Our Shared Values

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday have all gone. It's well into December. Already. Christmas will come soon enough and then … 2017 and beyond.

Over 140 senior service leaders and board members from over 30 LSA member organizations across the country came together at the 2016 LSA Member Reception at the LeadingAge Annual Meeting and Expo on October 30 in Indianapolis to network and share in the spirit of the event.

Thirty-four of the top financial minds representing LSA member and associated Lutheran organizations gathered in San Diego for the annual Lutheran Financial Managers Association (LFMA) meeting on October 9-11, 2016, to share best practices, network, and explore new trends in financial management. In addition to being in beautiful and warm San Diego, it was a fantastic conference, focusing on everything from new FASB regulations to growth strategies to the new federal overtime law.

Is it possible to improve high school graduation rates, or reduce the number of homeless youth in our communities by December 2017? These questions and others were explored on September 15th and 16th, when leaders from 10 LSA member organizations traveled to Washington D.C. for the first LSA Results Based Leadership Institute (RBLI). Results Based Leadership is a highly regarded leadership development program developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation for health and human service providers, and it combines results based leadership techniques with hands on implementation. At the start of this session, each LSA member committed to making a measureable impact toward the goal of ensuring that All children in the US are nurtured and on a pathway to successful adulthoodby December 2017. This is a very ambitious goal to achieve in a short period of time, but operating with a sense of urgency and call to action is a key component of the RBLI. LSA is offering this unique opportunity to LSA members through a partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation who is generously covering the cost of the RBLI faculty, AECF design staff and travel expenses for participants. I am so proud of this partnership, because this is what we strive to do at LSA--bring resources and opportunities to LSA member organizations to help strengthen Lutheran social ministry organizations and improve the lives of the most vulnerable.

No metro. No car. No Uber. I walked. For my first two weeks, in the blazing, DC summer heat, I chose to walk the 30 minutes from my temporary place of residency to the headquarters of Lutheran Services in America (LSA). Aside from collecting rare Pokémon along the way, I walked to get a feel for DC, a place that I would be calling home for the next year. As I walked, I was captivated by the scenery. I marveled at the ambitious people: locals waiting for the bus, little children walking to day camp, joggers, Hill interns, White House staffers, tourists, and government officials. My daily walk to LSA confirmed that the road to resilience for this Buffalonian would be one full of growth and adventure.

Last week, Cedar Lake hosted 30+ Lutheran Services in America Disability Network (LSA-DN) members at their corporate headquarters in Louisville, KY for the LSA-DN 2016 Summer Meeting. In an effort to better understand each other's organizations, we decided to forgo holding our summer meeting in a hotel, as we have in past years, so that we could take a deeper look at a member organization. And to my surprise, everyone preferred meeting in a member conference room with meals brought in by Panera and snacks from the grocery store as opposed to the carefully curated environment of a hotel! DN members were able to better grasp how the host organization, Cedar Lake, was delivering long-term services and supports to people with disabilities and how they might be able to partner with, learn from, or help grow Cedar Lake.

I have never been a fan of change. Until college, I lived in the same house my entire life. I’ve gone to the same church since I was a toddler. I attended the same school from preschool to eighth grade. And my taste in food hasn’t changed since I was eight (corndogs continue to be a staple in my diet). So when I had to move (a whopping two hours away) to Valparaiso University (Valpo), you can probably imagine my feelings on the topic. You know that Yellow Man on Google Street-view Maps that you drag and drop to different places? Have you ever noticed how much that Yellow Man squirms when you move him? That’s how I felt about college. Squirmy.

Ever since I was a young child I was taught to cherish and value community. In my life, this has looked like Sunday afternoons eating coffee cake in a church basement long after the service had ended because my Mom made a point to check-in with everyone who yearned a listening ear. Or when I would tag along with my Dad for a meeting of leaders strategizing about how to prevent yet another factory from entering our neighborhood ridden with dirty industry. It has also looked like a late summer night gathered around a campfire in my aunt’s backyard in Canada, ending a long day of play with my cousins and making every moment matter of the few times we met during the year.

Early in July, I traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to represent LSA at The 66th Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). As a lifelong member of the LCMS, one of LSA’s affiliate church bodies, I know that this church body has a steadfast commitment to their faith, their history, and the work of mercy professed that Christ calls us to. As I wandered the exhibit hall to find our booth, I felt both excited and disappointed to find that our booth sat right across from those who some consider to be the most famous Lutherans in the country – the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs. I was excited because, well, I would get to be around loving dogs for four days. But I was disappointed because it would make it much harder, nearly impossible, to get the attention of people near these Lutheran celebrities.

The Sunday of Independence Day weekend, I woke up bright and early to attend a worship service at a new church in my neighborhood. On previous weekends, you could find me at what I would consider to be a “popular church”- a well-attended, multi-satellite, free donuts before church kind of congregation located in a theater. You can picture it, can’t you? I’d chosen this welcoming community for the past weeks because I enjoyed the company of a friend who went there. The only inconvenience about this arrangement was that the church was located quite far from where we were living to the point where we had to take a train and walk a significant distance to get there. I had been wanting to support a local congregation for some time, so when my friend went out of town for the weekend I decided to do so then. I spotted a local United Methodist Church one night while roaming the area and had decided that this would be my place.