Weekly Update from the President

I would like to welcome everyone to this my first weekly update on what your synod Lutheran Men in Mission (LMM) have been doing. I will prepare this update every Thursday as I want all of you to be informed of what your SWTS LMM Board is doing for you. This way you can ask questions when you first see something rather then having to wait until you go to assembly to hear about it and ask your questions.

So with that said, here goes…I have developed a list of goals that I think we the SWTS LMM Board should work on to bring glory to our Lord and respect and admiration for your organization. I have forwarded the list to all of the Board members to review and I am waiting to hear back from them with their inputs. I must admit it is a rather busy list of things to accomplish but if we have the support and help of you the members I know we can accomplish them. I will post them next week in this update for you all to review and then you can send me comments by e-mail or if you want you can call me to share your thoughts and wisdom.

I have asked Dr Charles Oestreich to act as the Assembly Coordinator and he has graciously accepted. I am appointing him to the board as a non-voting member. The reason for my appointing him is that he has been instrumental in ensuring the last two assemblies were successful. So I thought it would be best if we didn’t mess up a good thing. Dr Oestreich, Charlie Schwartz and I met last week and started working on the assembly for 2008 in Fredericksburg. We hashed over some things and I am currently doing a telephone interview with each of the Board members to get their feelings on the straw man we have developed. So we have that going on. By the way, if you have experience in this area and would like to help Dr. Oestreich please let me know and I will pass your name and information on to him.

I also met with the LMM from my congregation and we have decided to hold a quarterly breakfast for the conference. This meeting will be for us in the San Antonio Conference to build relationships with the men from other churches in the conference and to pass on information about what has worked for our groups and things that haven’t worked. Thus helping the groups to grow and prosper in their work of bringing men to Christ, building relationships and studying God’s word. We will also be talking about how the local congregations can help the synod LMM meet the goals it has established. So if you are in the San Antonio Conference look for more information to be coming to your church shortly.

I have coordinated with Charlie Schwartz and the SWTS to have a booth at the Synod Assembly in Kerrville in May. We, the SWTS LMM, will be passing out crosses made by Charlie’s Sawdust Factory to the people attending the assembly and we are also going to assemble two benches on the premises. One of the swings will be presented to Bishop Tiemann for the LMC in Seguin and the other will be given to an assisted living home in Kerrville. So if would like to help Charlie and I on May 19 or 20 please give me a call at (210) 347-6338 or e-mail me at dhickey1@satx.rr.com so I can put together a list of men who will be helping.

The last thing I have to share with you this week is that Rodger Johnson and Base Huston have been working hard at developing a bulletin insert on the Century Club. If you are not aware of what the Century Club is click here to find out more about this ministry. What we are planning to do is to send one copy of the insert to each man who attended the assembly and ask them to ask their church council for permission to produce more of the inserts and put them in the bulletin. We would also like for these men to get permission to present a Temple Talk on the Century Club on the same Sunday the inserts are placed in the bulletin. We feel that this way we will be able to improve the support of this very worthwhile ministry and help us to reach the magic number of 100 that we need to really get this ministry rolling.

Well I think that is everything I needed to say this week. God Bless! You are all in my prayers. I’ll talk with you again next week.

Dennis