ABOUT EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States, with nearly 3.3 million members in more than 8,900 worshiping communities across the 50 states and in the Caribbean region.  Our values are grounded in faith, in our biblical and Lutheran confessional sources and our love of God and neighbor. Because we trust in God’s promise and understand faith to be a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, we are emboldened to embrace learning and change in our spiritual and institutional journey as church. This means we are open to new ways and willing to take risks to discover God’s plan for this church.

Through the Service and Justice (S&J) home area, the ELCA Churchwide Organization shall foster and facilitate this church’s engagement in service with and among communities and promote efforts to call and act for justice. Its work includes engaging in mission, service, and justice in accompaniment with churches and organizations in other countries [serving as the means through which churches in other countries engage in mission to this church and society]; engaging with communities, coalitions and networks, congregations, and synods in service and justice work within the territorial jurisdiction of this church; and providing guidance to members on matters of social justice.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Grounded in our purpose and priorities, the Executive Director (ED) will serve as the head of the Service and Justice home area. The ED will help the ELCA become a welcoming, thriving and sustainable church that is able to engage new, young and diverse people by demonstrating the compassion of Jesus in the world. This will occur by connecting communities through service and justice for transformation in the way of Jesus as well as through programs and ministries of the church that promote relevancy and engagement with new people.  The incumbent in this position leads the team in building bridges between the three expressions of the ELCA, our companion and partners, and new ministries that foster a shared vision for a just and peaceful world.

This is a full-time, regular, exempt, hybrid position. This position is a 4-year term position. Terms are renewed by the Presiding Bishop at their discretion.

A FEW ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Develops a theologically grounded vision for service and justice in the ELCA and articulates to S&J staff and other home areas and ELCA ecology the vision and goals of Service and Justice and how it is integrated into the programmatic work of the teams.
• Builds on S&J theology and practices (accompaniment, liberation, the 5 justice principles of Migration Justice; Economic Justice; Racial Justice; Gender Justice and Environmental Justice: (MERGE).
• Promotes effective S&J cross-team collaboration and with other home areas to meet goals; set high standards for performance, achievement and accountability while promoting effective and sustainable team culture and work processes, represent S&J mission, ministry and goals across the ecology of the ELCA.

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Our Commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Justice

Nonprofit HR is committed to fostering and maintaining a work environment where equity, diversity, inclusion & justice (EDIJ) are fully integrated into everything we do for the benefit of our employees and the clients that we serve. To fully realize our goal, we prioritize our understanding of the complexities of DEI within our workforce to inform our approach to talent management. We believe that this guides how we do our work, advise our clients to operationalize EDIJ and position our content and educational opportunities to help strengthen the talent management capacity of the social impact sector. See the full statement.