Hello, Synod Assembly 2025! It is so good to be together.
Much has happened since my last report to our Synod Assembly 2023. As a member of your synod staff, I can say we are working diligently meeting the daily joys and challenges of our work here in Metro New York. Through it all, God remains steadfast as we move Forward Together in Christ.
Joining our Office of the Bishop staff in early 2020 certainly presented challenges: a global pandemic, conflicts abroad, political tensions. During the past six years, as a team, we have navigated our learning curve through unprecedented times, finding new ways of working together, and making plans to do God’s work for our synod. We built new relationships in familiar and unfamiliar ways. Since then, we have made the transition from zoom and thankfully we have had opportunities to be out in our synod to meet with many of you in person.
As your MNYS Chief Operating Officer, my role is to manage the day-to-day operations of our synod office. As operations staff, we cover areas including administrative, candidacy and call processes, communications, data, events, finance, insurance, legal, property, and weekly staff worship. Also providing support to our Executive Assistant to the Bishop (Gayle), deployed Assistants to the Bishop (Pastor Angela Shannon, Pastor Chris Mietlowski, Mother Gladys Diaz), DEM (Branden) and Candidacy Coordinator (Pastor Seely). Each member of our staff has worked tirelessly sharing their unique gifts to the Glory of God, taking part in our Bishop’s vision to Live Like Christ in Our Communities. I am incredibly grateful for each one of my colleagues, who are deeply dedicated to our synod’s work and have each taught me so much over the past years, Forward Together in Christ.
There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them, and in everyone it is the same God at work. – 1 Corinthians 12:4-6
Please be sure to read the comprehensive report from my colleague, Donna-Mari Fieldsa, Assistant to the Bishop for Finance, covering the complexities of our synod’s finances, and all the work done to improve our processes in this area over these past years. I am also grateful for the guidance and support from our Synod Treasurer.
Our communications team (Lori and Leticia), events and data management team (Maria and Anaih) and administrative staff (Regina) have worked for many months planning this assembly in addition to our everyday work of providing newsletters, coordinating messages from our Bishop and Synod Council Vice President; sharing resources with congregations, social media and website updates; and providing microsite support and training. Our team has been working with our Executive Assistant to the Bishop in supporting deans’ meetings, quadrant meetings, ministerium meetings, council president events, Bishop’s Retreat for pastors and deacons and other synod events. Managing data and producing reports in our Sales Force platform enables us to work more efficiently together and better assist our ordained ministers, lay leaders and congregations. Sales Force is a robust platform that enables us to store the most accurate and up-to-date contact information. The platform provides rapid and easy access to documents our congregations often need and may not be able to locate, such as a certificate of incorporation and insurance declaration pages. Please be sure to send these documents to us if you haven’t already done so.
Our property manager (Mark) is responsible for managing our synod-owned properties through four seasons of maintenance needs and repairs. Expenses related to those properties include: legal fees, property and liability insurance, maintenance and repairs, real estate taxes, utilities, staff salaries and time, appraisal and architect fees, and paying violations. Retaining these properties requires care and upkeep, which is time consuming, labor-intensive, and costly. It is not cost-effective for our synod to continue to care for aging, deteriorating buildings, knowing it is not our mission or calling to be landlords of vacant properties, but to focus on our ministry and mission, Forward Together in Christ.
Working with our Tanzania Coordinator (Pastor Perucy), we are so pleased to have a new teacher and her husband going to serve at Kibeta English Medium Primary School (KEMPS) in our companion synod, the North Western Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. This is made possible through the Tanzania Endowment.
Mother Gladys Díaz, Branden Dupree and I have spent part of the past two years working on a comprehensive Bronx Strategy to retain and rebuild our Lutheran presence in the Bronx. You will hear more about this exciting, life-giving expression of Living Like Christ in Our Communities during the assembly.
In closing, I hope this provides a sense of the work your synod staff is part of. It is an honor to serve in the Office of the Bishop under Bishop Egensteiner, with and for our synod. May we all continue Forward Together in Christ.
From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. — Ephesians 4:16