Accompaniment

The Clackamas Land and Housing Cohort is Looking For Creator Interest in their Land and Housing Coalition

Storyline and Leaven Community are building a diverse and growing coalition of thoughtful property owners and faith communities stepping out of isolation to partner with neighbors and neighborhood based organizations.  Together they will engage brave space, invoke the stories of our ancestors both in faith and in family through the creative and people-power-building process of the sacred organizing cycle.

Contact Debi Stromberg, Gary Schulstad or the church office for additional details or to become involved.


Featured This Season - A Holy Spirit filled 2015 Youth Trip to Tulsa

This month participants recorded their reflections on their experience when they were diverted from the ELCA Detroit Youth Gathering to Tulsa where they heard about the Tulsa massacre, Black Wall Street and the memorial for the first time. There were also reflections on The Mable B. Little Heritage House, the Greenwood Cultural Center and the depiction of Jesus in the Gospel Church

Reflections by: Katie Kelly, Timmy Mair, Kim Mair, Trey Winthrop, Chris Hubbard, Brysen Winthrop, Majax Nduta and Anelise Nzocumugani.

Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice

Creator members work toward justice for our immigrant brothers and sisters in our community and throughout the region through IMIrJ. Working toward understanding and equal justice for those newly come to this country, the members of Creator work to accompany our brothers and sisters throughout the community as they need help and protection navigating the system.

Creator and the World

Creator partners with Lutheran World Relief to provide aid for global efforts. Lutheran World Relief Disaster Relief teams are on the ground where disasters strike in the U.S. and worldwide.

Local Learning and Resources

Oregon history is rich and simultaneously filled with understandings about racial equity present Oregonians no longer view as equitable.

Creator perseveres in accompanying many who follow various paths towards authentic diversity. Our hope is to be a lucid, useful, and humble people. We want to escape the ignorance that whips up many of our enduring biases and blind judgements, We long to tame the fears that place our hearts in prisons, and we seek to restrain the self-centeredness that inflames and keeps so many spirits captive and locks us away from true kingdom living..

Click here for local learning and resources to help

Creator and Central's Second Joint Emanuel 9 Commemoration - 2021 

In 2019 the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, adopted a resolution designating June 17 as a commemoration of the martyrdom of the Emanuel 9—the nine people shot and killed on June 17, 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C

Participants included  Sabina Spicer, SE Youth Collective Leader,   Damian Ntawumpora, Sonnet Mungyeh,  Evelyn Nguti, Valentine Mungyeh,  Rev. Dr. Ronald Wells, Union Congregational Church in Harlem, NY,  Gary Schulstad, Shirley Peterson, Pastor Amanda Zentz-Alo,  Deacon Bonnie Beadles-Bohling and Pastor Janell Monk.

The 66th Synod Fund

This fund is devoted  to equitably help elderly Black ministers supplement their retirement plans after years of serving congregations without the wherewithal to have adequately paid their pastors over their careers of service.

African-American Lutherans have been in America for more than 350 years, longer than many European immigrants whom we generally think of as being Lutheran. In 1832 an African-American Lutheran preacher named Jehu Jones formed St. Paul’s Colored Lutheran Church in Philadelphia which lasted until 1849. With no support from the Pennsylvania ministerium. St Paul's ministry ultimately failed. Jehu Jones was never paid for his work.

After the Civil War, most of the African-American Lutherans in the South left the white congregations, where they had generally been second-class citizens. In response, various Southern Lutheran synods began sporadic efforts to evangelize the newly-freed African Americans, and to establish separate Lutheran congregations. Starting in 1868, the Lutheran synods in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia began to license African-American preachers to preach the gospel and gather in congregations.

These efforts were poorly funded at best, and in 1889 (out of desperation) African-American preachers in the North Carolina Synod formed the Alpha Synod, the first African-American Lutheran church organization. This little synod, and the other African-American Lutheran congregations in the South, struggled for survival through the end of the 19th century.

Today the ELCA Lutheran church has 65 synods. The 66th Synod Fund is named in memory of the Alpha Synod and Jehu Jones and this endowment is led by a Board of Black women in the ELCA.

Reconciling in Christ is registering interest in a Lutherans for Black Lives Tee Shirt. All proceeds will go to the 66th Synod Fund.  Follow this link for more info.

Click on the following link to make a contribution through Immanuel Lutheran Church in Seattle to the 66th Synod fund.

Lutheran Community Services Northwest

Many Afghan allies and their families are arriving with little more than the clothes on their backs—no money, nowhere to stay, and nothing to eat. With your support, we can help them get on their feet.

Your gift to Lutheran Community Services Northwest (LCSNW) and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) will provide food, housing assistance, clothing, and other basic needs for our Afghan friends. Both Lutheran agencies are known for their excellent work and exceedingly low overhead, helping more of your dollars go to the people that need it most. Consider "liking" their facebook pages (LCSNW, LIRS) to stay informed and make giving easy in the coming weeks.

Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address and Creator Transition Team Town Hall - Land Story

Creator explored our land story and said an address at the beginning of our 2021 Town Hall . The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address is also called the Onandaga Nation's "The Words that Come Before All Else" and begins all their gatherings as "a river of words as old as the people themselves." as Robin Wall Kimmerer described the address in her essay Braiding Sweetgrass.