Dear People of God at St. Barnabas,

In light of current events, we want to provide our congregation with information regarding the current freeze of federal funding to Lutheran service agencies, including Lutheran Social Services throughout the country.

Some facts about Lutheran Social Services of Illinois from their website: LSSI annually provides social and human services to over 56,000 children, adults, and seniors, including: foster care, mental health services, alcohol and drug treatment, affordable senior housing, home care services for older adults, residential programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and programs that help people and families impacted by incarceration. 

For more information, please visit their website: https://www.lssi.org/statement-on-inflammatory-social-media-posts-regarding-lutheran-service-organizations/

Presiding Bishop Eaton has issued a statement regarding the false accusations of money laundering and illegal fund allocations in the form of a video. We invite you to watch that here:

How can we help?

Pastor Kelly, who preached at St. Barnabas last year and is the Manager of Church and Community Engagement for LSSI, recommended the following:

• Pray for those depending on services from LSSI
• Pray for the 1100+ employees of LSSI
• Donate to LSSI so they can continue to serve so many in our state
• Continue to volunteer and connect with the local program sites—which for us is Gable Point.

Finally, we remember that we are all in this together as fellow children of God. Jesus calls us to serve one another as he served us. We’d like to leave you with some words of scripture written to a congregation experiencing conflict and in need of guidance on how to be a strong, caring community. These words are timeless and apply to nearly every aspect of our lives.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant  or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (I Corinthians 13:4-7)

With Gratitude,

Your Church Council