It is an honor to bring you this report regarding God’s work among us and through us in the South Dakota District. What a joy it is for us 27,000 LCMS souls in our great state to join you in preaching Christ crucified!
COVID-19: The Unprecedented Challenge to Ministry in Our Time It hit us hard, as it did all of you. But I am so grateful to our wonderful God that we made our way quite well through this time of virus invasion. Pastors, church leaders, and congregation members made decisions to the best of their ability, and they respected the decisions of other congregations as how to handle matters dealing with the pandemic. And so, by God’s grace and the Spirit’s direction, the proclamation of God’s Word continued, online or in person. Moreover, the saints continued to give their offerings to the Lord so that, in most cases, our ministries did not suffer financially. That some congregations “upped their game” when it comes to technology, including the use of online giving, was a surprising new benefit stemming from our having had to deal with COVID-19. Our Lutheran schools and early childhood centers carried the tremendous burden of how to educate the children and how to staff their ministries. When schools closed for a time and tuition wasn’t coming in, many wondered how they would pay the bills. I’m very grateful to our school administrators, teachers, and staff for how they so patiently and creatively met these and countless other changes and challenges brought about by the pandemic. I’m grateful to our school children and school families for displaying the fruit of the Spirit (love, peace, kindness, patience, etc.), as they and their schools had to adjust to a strange new life under COVID-19. But along with the difficulties came opportunities. I loved the perspective of one of our pastors. He believed and communicated that, in spite of COVID-19, God was on the move. In spite of COVID-19, God was accomplishing great things. His message of Law and Gospel was marching forward. God was taking care of us, and we, His precious children, were being good neighbors to others.
Congregations Banding Together or Doing Something Novel in This New and Different Time Many of us grew up in the Church when our congregations, Sunday School programs, and confirmation classes were bigger. Today, it’s different (and it’s not just because of the pandemic we’ve endured). The Church is not the center of life, like it had been in days gone by. People think they are regular church attenders, these days, if they worship once a month. Some of our churches have no Sunday School because they have no children, and some of our churches haven’t had a junior confirm and in the past five years. One decision many of our churches have made is to form a multi congregation parish with one or more congregations. This is nothing new in South Dakota (we have 70 congregations in such arrangements), but now even more of our congregations, for several reasons, are beginning to band together under new parish agreements. Why must they band together in new alignments? Chiefly, in order to afford to call a pastor to serve them, at a time when salaries and benefits for pastors are increasing in cost and church membership numbers have declined (so also has the population in many rural communities). Some congregations, therefore, need other congregations to assist them in keeping the church doors open and the Gospel proclaimed and taught. In the last triennium, 12 of our congregations entered into new parish alignments. God’s people and their pastors in these parishes understand that hearing God’s Word and having the Sacraments properly administered in their midst is of life-giving and life-sustaining importance. They understand that God has something for them to do in their communities: share the Gospel and serve their
neighbors with acts of kindness. They accept that they must align in new ways to continue this God-blessed ministry, for their own sake, and for the sake of others. And they’re doing it. Praise God for our multi point parishes and the faithful pastors who serve them! Beyond the multi congregation parish phenomenon, some congregations and circuits are doing something novel to carry out the mission of God in this world. Examples of this include these: • St. Paul, Spearfish, is the mother church to Trinity, Belle Fourche, the first church plant in the district in 18 years.
- Participation in the Specific Ministry Pastor program (SMP) is growing, allowing churches to raise up men in their midst for bi vocational, ordained ministry.
- Laypeople and pastors in Circuit 1 have launched the Rural Gospel Initiative. The purpose is to support ministry staffing of congregations in the circuit for new or amplified efforts in rural and small-town ministry and to support and encourage education and training events concerning Christian witness and service.
And, in addition to new ministry endeavors, God continues to bless our steady, long-standing ministries to Native Americans on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations, our district-wide deaf ministry, and our campus ministries.
Lutheran Family Service: God’s Care for Us in a Special Way From the beginning of the 2018–2021 triennium, our district has been working with Lutheran Family Service (LFS), based in Fort Dodge, Iowa, to explore how we can join forces to support the mental and emotional health of our LCMS population in South Dakota. After much discussion with LFS, the board of directors of the district voted to enter into a ministry agreement with LFS, beginning in 2020, and renewed for 2021. Delegates to our district convention, at the end of 2021, then voted to extend and strengthen the relationship. What a blessing this has been! LFS and their professional counselors have consulted with our pastors, assisting our pastors in giving counsel to church members. Our church workers themselves have turned to the counselors at LFS, via Tele health, to work through mental health problems of their own. And now our laypeople are able to turn to LFS counselors for help too. An exciting development has been the opening of counseling offices in Chamberlain and Sioux Falls.
Our Prayer for All of You Our district convention theme, back in December 2021, was “Rooted in Christ, Abounding in Thanksgiving.” Our theme verses were : “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” We pray that your life will be marked with such a thankful, rooted connection to the Savior of us all: the crucified, risen, ascended, and reigning Christ!