a-town Bundle

If you attend worship or interact with Christ Church, you will probably hear the terminology A-town Bundle. This reference currently includes five Lutheran congregations of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod’s Lehigh Mission District exploring what it would look like to intentional bundle our ministry resources and staff together. This exploration process takes time and is designed to be centered around relationships and mission - not money. Here’s a few details:

The congregations involved are:

1. St. John’s Lutheran Church

2. St. Luke’s Lutheran Church

3. Christ Lutheran Church

4. Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer

5. St. Timothy Lutheran Church

What Exploration involves:

1. gatherings that inter-mingle members of each congregation

2. gathering data about knowns and unknowns, advantages and fears, scripture, and mission to discern where congregational values and goals lie

3. using that information to form mission and vision statements if we look at the five congregations as ministry partners

4. draft a sample covenant agreement for each of the five church Councils to review

5. each congregation as a whole votes on whether or not to enter into the Bundle, while still maintaining their own facility and site-specific budget

These congregations have been in Allentown a long time yet, in many ways, are still getting to know one another. Here is the August Newsletter of the A-town Bundle, sharing ministry highlights with one another.

Our church leaders will continue to meet with a consultant, our Exploratory Team has an August meeting scheduled, and each Church Council is continuing discussions as part of the exploratory process since the Reveal Gathering on June 28.