Arvin Pirness | The Voice of Zion October 2024 - News & Notes Article --
Fall is a busy time at the LLC office with staff, the LLC Board, and committees meeting to finalize plans for 2025 and prepare plans for 2026. These meetings and planning sessions remind me how important it is that God’s children remember to serve one another with their time. Thousands of volunteer hours are provided every year to serve brothers and sisters in faith. Christian love obligates us to escort one another in grace and truth to the end of our journey.
Update on LLC Activities
Camps
The camp season is nearly over. As information from the camp season is reviewed, the respective camp boards begin preparing for the 2025 season and planning for 2026. This year a Woman’s Camp and Health Trials Camp were added. Both events were reviewed positively by those that attended.
As of the middle of September, 3,545 participants have attended camps. 280 attended Confirmation School. Camps have been arranged by six North American Camp Boards: Hasscib Lake, West Coast, Prairie Shores, Stony Lake, Kamp Kipa and Silver Springs.
Facilities
There has been a lot of maintenance and improvements at LLC Camp Centers this year. Four cabin interiors at Kamp Kipa were improved; walls and ceilings were furred out, walls were covered with drywall and new flooring was installed. These cabins are now very nice. Replacement of deteriorated siding and painting of the entire lodge was completed in late spring. Volunteers at Stony Lake completed an overhaul of the main lodge decks. All this work is completed due to the large number of volunteers investing in camp work.
Education
Additional teaching materials have been created for third-grade Sunday school material and have been distributed to congregations this last year. For the 2024–25 Sunday school year additional teaching material is being piloted for 4th and 8th grade. Over the next few years, the goal is to continue to update teaching materials for all Sunday school grades.
Mission Work
The Williston congregation has called Adam Lampi as a minister to serve their congregation. We wish Adam, his wife Carly and their family God’s blessings in these duties.
Communication has been sent out from the office for all who are scheduled to serve in 2025 at LLC services, mission trips, camps, as well as for events coordinated by the camp boards and area mission committees. These 380 events are in addition to the regular service schedule in our local congregations.
Communications
As has been communicated previously, we will discontinue printing lists of individual Christmas greetings in the December issue of The Voice of Zion. We will include greetings from LLC staff and Board and also from SRK and SFC. Member congregations can place Christmas greetings in the form of an ad if they wish. More information on this will be sent to congregation boards. The tradition of Christmas greetings in Christianity’s newspapers is a long one, and as times and habits of sending others Christmas greetings change, so do our practices.
The 2024 Content Creators Workshop at Stony Lake Camp was well attended. Participants learned about and practiced writing skills, illustration, composing and arranging music and planned services broadcast content for 2025. In addition to individual sessions, there were also mutual sessions in which workshop participants discussed various aspects of creating content for LLC publications. Questions discussed included:
– How does publications content support the spiritual, emotional, and congregational life of our audience?
– Do our publications make space for those outside our faith while also deepening a connection with and between believers?
– How can we make theological concepts and our core beliefs understandable for all readers? How do we tailor messages for different age ranges without watering down the core message?
– How can we address contemporary issues through the lens of faith without becoming political or divisive?
– What balance of print, audio, video, and visual content should we aim for?
A recent topic of discussion in our area of work focuses on the fact that everything we produce is published on one or more digital platform, whether Hearken, our website or external music streaming services. Some things we produce are also published in print or as physical products such as CDs. Previously it has felt that the main focus is print and physical products, with digital efforts being a side effort. Has this balance now shifted? We will continue to discuss this question and its implications to our work and planning our publications in future years.