Keeping Connected

Anglican-Lutheran Society Conference

September 11-15 2009, TurkuJana Jeruma-Grinberga

Keeping Connected – what does this mean?

• Keeping connected– feeling dislocated– finding new connections–maintaining old ones

Christ the King Polish Congregation, March 2009

Keeping Connected - disorientation

• Personal story• Frequent traveller in Europe and

North America• First trip to Africa

Keeping Connected – disorientation 2

• Arrival at Dar es Salaam Airport

Keeping Connected – Disorientation 3

• Experience of first trip to DSM– feeling disorientated and lost–made me very aware that I shouldn’t get

lost! or lose contact with the people looking after me: what if I had been on my own?

– aware, at least to some small extent, of what my parents and their peers went through when they first arrived in UK, and of what our new members feel now

Keeping Connected – LCiGB Experience

• LCiGB – church of sojourners and travellers– number of languages used in worship– history of refugee and expat status

Eritrean Confirmands in London, June 09

Keeping Connected – How can we do better?

• How do we find people, offer them somewhere to make connections, and integrate them within the main church?

• How do we enable these lost folk to find us– website available – is that enough? What

else can we do?• How do we make them feel at home?– most people don’t choose a church because

of its detailed doctrinal statements – visiting with Augsburg Confession, 39 Articles, Westminster Confession or whatever in hand

Keeping Connected – Finding a Church Home

Reasons for choosing churches do include• being made welcome• finding worship that they enjoy, relate to and which

enables them really to worship• especially, perhaps, for Lutherans, after-service

refreshments and fellowship are important – partly because people often travel long distances, so staying for a while after service is good

Keeping Connected – Finding a Church Home 2

• speaking own language, especially for those who are far from home and in exile • In general, many people look for a place

that reminds them of home, of a lost childhood idyll, and that is unchanging – this is almost always a problem with exile churches• Effective Bible studies and prayer groups• house groups• Help available when needed

Keeping Connected – extending the connections

• For our congregations, various forms of connections are important–within the congregation and community

that surrounds it–with ‘home’, however defined–with the host community and the local

church body, the LCiGB– The first two are relatively easily

achieved, the last one can be harder

Keeping Connected

How do we achieve all these connections?

Good question!

St Anne’s Lutheran Church, London –

Pastor Johann Schneider’s farewell service