Another Extraordinary Call

Shrimp here. Last All Saints Sunday Calvary Lutheran Church in Minneapolis voted to call Brad Froslee as it's next pastor. His first Sunday will be January 11, 2009. In making that announcement the November edition of the church newsletter, Calvary's Crossroads, reminds the good folk of Calvary Lutheran,

Please join in welcoming Pastor Brad and his partner, Bill.

Shrimp doesn't think they mean business partner.

Froslee is among those listed in A Place Within My Walls, the devotional booklet distributed by goodsoil at the last ELCA Churchwide Assembly. He is Camp Director for The Naming Project, whose Camp Out is the subject of a short documentary (now out -- sorry -- on DVD) of the same title. And he's written this devotion drawn from the scene where Joshua and the Israelites are about to cross into the Promised Land as the 40-year Exodus concludes:

...Having come to a place of wholeness and promise as child of God, I found myself now wrestling with a church trying to make its way through its own wilderness of sexuality and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons serving as clergy. It has been a journey for me…it has been a longer journey for many others…and certainly it has been a long and challenging journey for this community we call the Church.

Yet, now, as I stand as a gay man ordained to serve as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I am well aware of the Promised Land to which we are called. We stand at the banks of the river preparing to cross over. We will carry with us our lived experience, the memory and the promise of those who have gone before us, the profound sense of grace that God instills in us as a church, and most importantly we will look to the God who calls and challenges us to live into promise...

Froslee has been serving St. Luke Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) since his 2004 ordination by the ELCA's Minneapolis Area Synod (and you wondered if the Formula of Agreement had any real impact) and he remains on the ELCA roster of ministers.

Despite our title for this post, Froslee is not on any Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries roster. He is, though, one of the planners of the new pan-Lutheran LGBT Ministerium founded by Lutherans Concerned just before their Hearts on Fire assembly last summer.

Shrimp out, er, signing off.