Newsletter November 2013

As we move toward the end of the 25^th anniversary year of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America we remember our partnership with Lutheran helping agencies that are much older than our current denominational structure.  Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota has been a partner with Lutheran churches in this state since the mid-1800s when a group of Swedish Lutherans began an orphanage down in the Red Wing area.  While the denominational configuration of Lutherans in the state has gone through many changes in the last century and a half, Lutheran Social Service has continued to do work our behalf with some of the state’s more vulnerable citizens, young and old.

The era of orphanages has passed, of course, and been replaced with foster care and adoption.  LSS has had to move with the times as the views of society on how to be of assistance to those in need have changed.  In the previous century LSS was in the forefront of the adoption process in this state.  As the number of children available for adoption within the state dwindled, LSS then helped people with international adoptions.   In the Twin Cities LSS works with homeless teens through a variety of programs, often dealing with mental illness, emotional turmoil, sexual exploitation, and drug addiction.  It is hard work on the darker side of modern American life, and sometimes those who help, such as LSS, get embroiled in some nasty situations and conflicts.

In the aftermath of World War II Lutheran Social Service partnered with Lutheran World Relief to help resettle homeless refugees from Europe.  In the days of the Vietnam War refugees from southeast Asia were brought to the safety of America, including to Karlstad and Halma.   Some of you remember being a part of that project of our parish.  In more recent times LSS has brought Somali refugees from the heat and violence of east Africa to our frigid state, making Minnesota home to the largest Somali population in America.  In each of these eras the resettlement programs were not universally popular as they touched on controversial issues such as the suspected involvement of Minnesota Somalis in African violence through the terrorist group “al Shabab.”

Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, and similar agencies in other states are often helping in difficult and messy situations.  We should be grateful for their work in places many of us might fear to tread and with people we don’t understand well.  The work of LSS is one way that Lutherans seek to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and welcome the stranger as Jesus so powerfully told us to do in the Great Judgment story.  “When you do it to one of the least of these my brethren, you do it to me,” he said. (Matthew 25:40)

Here in our local community Lutheran Social Service is most visible in administering the senior citizens nutrition site and the two group homes, all in Karlstad.  On Monday, October 28, the nutrition site celebrated 40 years of LSS providing nutritious meals and social interaction for senior citizens in Northwestern Minnesota with an evening meal and program.  The group home situation has changed over the years as they have moved from one large facility in the old hotel at the corner of Main and Lincoln streets to the new building the city built on the same site, to the current emphasis on living in small homes that look and feel like any other family home in the community.  Thus a new home is going up right now on Third Street in Karlstad.

Locally, too, LSS sometimes gets into controversy as it deals with ever changing government mandates (remember most of the money for these programs comes from the federal  and state governments) and the evolving philosophies about how best to help people in need.  It never has been easy, but Jesus described those who do this work as “blest of my Father.” (Matthew 25:34)  So in this month of thanksgiving in this 25^th year of the ELCA let us give thanks for the work that Lutheran Social Service does in our name.