What is Mission Support?

Mission Support is the money you place in the offering plate that is then shared with your synod and the churchwide organization for ELCA ministries beyond your congregation. Mission Support is undesignated giving and it provides the staff, networks, and relationships that enable the ELCA to carry out God’s work in this country and throughout the world.

2013 mission support intent

What is your plan for mission support in fiscal year 2013 (February 1, 2013 – January 31, 2014)? Please let us know by filling out this form and mailing it back to us.

Working Together as the ELCA

When we work together as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, we are doing God’s work in ways that no individual or none of the 10,549 congregations can do alone. By sharing our time, talents, and possessions generously, God’s Spirit inspires others to give generously! Your Mission Support dollars support the whole church, including:

• Your congregation and leaders
• Congregations seeking new pastors in the call process
• 61 new congregations started in 2010
• 195 existing congregations intentionally focused on renewal
• 250 missionaries in 50 countries, including 49 young adult volunteers
• Ministry and projects in over 90 countries
• Eight seminaries
• 26 colleges and universities
• 180 campus ministries
• 145 outdoor ministries
• 1,530 Lutheran early childhood education centers, from birth through age five
• 257 Lutheran elementary schools, K-8, and 14 high schools
• Health and pension benefits for retired clergy, mission personnel and lay church workers
• Long-term community development
• Advocacy with the United Nations, federal and state governments and corporate development
• Partnerships with The Lutheran World Federation, World Council of Churches, and the National Council of Churches in Christ

From Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson

The ELCA – including more than 10,000 congregations, 65 synods, and the churchwide organization – is a church that is on the move. We, the members of this church, are the hands and feet of God:

• when we share a meal with those living in poverty in rural North Dakota
• when we rebuild homes and lives in the Gulf Coast
• when we provide free training for nurse’s aides in Denver

Mission Support provides the staff, networks, and relationships that enable the ELCA to carry out God’s work in this country and throughout the world:

• so that women in Keur Massar, Senegal, learn how to read and write
• so that families in Lima, Peru, receive the food they need
• so that villagers in Morogoro, Tanzania, can dig new wells for drinking water

Even in difficult times, we remember the abundance God has so freely shared with us. “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9: 8) There’s more than enough good work to be done – people to feed, homes to be built, faith to be nurtured, and lives to be transformed. And God has entrusted this work to our hands – our human hands. What a gift, and what an opportunity!