.

I confess that I have felt like I have been spinning my wheels in sand. Early on—in March and April—there was a sense of urgency. Information to be distributed, guidance to be offered, congregations to be supported. But in more recent months, we’ve settled into what has become our new normal. Zoom or recorded worship. On-line committee and council and staff meetings. On-line bible study. Our computer and phone screens have become our access to the world as we use them to make contact with those who live outside our “COVID bubbles”. And I’ve wondered: what comes next? Why are we working so hard? What are we paddling this canoe toward? Anything?

A COVID-19 Update

It has been a little while since I’ve given you all an update on the Synod’s response to COVID-19.

The Synod office (housed in with the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane) will remain closed as long as the Diocese is closed. Following a conversation with Bishop Rehberg, we are in agreement that this will be in Phase 4 at the earliest—possibly later than that if the numbers are still going up. Once again, the Phase process is closely connected to economic realities—not necessarily the realities of the case numbers in a given county, so we will be looking to those numbers to make our final decisions. Because NWIM is a tenant of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane, we will respect their boundaries around the health and well being of our employees.

White Supremacy and the Need for Anti-Racism Work in Our Synod | June 9, 2020

In the last few weeks we have watched our country (and much of the world) explode in protests following the death of George Floyd while in custody of officers from the Minneapolis Police Department. Three of the five synod staff called the Twin Cities home for at least a portion of our lives, so we have watched this while seeing familiar landmarks & neighborhoods burn, while hearing of congregations we were once a part of stepping in to support those whose lives have been shattered by the violence, & keeping in contact with friends and family still living in the area. This is not simply happening in a city. It is happening in our hearts.

Mr. Floyd's death (along with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor & many others) has reignited conversations around racial inequality in our country, often in ways that cause white people to react defensively. The existence of systemic racism is not up for debate. The existence of white supremacy is not up for debate.

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Guidelines for Resuming In-Person Worship

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To the people of the Northwest Intermountain Synod,

Attached to this letter you will find a substantial document focused on how to reopen our congregations safely. We are grateful for Rev. Brad Munroe, Executive Presbyter of the Presbyteries of Grand Canyon and de Christo, for sharing with us the work his Presbyteries did in preparation for re-opening. We have taken that document and edited it for our contexts. We have also taken a checklist that is contained within the body of the document and sent it as a separate document to make it easier for you to find and use. I strongly encourage you to review the entire document, and to distribute it to your congregation members so that everyone knows the criteria that leadership is using to establish safe parameters around worship.

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Communion in Extreme Circumstances

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To the People of God in Northwest Intermountain Synod,

There are those who like to say that we are living in “unprecedented” times. They certainly feel unprecedented. However, for anyone with a knowledge of history there is nothing “unprecedented” about the time of pandemic due to COVID-19. The scale is, perhaps, larger than epidemics that have come before. But perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is our increased global connectedness through technology that has given us the sense of this being an unprecedented pandemic event—because we are seeing this virus unfold in real-time, not simply receiving reports of devastation months or years after the fact.