SoCal Lutherans

A queer community of faith in the East Hollywood / Los Feliz community.

The bishop of the Lutheran Church in Peru, Rev. Adita Torres, has died this morning of complications due to COVID 19. Today is also her birthday. Please keep Bishop Torres’ family and the Lutheran Church in Peru in your prayers.

We pray AND we act. 16th century counsel from Martin Luther’s Whether One May Flee From A Deadly Plague.

Today is Eid al-Adha, the holiest day of the year for Muslims. Sometimes referred to as the Festival of Sacrifice, this day honors the willingness of Abraham ...to sacrifice his son in obedience to God. We wish all of our Muslim neighbors a blessed and spiritual Eid. Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) See more

The Bishop's Day, 19 July 2020 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost Will start the day by watching the Synod worship service, then tune in to some others in the synod... and around the country. I get a lot more worship in when I can channel-surf! And I can find the music I like best. None of us can wait to be back in face-to-face worship again, even as the possibility recedes into the future. I'm now at the "regret" stage of the pandemic. We could have seen this coming, with our half-hearted lockdown of months ago, but we all just hoped it wouldn't be as bad as it turned out to be--and of course, as a nation we prolonged it significantly by what we left undone back then and can't do over now. Church congregations have become--like everything else disrupted by the pandemic--a casualty of ineffective public health policy. Every citizen should be concerned. Well, at least nobody can really deny now that our nation has sunk below the standards of many others in terms of our public health capacity. We knew already that our diffuse federal system could cripple any efforts at a truly national response. We knew already that we had an extraordinarily expensive and inefficient health care system, based not on the need for care but the ability to pay. Now we know we also don't have a national public health infrastructure that means much or has much authority to act. That came as more of a surprise, because until recently there was a lot of consensus about the importance of public health structures in today's world. I am sad about what has happened. I grieve those we have lost, especially those who in other times might have survived. I weep for California and the nation. I hope we have learned, but I'm not confident of that. But I also know that life will go on--for most people, largely as before--and unless we can sustain the energy needed to make meaningful change happen, this bad time we're in will come again someday, and sooner than ever. Stay safe. Wear your mask. Thanks be to God for medical science!

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out ...with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (ELW, p. 317) See more

STATEMENT REGARDING INCIDENT AT ST. PAUL'S FIRST LUTHERAN CHURCH, NORTH HOLLYWOOD On July 8, 2020, a Black woman who was sitting on the grass on the campus of St. Paul’s First Lutheran Church (stpaulsfirst.org ) in North Hollywood, California, a congregation of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). The woman was confronted by lay members of the church and a video of the incident was posted on YouTube. The Los Angeles times published an article about the incident on... July 11, 2020. St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Santa Monica is a Reconciling in Christ congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and its Southwest California Synod (SWCA). The ELCA is a separate denomination from and has no association with the much-smaller WELS. We repudiate the racist words and actions of those in the video, and would not tolerate them in our congregation. While this incident did not take place at this St. Paul's Church, our congregation and the ELCA does acknowledge its shared responsibility with all largely-white churches for the racism that has played too large a role in the history of American Christianity, and re-emphasizes the ELCA’s belief that we are called to confess the sin of racism, condemn the ideology of white supremacy, and strive for racial justice and peace. Guy Erwin, Bishop, Southwest California Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America James Boline, Pastor, St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Santa Monica

Be like Martin Luther - wear a mask.

The Holy Spirit was at work 50 years ago within the Lutheran Church in America, one of the ELCA’s predecessor bodies. On June 29, 1970, the LCA convention voted... to change man to person in its bylaws to allow for women’s ordination. Delegates may have not known how much that would change. Join us as Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton says thank you to those women who have answered God’s call to be pastors over the past 50 years.

Women Called By God. Artist: Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Celebrating 50-40-10: 50 years today since the ordination of the first woman in the (E)LCA 40 years since the ordination of the first women of color in the (E)LCA... 10 years since the ordination of queer folks in the ELCA. May the Holy Spirit continue Her reforming ways among us! See more