LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2010, Page 124

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124

SYNOD REPORTS

R7-02-07

Indiana District
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you
a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that
with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 15:5–6)
God gives endurance and encouragement as well as a spirit of
unity as we in the Indiana District strive to follow God’s lead with
one heart and mouth and thereby give glory to God the Father of our
Lord Jesus! We know that by God’s grace we can do more together
than we can do individually. We always pray for the gift of unity as we
share the mission work to be done in the Indiana District. Finally, the
Lord who loves and calls us together accomplishes His will among us!
We thank and praise God for the opportunities He has placed
before us, and we give hearty thanks for the life and growth that He
provides in this vibrant district. He continues to lead us to be intentional and enduring in our sharing of the Holy Gospel in this place.
May we remain faithful and determined in all that we do, and may
we always glorify Him as we celebrate the bond of faith and love
that we share in His name. The mission of the Indiana District is to
encourage and assist the Christian outreach and nurture of its congregations and other ministries!
Our bond of faith and love in Christ is celebrated in the 238 congregations of the Indiana District and among the more than 1,200
professional church workers! We want to do all that we can “with
one heart.” These three words from Paul’s letter to the Romans provided our theme for our 2009 district convention and will serve as
our focus until our next convention.
We are happy to provide this report of God’s work among us. May
our work always be the outgrowth of God’s active grace in this place!
Endurance in Christ
God has provided our district with a president, an outreach executive, a Christian education executive (schools), a congregational
services executive, and a financial executive who share the same
desire to encourage all in our district to work together in a spirit of
unity and endurance. We enjoy the faithful efforts of these executives:
Larry Jung, Jon Mielke, Geoff Robinson, and Dr. David Ebeling. The
unity and harmony which characterize our joint efforts are a blessing
to us and, we pray, the entire district!
Together we have seen and enjoyed the God-given unity which
defines our district. We are pleased to encourage a spirit of cooperation among congregations, schools, and a host of professional church
workers. We continue to enjoy a healthy relationship with Concordia
Theological Seminary, which has its home in our district. Our efforts
at maintaining and expanding significant multicultural ministries and
our desire to plant new congregations provide exciting challenges that
we approach faithfully. We thank God for more than 120 schools (preschools, elementary, secondary) that provide daily child and youth
ministries. The congregations of our district demonstrated a commitment to faithful and generous giving to the Lord’s work on the local,
district, and Synod levels!
At our convention this past summer, we also adopted two special
mission projects. The first is to help and support our fellow Latvian
partners plant an immigrant church in Ireland. The second is the
Wittenberg Project. We were able to provide a special gift of $80,000
for these two projects. President May visited both missions to share
our gifts and express our partnership with these two efforts. In the
year now past, more than $8 million was used by our congregations

to build or expand facilities for God’s use in mission in our district.
These funds were graciously available through the Lutheran Church
Extension Fund! These efforts, funds, and expansions are wonderful
demonstrations of the enduring unity we have in Christ Jesus! Our
district continues to reach out with the Gospel and God has continued to bless us with steady growth.
Encouraged In Christ

We work to invite and encourage church workers of the future
to continue in their studies with support from our district funds. We
are also a new effort to engage older church workers in their retirement years. Rev. Dave Dubbelde directs “Next Steps,” which seeks to
match needs of congregations with the strong interest of retirees. Next
year, we plan to expand this program to laypeople. This is all possible
because of a partnership with the Fort Wayne Lutheran Foundation.
At this time, we also enjoy the opportunity to provide added support for pastors with indebtedness due to student loans and other
financial challenges. We have established a Ministry Excellence Fund
that grew out of a Lilly Foundation grant of nearly one million dollars.
This program functions under the leadership of Dr. David Ebeling
and a volunteer task force. They review requests and provide grants
on a matching basis to those qualifying pastors. We are striving to
maintain the corpus of the original grant so that this can be an ongoing blessing in the future.
We are amazed by the growth and vitality of many of our congregations. We see a variety of approaches to establishing satellite
missions, daughtering new congregations, and launching new mission
starts from some of our larger congregations. We have pastors and circuits working at restarts and new starts in many areas of our district.
We have not been immune to the economic times and we have had
to make some spending adjustments this year. We have frozen district salaries and used some “rainy day” funds to continue our work
in a financially “rainy economic season.” This is what it means to be
led by God to endure and encourage one another to work with zeal
and unity.
We remain convinced that our working and walking together will
be enhanced by strong circuits and cooperative efforts in local communities. Our circuit counselors work hard to encourage this spirit.
God continues to bless these efforts as we see a variety of ministry
projects growing up in every region of our district.
The effectiveness of these efforts is seen as God combines and
uses the gifts and talents of our dedicated support staff in our district office and resource center. The blessings of our support staff are
essential to all that we do. They are faithful people with strong professional skills dedicated to the unity we seek in Christ.
We join with Christians everywhere in bringing Christ to an often
hostile world. We pray for the congregations in our district and around
the world as together we strive to be the best possible stewards of all
of God’s gifts. We thank God for placing us in this time in history as
we strive to be faithful and strong in our witness.
Finally, we thank God for all of the elected leaders in our district
who serve as vice-presidents, circuit counselors, council members,
task force leaders, and committee members. These people are critical gifts as they share the day-to-day ministry responsibilities in our
large and lively district! To God be the glory!
Daniel May, President

2010 Convention Workbook

2010 Convention.indb 124

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