Judy Lang
(Introduction)
Good afternoon. Joanne has told you about the make-up of the
Atlanta secretariat and now I am going to tell you a little bit
about the Iowa secretariat and how we serve the whole state. In
order to do this, I need to give you a little bit of history of
the Iowa Cursillo or Via de Cristo movement. Fred is going to put
just a sketchy map of Iowa up there so that you can recognize
where these places are when I mention them. We had our first
Lutheran weekend in 1972 - same time as Florida started - with a
lot of help from the Catholic community. Those weekends were held
in a church in Atlantic, Iowa which is in the southwestern part
of the state. They had two weekends for the first two or three
years. Then a couple years later we started having weekends also
at Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp, which is in the central part of
the state and this was a much better location for the people from
the Des Moines area.
So in 1976 when I attended there were four weekends held each
year - two at each site. We grew and expanded in the late 70's and
80's. We held weekends at various sites including we tried one
weekend at a church in Pomeroy and one at a church in Rockwell
City. We've had several weekends at a mental health center in
Sioux City. We had, I think, three weekends at Camp Io-Dis-E-Ca
near Iowa City - between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. We've had
several weekends at Waldorf College in Forest City which is in the
north central part of the state, and many weekends at Okoboji
Lutheran Bible camp near Milford, which is in the northwest part
of the state. During this time we have been pulling candidates in
from Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota. We've also been having
a prison ministry in connection with some of the others - it's
more of an ecumenical movement, but we have been helping a lot
with that through support and we have had prison ministry at Ft.
Madison maximum penitentiary, and Mt. Pleasant and Rockwell City.
Currently, they are holding them at Mt. Pleasant. Mt. Pleasant and
Fort Madison are in the southeast portion of the state.
These states that were coming in - the people from Nebraska,
South Dakota and Minnesota - as these states started their own
movements, our need for weekends diminished, so we are currently
using four of the sites.
As we grew and used more sites, there was no thought of
starting another secretariat. The original secretariat met a
couple of hours before the closing on Sunday afternoon. The
responsibilities included arranging for the weekend, such as
securing sites and dates, selecting the rectors and spiritual
directors. The community was small enough that they knew most of
the people and those people that were qualified so they could
handle all of this. They handled the finances and suggested the
donations. They had someone who stored all the supplies in their
garage and would see to it that they were taken to the site for
the weekend. They prepared the materials for the leaders for the
weekend and kept track of all of the talk books. As we grew, this
task became more difficult to do in such a short amount of time,
so the secretariat decided to meet on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to
4 p.m. in the central part of the state, near Riverside Bible
camp, in a church. It was also difficult to know all the people,
who would be good, to be rectors and spiritual directors.
It was about this time - the early 80's - that the National
Lutheran Secretariat was starting. In the sharing that goes on at
these meetings, we discovered that in other areas a new
secretariat was started each time a new area or a new site was
started. This was new to us. We thought that we're too much of a
community and didn't want to separate our secretariat. We did go
through a period of reorganization and we did sort of subdivide
our group into areas according to the sites, for such things as
selecting rectors and spiritual directors and making the
arrangements for the sites. This was a painful process for some
of our people to go through. Presently, our secretariat meets one
Saturday every month in a church at a central location. They
coordinate the weekends in the different areas and approve the
selection of rectors, spiritual directors and the dates for the
weekends so they're a coordinating body now, rather than just
planning every little detail.
We are constantly reviewing the finances, to see how we are
coming. If there is a need for an appeal to the fourth day
community then they decide how that's going to be done. As I said
before, we started with the supplies being stored in someone's
garage. Then we purchased a snowmobile trailer and someone built
the frame around that, so we had a trailer where we stored our
supplies and this trailer, then, was hauled from site to site and
back to where it was stored and these people kept it supplied.
Recently - just this past year we purchased a used rescue truck.
This holds our tables, podium, overhead projector, communion-ware
banners, hymnals (LBW), our songbook which is "Songs", notebooks,
pens, crosses, tissues and much, much more. But these are the
supplies for all the weekends throughout the whole state plus our
prison weekends. They also make decisions regarding any purchases
that we have to do for these supplies. For instance, if we need
to purchase some more hymnals or we need to purchase some more
communion ware - those kinds of decisions are made by the
secretariat.
We also review the materials for the rectors and the rollo
room team members and the palanca team which is what we call our
support team. The members of our secretariat are usually couples.
In a couple of instances we've had a single male and a single
female from the same area, and we have even had two women for a
short while. We call our leader a lay director. This couple is
responsible for conducting the meetings and receiving some
correspondence. We have a spiritual director and three or four
clergy couples at large. That's how we got started - we were a
clergy couple at large. We have one treasurer for the whole state.
Originally, our representatives on the secretariat were one couple
from each ultreya. This was a nice group to start with, but as we
grew, the number of people, because the number of ultreyas
increased, the number of people increased, so we became really too
large, so that's when we decided we needed some reorganization.
We decidedto have one couple or two singles as a representative
for each of the areas where we hold weekends. We are now wanting
to have an alternate from each one of those areas, too. If the
couple cannot make it, the alternate can. Sometimes both couples
come.
We also have an assistant lay director couple and from the
area representatives we collect a secretary, a financial advisor
and a palanca coordinator. The financial advisor is a little
different and this was decided upon because our treasurer was not
able to come to our meetings - she just sent us a report. Many
times we had questions about that report so we decided to have a
financial advisor who would receive the treasurer's report ahead
of time, review it, and then contact the treasurer with any
questions or concerns, and then report to the secretariat at our
meeting. Also, the financial advisor would do things such as if
we had several thousand dollars there we'd maybe suggest some ways
to invest it - or what we should do with that money. We have our
newsletter editor and our NLS representative that are also part
of our secretariat. We also have something else that I'm not too
sure that many of the other secretariats have. We have a liaison
who is a member of the synod Congregational Life Board. A person
who is on the synod Congregational Life Board is also a member of
our secretariat or comes to our meetings. We have three synods in
Iowa, and we have one synod that is doing that, but we'd like to
have someone from the other two synods as well.
Each area is to have a representative couple to attend the
secretariat meetings and an alternate one and each site has its
own registrar for the weekends at that particular site. For each
weekend and also each area is to select a weekend couple who is
responsible for set up, take down of the weekend and also
responsible for handling any of the money and bills for that
weekend.
Something else that we do that's a little bit different -
much of our leadership training is done by experience. We want our
people to serve at least two palanca teams or background teams
before being in the rollo room. Then, once they're in the rollo
room, we'd like to have them serve once as a silent, or auxiliary,
before they can give a rollo. Then we'd like to have them give at
least two rollos before they be an assistant, and be an assistant
rector at least twice before being a rector. Our rectors and
assistant rectors are Lutherans. The rollistas do not have to be
Lutheran and they are selected by the area representatives with
approval of the secretariat.
In other words, our training is done by experience as they
move through the weekends and experience more weekends. For our
team training we highly recommend 25-30 hours of team meetings and
preparation time. We used to have ten weekly meetings of three
hours each. Then with the mileage and the gas crunch, we tried
all-day Saturday meetings and overnights on Friday and Saturday.
We found that one overnight is not enough so we've gone with the
number of hours leaving the specifics for the leaders for a
particular weekend. If they want to do a combination of weekly
meetings and overnights or all day Saturday meetings - that's up
to them, but we would like to have 25-30 hours of training. This
is just a thumbnail sketch of how we do things in the Iowa
Lutheran Secretariat. Minnesota is another state that has a
secretariat or a council for the whole state, and I'm not sure
there might be a couple of others. We are the minority, I think.
Thank you.
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