LOVE REVOLUTION
Does your congregation feel the call to grow and transform? Love Revolution: Love God and Love Neighbor is looking for congregations to bring their lay and rostered leaders to renew their sense of purpose.
Love Revolution is a five-year initiative funded by the Lilly Endowment Inc, intended to ignite a paradigm shift towards renewing and living out a deep love of God and neighbor, all neighbors. Love Revolution will work with ELCA churches and their surrounding communities to renew their sense of purpose and vocation, engage in social action, address justice, and foster greater connection across divides to build strong and thriving congregations and communities. The revolution is meant to transform our Church.
We hope this Love Revolution sparks a movement across SEPA Synod and the ELCA as we recommit to Love God and Love Neighbor. Come join us!
Please apply by April 30, 2026. Additional rounds of applications will be solicited in the coming years so if you are unable to apply this summer, please consider doing so in the future.
WHAT IS LOVE REVOLUTION ALL ABOUT?
What is it?
Grounded in God’s grace and the promises of baptism, the Love Revolution gathers a learning community (multiple congregational leadership groups) in a two-year process of engagement with biblical and contemporary approaches to loving God and neighbor in order to both encourage and support relationship-based, community-centered, mission-oriented dynamic ministry.
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It’s a process to deepen spiritual life and develop leadership skills for congregational leadership.
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It’s a two-year journey in which leaders renew and strengthen their sense of God moving in their lives and gain essential skills to do relationship-based, community-centered, mission-oriented ministry.
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It’s about helping congregations focus their work of Loving God and Loving Neighbor in the community in which they are called to serve.
The Love Revolution will help congregations discover what’s most important and evolve into fresh ways of approaching ministry. We are intentionally tapping into a movement of the Spirit that is seeking to revive and renew the church.
The Love Revolution has been funded by a “Thriving Congregations” grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. Resources from the grant will cover the cost of participating in the revolution!
The Learning Community
In order to grow in faith and in ministry skills, the Learning Community will focus on the five promises of Baptism:
LIVE among God’s faithful people
HEAR God’s word and share in the Lord’s supper
PROCLAIM the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and deed
SERVE all people following the example of Jesus
STRIVE for justice and peace in all the earth
For more information, contact:
The Rev. Rick Summy
Program Director
952.529.8340
RESOURCES
LIVE
HEAR
Love Revolution HEAR Cohort Gathering: 1:1 Interviews
PROCLAIM
Love Revolution PROCLAIM Retreat: Ernie Hinojosa Presentation
Love Revolution PROCLAIM Retreat: Linda Manson Presention (SMART goals)
Love Revolution PROCLAIM Retreat: Brendan Galvin Presentation (Composite Character)
Love Revolution PROCLAIM Retreat: Paula Lebo Presentation: Social Media 101/Digital Evangelism
SERVE
SEPA Fall 2025 Learning Day Video-Rev. Emily Harkins
SEPA Fall 2025 Learning Day Presentation: Julia Frank
Love Revolution SERVE Cohort Gathering: Panel Discussion Part 1
Love Revolution SERVE Cohort Gathering: Panel Discussion Part 2
STRIVE
Love Revolution 2025 Synod Assembly Video
Action Steps
1. Take an implicit bias test and confront your bias
2. Make a list of people and the types of people you need to meet with 1:1.
3. Make a phone call to set up the meetings. (Not a text or an email.)
4. Go to the meetings
5. Listen for how they view the world, their experiences, their hopes and dreams
6. Imagine together what a just and loving world should and could look like
7. Invite them to join you and your congregation on this journey together
8. Report back to your congregation team and think about how this helps you build your Love Revolution
Remember: when doing 1:1 interviews, the idea is that you listen 80% of the time and talk only 20%.
Love Principles
Bishop Dwayne Royster, executive director of Faith in Action, the largest U.S. and global faith-based grassroots organizing network, provided the keynote for the Love Revolution launch. Reminding participants that all people are created in God’s image, Bishop Royster challenged us to change the world so that “everybody gets to live their full, best lives.” Asserting that Jesus was disruptive, Royster called us to be disruptive for the sake of the gospel. He said that race and class are never separate, that this is used as a weapon for “white folks not doing well to blame others,” and that the church does this kind of scapegoating as well. Christian nationalists are not Christians, he said, but they have become the predominant Christian voice in this country. He called the church to organize a counter-voice that is faithful to the Lord found in scripture.
Royster outlined three “love principles,” and framed them with questions for participants to consider.
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The first revolution is internal, dealing with our own biases. Are we willing to change? Are we willing to die to self, beliefs, traditions, and understanding? Are we prepared to be disrupted ourselves? Are we willing to take risks? What are we afraid of? He concluded by pointing to 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…”. And saying that “there is no punishment from God if one takes a risk in love and gets it wrong.”
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Everything is done in the context of relationship. He challenged us to risk relationship with those with whom we are not presently in relationship, to see others as Jesus sees them, and to work at building new relationships. If we are not in relationship to certain people, do we really love them?
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True love invokes (and provokes) the imagination. It leads to creativity, breaking rules that serve only to prop up the status quo. What is the world we want? What is the world God wants for us? How do we unite God’s imagination and our world? And what are we going to do to change the world?
