Location: Little Crow Resort & Conference Center: 15980 Hwy 23 NE, Spicer MN, 56288
Sunday Evening, October 6th – Tuesday, October 8th, 2024
Keynote Speaker: Professor Emeritus Timothy J. Wengert

The 2024 Fall Theological Conference is planned especially for Pastors, Deacons, TEEM Students, Interns, Synod Authorized Lay Ministers currently serving a congregation, and paid staff youth coordinators. By action of the 1988 Synod Assembly, this conference has been designated as an “official synodical event.” This means that all pastors and deacons under call or appointment are expected to attend. If you need to be absent, please email Bishop Dee Pederson at [email protected] and CC Kristin Bakeberg, [email protected] in your email.

Registration Information

 The registration fee is per person:
$135 regular registration
$90 per person reduced registration (only for grads awaiting first call, interns, on-leave-from-call, and retired pastors not serving in an interim position) The registration fee includes the conference fee, Monday lunch, snacks, and refreshments.

Click here to register.

Housing arrangements and cost is separate from the FTC registration fee.
All attendees are responsible for their own housing arrangements. The synod office has reserved a block rooms at the Grandstay Hotel & Suites at Little Crow Resort where the conference will be held. The block of rooms is under the name: SW MN ELCA. This block of rooms will be released on September 6, 2024. Please call 320-347-1450 to make your room reservations.

Click here to view and download the conference schedule. 

Augsburg Confession and Ministry: Finding You (Lutheran) Roots: 

We are living in a time of enormous change. Everyone knows that. As a result, Christian, parish ministry can get lost in the weeds. Everyone in the Church’s ministry experiences that, too. Our anchor, of course, is Jesus Christ, “The same yesterday, today, and forever,” as one clever first-century writer put it. With Christ as our anchor, we Lutherans have an amazing rudder to help us steer through the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (Hamlet): the Augsburg Confession

In just a few years, in 2030, that confession will marks its 500th anniversary. To be sure, there are different ways to read that confession:

• As a historical record of princes and cities caught confessing their faith before the most powerful European ruler between Charlemagne and Napoleon, namely, Charles V;
• As a witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ;
• As a set of doctrines to be learned and subscribed to by congregations and church leaders.

But another approach to that document may help us “take arms against a sea of troubles” (more Hamlet), and that is to view this document as a helpful guide for ministry and parish life. This year’s fall theological conference will give us all an opportunity to do just that.

Our guide for this endeavor is Professor emeritus Timothy J. Wengert, who not only served as a parish pastor and is now married to one, but who also, as a scholar, has studied and written about many aspects of the Reformation, including Luther’s Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession. Most recently, at the invitation of the ELCA he and Robert Kolb of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis have developed a study edition of the Augsburg Confession in anticipation of the 500th anniversary. Here is what we will study and discuss together:

• Session I: “The Heart of Parish Ministry.”
• Session II: “Church Is Ministry, and Ministry Is Church
• Session III: “Separating Essentials from Non-Essentials.”