Good to Be Here Now
It’s Good to Be Here Now!
Greetings in the name of our Lord, Jesus the Christ!
My name is Pastor Grant Applehans, I am the new Director of Evangelical Mission for the ECSW, and it is good to be here - now!
Had you asked me a year ago, I would not have anticipated being in this place or in this call. I had served as an intern at Emmanuel in Seymour. I had pastored a 5-point 2-pastor Methodist-Lutheran parish in the mountains of Montana with my wife, Pastor Amanda Applehans. I had served alongside her in parallel solo calls in the Twin Cities.
And then with our young son, Samuel, we had discerned a call to serve for 4-10 years as the ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission coordinators in Madagascar. We were prepared, focused, enthusiastic – but then, a couple of days before our plane was to take-off, the global Covid-19 pandemic said “no”. And so we spent a year as nomads – ready to go to Madagascar on a week’s notice, moving from place to place, serving the YAGM program remotely, and helping out wherever else we could. It was a good 18 months, and much good was done. We helped my dad recover from knee surgery, wrote curriculums, did pulpit supply, wrote music, and a Christmas eve service that could be done well remotely. We served as chaplains and then coordinators at Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp – supporting their life and ministry even as they supported ours. It was good to be there, then. And It is good to be here, now.
It is good to be here, now, as Amanda, Sam and I look to settle in for the next years of life and ministry. It’s good to be here, now, working with the talented folks in the synod office, and looking forward to the amazing work of accompaniment that I have been called to in this place. It’s good to be here, now, as I look forward to getting to know each of you - as congregations and individuals - your passions, your struggles, your joys, and how God is persistently, playfully working in, with, and through you for the sake of the world.
It’s good to be here, now, because if there is one thing that the last 18 months have taught me it’s that: wherever here is, whenever now is, God has chosen to meet us and walk with us. And wherever God is, there is peace, there is joy, there is creativity, and there is persistent love in abundance!
I look forward to being with you and God, here and now, and in the weeks, months and years ahead!
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Grant Applehans
Director for Evangelical Mission
