E-News, Event
Lin Carlson
Seismic Shifts

Beginning September 3 through mid-November, the artwork of oblate Karla Neumann-Smiley will be featured in an exhibition titled, "Seismic Shifts," at the 1912 Center, 412 East 3rd Street, Moscow, Idaho.

E-News, Event
Lin Carlson
Lay Ministry Associate Program

  • Reading the Bible through a Lutheran Lens, Zoom: Sept. 10 at 6pm Mountain Time

  • Introduction to Preaching, Zoom: Sept. 23 and Oct. 7 from 6-8pm Mountain Time

  • Preach, Pray, Preside Retreat in Spokane: Oct. 26-28

  • Additional information click here.

E-News, Event
Lin Carlson
Executive Skills for Church Leaders

Monday through Friday, January 6-10, 2025

E-News, Event
Lin Carlson
Thriving Leadership Cohort Groups Now Forming

Are you looking for a new way to deepen your faith journey or for a deeper connection to God and others? Do you need something different to anchor you to your faith?
Discover a community that goes beyond surface connections.
Join a cohort grounded in spiritual practice—a different way to gather where there's nothing to do but show up.

E-News, Event
Lin Carlson
BONHOEFFER WEEKEND

Grace Lutheran Church, Wenatchee, Washington 
October 19–20, 2024 
We hope you extend an invitation to others, and that you would join us for an educational weekend which will certainly spark conversation among us as a community. Dr. Mark Brocker is a Bonhoeffer scholar and retired ELCA pastor living in Oregon. Grace Lutheran will be hosting Mark and his spouse Donna. To learn more, please check out our website. We’re excited to have this learning opportunity here at Grace!

Bishop's Message

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.

Untitled Facebook Post | March 5, 2020

It's getting to be the time of year when synods electing new bishops start to identify candidates they think might be a good fit for the call. Since 2018, I've been approached by young women seeking to know how I balance this work with the demands of motherhood. The good news is that there are many young women contacting me--it means that people are looking beyond the "typical" bishop candidate to individuals who have historically been overlooked. But it means I spend a lot of time answering individual emails with the same information--and while I'm deeply honored to be consulted as part of a discernment process, I am also aware that due to my schedule: sometimes I don't respond as quickly as I would like.

I thought a Facebook post might be a good vehicle to share my perspectives as someone who entered into this work almost four years ago as a very non-traditional bishop.

Looking Ahead to 2020

My family has a rather unique Black Friday tradition. We wake up, in homes all over eastern Washington, and we bundle up in layers and climb into our cars several hours before dawn. We scrape ice off windshields, we load blankets, sweatshirts, pillows into the trunks of our cars. Probably most of us stop by McDonald’s for breakfast on our way out of town. And then, accompanied by the faintest sliver of light in the east: we head for the family homestead near Colton, in order to process several hundred pounds of pork in to “Grandpa Becker sausage”. Many of you have similar traditions—you may call it sausage, you may call it “wurst”, or you may call it something else—but the act of processing an animal into a freezer full of delicious sausage is something that is more common in our region than I ever realized.