The Best Laid Plans

I love the ELCA, I really, genuinely do. I know a lot of pastors grumble about the bureaucracy of "Higgins Road," but I fully support the church in all its expressions - local congregations, synods, and national churchwide offices. I think the churchwide office in Chicago coordinates some amazing ministry that would otherwise not be possible, or at least, would not be nearly as efficient.

In spite of this love, I am not very happy with the ELCA at this moment. And it has to do, of all things, with curriculum! Last fall, the World Hunger circular advertised a new curriculum called "Taking Root." It is geared toward children and teenagers, but (supposedly) could easily be turned into an intergenerational experience. It is five sessions long - conveniently, the same number of evenings most Lutheran churches offer mid-week Lenten programs.

"Perfect!" I thought, "Lent is taken care of." I ordered the materials in early January, they were due to be released mid-January. By late January they had still not arrived, so I called Augsburg Fortress to see if my order (it was placed online) got lost in some black hole of cyberspace. Nope - the order was there, but the ELCA is running behind schedule, has not yet released the curriculum. "Let me guess," says the operator, "you want to use the material for Lent?" I wasn't the only pastor who had this brilliant epiphany, apparently. :)

The operator said she would send on the rest of the order (other world hunger resources - we're having a whole hunger focus this Lent), and let the ELCA rep know once again that they need to hurry up on the Taking Root materials. I figured they would come when I was on vacation.

Instead, an email came from Augsburg, telling me they've basically washed their hands of the whole deal. No, really, it's that they told the ELCA it would be faster to ship from there directly, instead of sending the orders to Augsburg to be reprocessed. That was last week.

Lent starts next week, and Taking Root has yet to arrive. Technically, I don't absolutely need it until two weeks from now, because we just have a service on Ash Wednesday, no dinner or program. But I was kind of hoping to have some time to look it over and figure out how to adapt it for intergenerational use. Plus, I only ordered one sample of each age group (elementary, jr, and sr high) because I thought I would have plenty of time to order more materials once I decided which pieces I was going to use for our group. As it stands now, it looks like I'm going to end up writing my own hunger curriculum, which is what I was trying to avoid by ordering this stuff in the first place!

So, that's why I'm grumpy with the ELCA tonight. If anybody's got suggestions for hunger-related curriculum (other than the Real Meal Deal, which I already have, and whose statistics are way outdated by now), please send them my way.

Peace,
C.