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Notes from Pastor Natalia

October 1, 2025

Sunday through Tuesday I gathered on the shores of Lake Darling in Alexandria MN with over 150 pastors and deacons from the Minneapolis Area Synod at our annual Bishop’s Theological Conference. This retreat is time to be together as colleagues, find rest and renewal, and dig into a theological topic for a few days. We spent the days hearing from our guest theologian, former Bishop of the Metro DC Synod, Pr Leila Ortiz. 

Pr Leila framed her three sessions with us around the theme of “Baptism in Muddy Waters.” She began by reminding us that our belovedness is our foundation. We begin beloved, so then we can risk transformation, navigate change, embrace complexity, and create authentic community where people are free to be their whole selves. 

Throughout her talks, Pr Leila used the image of an estuary, where salt water and fresh water meet. She talked about how estuaries are not two things where one becomes the other, but instead they are two things that come together to create a new thing. It is a unique environment, rich and diverse, where newness is what thrives. There is not uniformity there, but complexity, and she named this complexity as a strength. 

I found her talks to be profoundly hopeful, especially in light of a constantly changing culture in and outside of ECLC.  In this time of binary, us/them, in/out, red/blue divisions, estuaries tell the story of a third, new way, where we don’t have to choose. Estuaries are murky and muddy and not perfectly clear or pure, Pr Leila told us. “Muddy water is not dirty water,” she said. “The muddiness is not a problem to be solved - it is where the Spirit does her work, and the Spirit is working in the murkiest of moments.” 

I took pages of notes, so if you want to talk more about this Estuary Ecclesiology, come find me on Sunday and let’s chat! 

Pr Natalia

Transitions

September 17, 2025

Transitions are a way of life, as you all know, and over the past 11 months as your Interim Pastor, I have watched ECLC navigate this time of transition with grace and care and good humor. Transitions are inevitable, but not easy, and your willingness to be intentional and thoughtful in this process is a good model to hold onto for future transitions. 

We have one of those transitions coming in May, and we wanted to let you know. Paul Andress, ECLC's worship leader for 25+ years is going to retire at the end of May. Paul's process to retire has been grounded and intentional and I am so grateful for the ways in which he is leaning into this transition with care for ECLC. We have a lot of time to determine a plan moving forward, there is no need to rush, and we will continue to trust the work of the Spirit in this transition, as we have so faithfully done in the others. As we determine next steps, we will communicate with you as it unfolds. 

Blessings to you - Pr Natalia

House Church Sign Ups

September 10, 2025

Each year, small groups of ECLCers gather on Zoom or in person once a month for the year. House Churches, originally started during the pandemic, have become an integral way that many ECLCers build deep relationship guided by a simple faith conversation template the pastors and I create each month. 

Now is the time to see the variety of House Church offerings this year and sign up for new groups that begin the second week in October. 

We know lives are full, so House Churches conveniently meet just one hour a month at a set time, either on Zoom or in person. As Anne L says, “I have many friends at ECLC, and I know I can turn to any of them in times of joyful abundance and in times of sorrow and need. Having a set time each month to meet with a group helps us stay connected when life gets busy.”  

It’s hard to truly get to know folks at a deeper level on a Sunday morning, and House Churches provide an intentional opportunity to be in relationship. Liz L offers, “House church matters to me because it is a like-minded group of people who are able to come together to support each other in life. It is beyond just a group of friends gathering, because Christ is at the center.”

Beginning each month with get-to-know-you questions and check-in time and offering a blessing and a poem or scripture each month, House Churches offer a safe, small community to stretch a spiritual muscle. Julie C says, “My favorite part of House Church is building spiritual community, building stronger relationships within our congregation. I have found it to be the best way to meet people in our congregation and spend quality time getting to know them in a faith-based environment.” 

This year, a variety of House Churches at various times, locations (Zoom and in-person) groups are offered, both open to all and for specific affinity groups, like LGBTQIA and Parents of Teens groups. Contact Deacon Lauren for more information and to sign up!

Renewal Sunday Ministry Fair

September 3, 2025

As we dive into the theme What We Can Do this year, we remind ourselves that this is not a push to do even more.  It is instead a reminder that we are not God: we cannot do it all.  We cannot save ourselves. We cannot save the world.  But, in believing that, we are free to do something.  

This Sunday, you’re invited to ECLC’s Ministry Fair between worship services.  Not to fill up your calendar even more.  Not to pressure you to sign up for another list.  But, instead, to be reminded of the many, diverse ways that ECLCers are being Called to live out their faith.  Perhaps you are feeling pulled to try something new.  Perhaps you’re intrigued by a new ministry.  Stop by the various tables, including Indigenous Rights, Children; Youth & Family Ministries; Pre-Trial Fairness; Thrivent connections; Care and Connection, and more.  

As we fight the urge to try to do it all, may we be empowered by the Gospel to find our Calling(s). As always, please contact Deacon Lauren if you would need help connecting to a ministry or have an idea of a new ministry. Perhaps this Sunday’s Ministry Fair will inspire something new! 

Membership Rolls Update  

August 28, 2025

One of the less exciting (but not less important!) tasks of the interim process is to do an honest look through the membership rolls. Clean and current records help us stay connected with each one of you through the enews and mailings, and ensure that every member is cared for and counted.

So first and foremost, please take a moment to make sure we have your correct address, phone, and email. Have you been receiving enews at the correct email address? Have you received snail mail from ECLC (like the Christmas card) in the last year? 

If you know your contact information has changed, and in the hustle and bustle you forgot to let us know, don’t worry - you can always drop us a note or let us know on Sunday morning. 

Some of you may be receiving a call, email, or letter seeking additional information that we are missing, or to check in and make sure you are still where you want to be. Look for that communication over the coming weeks. 

This process isn’t about narrowing our community—it’s about strengthening our connections and honoring our commitment to one another. We want everyone who calls this community home to feel seen, known, and included, and we want every transition that may move someone away from our community to also been seen and honored. 

2025–2026 Program Year Theme: “What We CAN Do”

August 20, 2025

Our theme this program year affirms our agency and faithfulness in uncertain times, inspired by Galatians 6:9 —“So let us not grow weary in doing what is right…”  

Lutherans have a healthy reminder woven into our tradition about what we can and cannot do. We cannot save ourselves or the world. We cannot make ourselves more beloved by working harder to please God. We cannot make all that is wrong in the world right again. That is all God’s work. But we CAN care for one another and the world God made. We CAN carry one another’s burdens and speak on behalf of those who with no voice. We CAN breathe in God’s spirit and live out God’s justice.

To keep the theme dynamic and seasonally grounded, we will pair it with evolving subtitles throughout the year:

• Fall: Responding to God’s Generosity
• Advent & Christmas: Responding to God’s Presence
• Lent: Responding to God’s Compassion
• Easter & Spring: Responding to God’s New Life

This poem speaks directly to the posture we hope to take — not despairing over what is out of reach, but rejoicing in what is within our power to do.

“I can’t stop all the wars, but I can be a voice that speaks for peace.
I can’t calm all the storms, but I can offer safe harbor to someone in need.” 
- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Together, these words, scriptures, and images will shape a year of faithful, hope-filled action — grounded not in what we can’t do, but in what we CAN do.

Summer Camp Highlights

August 13, 2025

As back-to-school season is gearing up again, the summer is coming to a close! One way a handful of ECLC kids celebrated the last weeks of summer was time at Camp Wapo for a weekend or a full week at the beginning of August. Between Seeds, Youth Camp, and Wilderness Canoe Base, 24 ECLC students and friends attended camp this summer. Filled with campfires, songs, Bible studies, Gaga ball tournaments, big field games, silly skits, time on the water front, a banquet, and the “Wapo County Fair”, time at camp was so fun for each camper that could be there! I was able to spend a few days at camp which was so fun and special! 

-Kaya 

Capital Campaign Nears the Finish Line! 

August 6, 2025

Over the past year, See What Yes Can Do! has shown us exactly that—what happens when our congregation dreams boldly and acts together. Because of your generosity, we’ve reduced our mortgage, created a welcoming new patio and gathering space, and supported mission partners near and far. 

We’re almost at our goal—but not quite. And “YES” isn’t just the story of what we’ve done—it’s still an open invitation to be part of what’s next. Your continued gifts will help us cross the finish line and fully fund these lasting improvements for ministry and mission. Perhaps you’ve been waiting for the right occasion to honor someone who has been influential in your life of faith , or maybe there is a special event you’d like to honor by helping us reach our goal. Consider if you might be called to help us reach out goal. 

Join us in worship on Sunday August 24 as we celebrate the campaign’s accomplishments. Weather permitting, we’ll head out to the new patio for treats and conversation—a perfect way to enjoy the space your generosity has made possible. 

July Rest is Resistance

July 2025

This July we are spending time reflecting on our “being” instead of our “doing,” leaning into rest, and reading “Rest is Resistance” by Tricia Hersey. 

Each week in our enews, we will highlight two of the ten steps for “How to Be an Escape Artist,” also written by Tricia Hersey, where the author reflects on what it means that in order to rest, we must learn the art of escape. Not escaping our lives, but escaping the things that hold us in unhealthy rhythms and systems that take instead of give. We encourage you to spend a little time each week reflecting on these steps. Use them in conversation with the book we’re reading together. See how you learn and grow and lean into who you were always created to be. 

How to Be An Escape Artist (An incomplete List)

Step 1: “The first step for morphing into an escape artist is belief. You must believe you have the power to refuse. You must believe you have been gifted with everything necessary. You must be a trickster. No matter what, you must not show fear. We are abundant. I have heard from many that it’s been difficult to rest because you don’t know how. Give thanks for the “not knowing.” Isn’t it exciting to be able to develop, discover, and experiment with your own liberation? 

Step 2: “Develop clear boundaries that feel like fresh clay. Flexible, strong, and soothing to your body. Develop the ability to ignore anyone and anything that stands in the way of your goal of liberation. Every system in the culture doesn’t see your divinity. They were not created to connect. They were not created to have vision. They were created for you to internalize the lies about labor in a capitalist culture. Stay clear. Stay connected.” 

Step 3: “Create community. Build community. Be community. Community care can seem impossible when you are exhausted. It is possible. Community is anywhere two ore more are gathered. Two is still community. Don’t rush to quantity as the marker of deep community and care. Don’t rush to do anything alone. To be an escape artist is to be in the collective. Supported in rest, care, and love. Demand the collective as a source of inspiration and change. Real change comes from the people.” 

Step 4: “Study the art of improvisation. You will need it for your escape artist life. There are no quick steps or cookie-cutter lies to liberation. You do what you must in the moment and right now. You tap deeply into your inner knowing. You view rest not as an afterthought and instead as the foundation and North Star. Follow the stars. Follow the light. You boldly step into your role as the leader. You carry your escape plan in your pocket. You carry your escape plan in your heart.” 

Step 5: “Create a concise one-sentence response to the question “What are you willing to rest for?” Then memorize it. Embody it. Become it. Then lay down in the beauty and power of your plans.” 

Step 6: “Listen. You must slow down to listen. Listen to your body. Listen to your heart. Listen to the birds. Listen to the wind. Listen to your dreams. Listen for clues. Your escape from grind culture depends on listening.” 

Step 7: “Reinvent yourself over and over again. Resurrect yourself over and over again. Focus daily on the spectacle of escape. The best spectacles are the ones that are organic and catch everyone off guard. Don’t be afraid to say less. Every word doesn’t have to be used. Silence is holy and goes directly to the point. Silence is rest. People need to know that you are pissed about the bamboozlement. Let grind culture know you are not playing around. This is not a game or a time to shrink. Your thriving depends on the art of escape.” 

Step 8: “Start being ok with being seen as an outsider to grind culture. An outlier wizard. Embarace the mystery. Why would you want to be a part of exhaustion, disembodiment, and trauma? Why would you want to align with and trust in toxic capitalism and consumerism as both sell self-care as expensive things and doing more? Don’t be fooled. Rest your eyes right now. Take a nap right now. Daydream right now. Sky gaze right now. Make being on the outside a freedom space. Hide in plain sight.” 

Step 9: “Read a poem daily. You will need it for your dreaming mission and your escape maps. May I recommend Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, or Audre Lorde? Write your own. A prompt to start: “My rest feels like…”” 

Step 10: Create an escape map. Keep creating them for the rest of your days. Trace the path telepathically. Write the plans down on scraps of paper, then tuck and hide them away. Find them by surprise. When you need the map, it will appear. Create a map for the following: How to bend time, how to sky gaze, how to daydream, how to rest. 

More Thoughts on our July Month of Rest: 

June 25, 2025

I have already noted in sermons that my favorite author and theologian is Barbara Brown Taylor, so of course I am subscribed to her newsletter, "Coming Down to Earth."  Yesterday she published a new post, titled "Reverie Saves the Day" and it contained so many parallels to our own musings at ECLC around rest and doing and being, I had to share it with you all today. https://barbarabrowntaylor.substack.com/p/reverie-saves-the-day 

I hope you read it and savor her words and then I hope you ask yourself the very question that inspired her to write this column in the first place: What pastime gives you life that you never take time to do? 

Happy almost July ECLC! Can't wait to lean into the beauty of rest with you all. 

Pr Natalia

Join Us In A Community Experiment This July! 

June 18, 2025

During our Focus Groups, we often heard about the culture of “doing” that we have here at ECLC. As the Transition Team and I both named in our report, this volume is not inherently bad, we DO do a lot: we give and serve and use our voices and resources in the wider community in a way that matters and is core to who we are. And a question that has come up from all this doing is: “is this sustainable?” 

July “Rest is Resistance” Month

We were created for rest. God built sabbath into the very foundation of creation. It was a gift so that we wouldn’t get our doing confused with our being. The question for all of us to consider this July is the same one asked to the people of God during sabbath throughout our history: do we know who we are when we don’t do anything? 

What does this mean? 

This month, we’re going to take a step back from our doing. Together we will read “Rest is Resistance” by Tricia Hersey. We have asked our committees to not meet. We are encouraging people to lean into what reconnects them to who they are and whose they are. We will also gather for “patio parties” a few times in July. See the “save the date” below for dates and details.

To bless our time of rest, and to use as a reflection on why we are doing this experiment together, read this blessing below from Meta Herrick Carlson. I hope you save it and come back to it regularly, to remind you that you are more than what you do. 

It is only human to become what you do, 
to believe you are necessary for good order and momentum. 
So in the beginning God set humankind apart on a planet that moves without your control, 
that revolves despite your wild desire to be at the very center of things. 
God promised provision on the seventh day, 
so that you could practice resistance to your zealous rhythms with rest, 
so that you could stop for a season and trust: 
I am so small, and also I matter so much. 
It is here in the absence of doing you will remember the terrible and wonderful news - 
that God is still here, making things new, even and often without your help. 
May this sabbath time return your identity from production to relationship
in which you hear the call to some things, not all the things, 
and relish you place as a creature of God. 

Pr. Natalia

PATIO PARTIES! 
During our July month of rest, we will gather on the patio on a few days and times. No agenda, no checklists, no projects, no plan; but simply a time to be together and delight in each other.

The dates and times for these parties are: 
•  July 9 at 12pm
•  July 14 at 6pm
•  July 29 at 6pm.

If this feels like something that would bring you joy, if it would help you connect to who you are and who you have been created to be, I hope you come be with us.