Don’t miss out on registering for this summers Out Fishing – Tending the Flame Conference. “Out Fishin’” is focused on practical hands-on evangelism and witnessing resources for everyone in the congregation and school: from the evangelism committee to ushers and nursery attendants, from Sunday school teachers to elders, from the teens to the children.

Once again, we have over 30 workshops with new topics. We are blessed to have former conference presenters Rev. Glenn Lucas, Sarah Guldalian (Lutheran Hour Ministries) with us for workshop presentations. Workshops also provide resources for those who serve in every area of the congregation: Sunday school, Outreach Committee, Elders, Greeters, Youth, Day School, Visiting Team, and Compassion ministries.

Workshop Listing – Agenda includes four one hour fifteen minute long workshop sessions as well as an opportunity to attend a mini-session with one of our speakers and special guests on Saturday morning.

A Message from the President

From President Jon Diefenthaler
The Tending the Flame conference is always a highlight for me. It brings together people from all of over our Southeastern District. There are plenty of laity as well as church workers. Some come as families with children of several ages. There is an energy that is easily felt, and there is a love for the Lord and his mission that everybody shares and wants to express.

This year’s conference is of particular interest to me. For it comes on the heels of this year’s District Convention, where we resolved to make “faith-sharing” the priority emphasis for the next three years. Thus far, we have recorded some 311,000 such moments, and by 2012, we intend to surpass the 750,000 marker on the way to our 2017 goal of 2.5 million.

“Out Fishin’” is also a theme that serves to capture all the dimensions of the work of outreach to which Jesus calls us. I pray that each of the sessions will serve both to inspire and to provide those of you who come to Richmond with the kind of practical, hands-on assistance in faith-sharing that so many of us are seeking.

Did you know…

There are an estimated 190 million non-Christians, which would equal the 4th largest nation in the world?

85% of all evangelical churches have evangelism” in their mission statement?

Less than 5% of Christians in a typical church are personally involved in evangelism?

A typical church spends less than 2% of their budget on local evangelism?

Only 9% of pastors and 2% of lay people say they are gifted, and most do not feel adequately trained in evangelism?

Out Fishin’ hopes to make a dent in those statistics by providing sessions that will help you grow the skills you need to share Jesus where you are!

Please share this information with others in your congregation who would benefit from OUT FISHIN!

Registration Form
Agenda
Workshops
Holiday Inn Koger Center

Registration fee is $50 per per person until July 10
Children & Youth- $25 each

Already more than 312,000 faith-sharing experiences have been recorded by individuals, district congregations, and the Lutheran Mission Society of Baltimore MD.

Thank you for your stories and letting us know how it is going. We have an opportunity to help reach Ten Million faith-sharing events recorded. Next week I will share our totals. If you have additional stories or numbers for yourself or your congregation, let me know. I will joyfully pass our total forward.  Just a reminder – it is not about numbers, it is about lives that eternally changed. Sharing the stories and numbers helps to encourage all of us to keep on being Great Commission people.
 
So, the great question “How do you record your faith-sharing events?
There are three ways for you to do this. I will outline them here and if you have any difficulty, contact Sally Hiller at sjhiller@se.lcms.org or Jerry Lucas at lucasjs@verizon.net.
 
1.   The easiest way is to email Sally or Jerry with your faith-sharing event. This would be the number of events and/or a brief story/description about the event. You could volunteer to collect these from the congregation and then contact either of us with that information and we will record them for you.

2.   Go on the web to the SED Faith-Sharing blog
Click on the “Ablaze! Reporting” box in the upper bar of options and you will find a simple form for recording the information.

3.   Go to the LCMS home page at http://www.lcms.org. Click on the “Ablaze sharing our faith ” button in the center of the page. Click on the log in for sharing your story. Locate your congregation or school and fill out the form.

Currently about 25% of the District’s congregations have identified an Ablaze! Congregational Contact. We would like to grow that number so that all of our congregations have someone who is able to share the Ablaze! stories of faith-sharing, encourage members in evangelism and outreach, and be kept current with information and news about this effort. If you are interested in serving as an Ablaze! Congregational Contact or know someone who would be glad to do this, please send an email to sjhiller@se.lcms.org

Pastor Tim Sandeno shares the following faith-sharing moment:

1Recently, a young sailor from the Naval Nuclear Power School visited Good Shepherd. Two weeks later, he brought a friend. I decided to meet with them on a Friday afternoon to get acquainted. My intention was to begin catechesis. We sat at a table in the club where most of these young sailors go on Friday afternoons. Before long, we had sailor after sailor drop by, with several joining us. At one point, there were at least eight young men sitting around the table joining in our conversation of the Ten Commandments. Now the challenge is how to continue these informal sessions of catechesis.

You will have opportunity to hear Art Scherer, Tom Zehnder, and Phil Bickel teach evangelism and outreach principles from Scripture. More than 30 workshops will help to develop evangelism skills. Music will be a very special part of the conference and the children’s program will be outstanding. Registration information is available on our website at www.se.lcms.org or you may call the District office at 800.637-5723.

The most important part of VBS is the follow-up! Are you prepared to follow through and build on what VBS begins? Did you know….

Vacation Bible School is a ministry designed to reach people of all ages, leading them to know and to respond to Jesus Christ as led by the Holy Spirit. VBS is a fun-filled, spiritual adventure that provides concentrated Bible study and encourages real-life application. All aspects of VBS are appropriate for church and mission settings.

In 2006, over 3 million people were enrolled in Vacation Bible Schools.

Over 94,000 people came to know Christ as Savior and this was reported as a result of VBS.

Vacation Bible School is the single largest outreach event for most churches. ·   About 26% of baptisms are the result of Vacation Bible School.

More people have come to know Jesus as Savior through VBS than through any other single outreach event.

Simply defined, Vacation Bible School is a spiritual adventure designed to reach people of all ages with the gospel of Jesus Christ. How spiritual the adventure becomes, and how effectively we reach people of all ages, is dependant upon how well we are trained and prepared for the work of evangelism through VBS.

(REACHING THE HOME THROUGH VBS written and taught by Michael Stover, 2008.)

Some suggestions for VBS follow-up:

First, get addresses from your participants. Send a post card from their VBS teacher. Invite them to Sunday school. If you have a summer camp program or a Day School, invite them to check you out. Put them on the invitation to church events and newsletter list. Make follow-up contacts by phone, email, and in person. Pray for them, in fact when you call, ask if there are special needs for which you may pray. As a rule, plan for four contacts in the four weeks that follow – try to make one a personal visit and another a fellowship opportunity.

There’s more to summer than heat! Summer is a great time to mobilize the outreach committee, the evangelism committee, the prayer team, the visitor follow-up team, and the children’s program teams. There are so many natural opportunities to make connections and be the church out in the community. Look at what some of our SED congregations are doing this summer.

Urban Adventure Week: What do you get when you mix and adult VBS with an “Amazing Race” concept? Crossway, Norfolk VA has developed an event where groups will compete in a weeklong contest for a prize by doing specific tasks in the city of Norfolk.

Riches in Richmond: This servant event involves 71 people from across the country serving in various mission projects throughout Richmond. Hosted by Trinity in Richmond, VA and led by DCE Randy Ronning, participants are working at St. Joseph Villa, with some special home repair/rebuild projects, and at Resurrection Lutheran helping with repainting and repair work.

Helping Hands Project: LINC-Baltimore’s 14 covenant congregations are linking hands to reach out across Baltimore City to help hurting families for whom an extra bag or two of groceries will be a blessing!  The goal of the outreach is, first and foremost, to share God’s love and provision with people in need.  HELPING HANDS also seeks to facilitate the building of relationships between participating congregations and the unchurched or spiritually hurting people in their church communities.

VBS Mission/Servant Event: Abundant Life and Messiah in Charlotte are working together to hold VBS at Abundant Life. Volunteers from Messiah will help to lead this summer program that is intended to reach children throughout the community. It is a great way to build a local mission/servant event and help a new or smaller congregation.

4th of July Events:  At New Hope Missions, Mooresville NC, they are having a booth at the Lowe’s YMCA Summer Festival and Fireworks.  In fact, they are one of the sponsors and will be giving out free bottles of water, offering crafts and free helium balloons for the kids, and talking to people about Jesus and the vision for the new church.

During the latter part of March and the first two weeks of April, the youth program at the Maryland School for the Deaf focused on the events of Holy Week. Normally we separate the elementary and middle school students, but for these lessons we kept both classes together as we told the stories of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, and then had the children dramatize the stories.

For the final lesson of the series, we separated the students back into their regular classes to discuss what these stories mean for us. As we launched into our debriefing with the middle school class, we asked the students to summarize the story previous lessons. Jennifer was the first to respond: “I don’t know what happened last week, because I wasn’t here.” Her classmates were more than glad to fill her in. When the students finished telling the first part of the story -the suffering and death of Christ — we interrupted the narrative to make the Gospel application. Christ suffered and died in our place, taking upon Himself the punishment that we deserve for our sins, so that we can be forgiven. Judging from the discussion that followed, it seemed apparent that some of the students “got it.”

In final minutes of the lesson, we reviewed the rest of the story — the resurrection. The instant we put up the poster picture illustrating the gloriously resurrected Christ before the open tomb, Jennifer, who had not said anything after her first comment, exploded with surprise and delight. “He’s alive!?”

“Yes, He lives. And because He lives, you also will live forever with Him. And His
resurrection proves that all His promises that God forgives all your sins are true.”
Judging by the brightness in Jennifer’s eye and the smile on her face, she “got it,” too.

More than 312,000 faith-sharing moments have been recorded by the Southeastern District Office. To share your story, email sjhiller@se.lcms.

It is such a joy to read the stories of people sharing the love of Jesus with another. As people tell me about these experiences, I am putting them on our District chart.

You may have a question about faith sharing moments. Simply, it is when you have the opportunity to share with another person who Jesus is – in your life and what he means to you.

The gift of faith and believing is the work of God through the Holy Spirit. It is something we leave to God to do, but I rejoice that God has invited me to share his name and, perhaps in so doing, encourage the planting and growing of that individual. As you tell the story of Jesus, share it with us so that you may become an encourager to another. More than 312,000 faith-sharing moments have been recorded by the Southeastern District Office. To share your story or the number of events, email sjhiller@se.lcms.

God invites us to pray without ceasing for the work of the Holy Spirit throughout the lives of all people. 

Currently we have 2011 people who are committed to this ministry. Our goal is to gather at least 3000 people praying for mission.

In the next weeks, a member of the prayer coordinators group will be calling your congregation to gather information about congregational prayer ministry.  We hope to grow the network of prayer teams so that every mission has at least one prayer team connected to them.  If you are interested in joining this effort, contact prayers@se.lcms.org