Church Leaders: Crucial Partners for Project Connect

Project Connect is a project of the Eastern Cluster of Lutheran Seminaries. We venture into this project relying on and working with our seminaries, Lutheran colleges & universities, outdoor ministry sites, service ministry organizations, Lutheran Student Movement, Lutheran Volunteer Corps, seminary & college students, synods, bishops, pastors, and congregations. We need your support, your expertise, and your help to identify, nurture, and sustain young people gifted for and/or interested in ministry or identified by others as having promise for leadership.

Why is Project Connect important for the ELCA? It is a known fact that nearly one fourth of the 11,000 congregations of the ELCA are without a called pastoral leader. Connect will dramatically increase the pool of candidates for ministry and will strengthen congregations by helping meet the need for more young people to enter seminary with a vocational commitment, aptitudes and Endowment for pastoral ministry.

Why do we need you? Because you have discerned this call in your own life and you are living out that call. As a leader in this church you are in an ideal position to encourage promising young adults to consider God's call for their own lives. The members and other leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America expect and trust that every pastor as an ordained minister shall seek out and encourage qualified persons to prepare for the ministry of the Gospel. Project Connect is a network for all church leaders throughout the ELCA. We need you to be part of this network. By identifying young people who are gifted with the marks of strong pastoral leadership, we will be able to reach out to young people in your congregation. Work together with Project Connect and the vocational discernment network of the ELCA to keep young people connected to the church and its opportunities for ministry.

You are a crucial partner in Project Connect! Your gifts and enthusiasm will be invaluable as we work together to encourage others to consider and pursue a call to pastoral ministry.

We are, therefore, asking you to go to our secure online data base at www.elcaconnect.net. You will be able to request a password that will make it possible for you to give us names and contact information for young people whose gifts and faith could serve the church and the world if called to a vocation of public ministry. The time is right, right now, to identify the church's future leaders.