Our Mission Statement - We had a detailed and fervent conversation about the Mission of CrossTies at our August Board meeting. I share the results with you, because it will help you to understand how we view our mission in relation to the churches we serve. Here is what we finally adopted:
Granted, this says essentially the same thing as our mission statement on our website (http://www.crosstiesministries.org/mission_statement.asp). Why then the discussion? Two things we want to emphasize: 1. We want to provide professionally led training and materials to equip both pastors and local congregational leaders. 2. We want the training and materials to be based upon the Holy Scriptures, the Lutheran Confessions and sound psychological studies. First, I need to clarify a few things about training and materials. We do not believe that all wisdom and knowledge reside within our organization. We have developed some training materials. We intend to develop others. However, we are in the "providing" business. That means that we will continue to look around for other resources. In turn, we want to pass those on to pastors and congregational leaders. That is one reason why we are providing links to important books and Websites (http://www.crosstiesministries.org/reading.asp). We want you to be able to go to our website to find resources, both from us and from many other organizations. That is why we are being cautious about whose work we cite and to whom we refer. Second, we believe there are many classes, booklets, study guides and other resources being developed within Lutheran congregations. For instance, I know of a fellow pastor who is doing some important work developing a book on Christians and Muslims. When he completes that work, we will make it available to our readers. If all goes according to plan, we will publish his book, perhaps both in paper and in electronic formats. We sincerely look for other leaders to do the same, utilizing our website as a way to bring these resources to the wider world. Send us your work. We may be able both to post it and to publish it. Another example of this is the work being posted weekly by Rev. Richard Bolland (strshooter@pagosa.net) of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. He is providing sermon outlines for the entire church year (http://www.crosstiesministries.org/sermons.asp). A growing number of pastors are turning to these outlines to assist them in developing sermons for their own congregations. We are also proud to make available Questions for a study of the Sunday lessons (http://www.crosstiesministries.org/worship.asp). These are provided by Dr. Lou Jander (LJander@aol.com), Mission and Ministry Facilitator for The Texas District, LCMS (http://www.txdistlcms.org/). Third, let me say something again about publishing. A whole new publishing world is opening up. It is called "Print-on-demand." What that means is that publishers no longer have to print and sell a minimum of 3,000 copies of a book in order to make it economically feasible. The technology is now available to print one book at a time. All the printer needs to do is store it electronically. Once the book is set up on a computer, the printing, binding and mailing is relatively inexpensive. We are carefully exploring how to work hand in hand with some companies who will make our materials available as "print-on-demand." We have purchased software to perform the necessary setup. Once that is completed, we will pay the printer for his costs and away we go. We'll have the book listed, both on our website and with Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and so forth. If you have developed some materials that will help us to equip pastors and church leaders, let me know. Before I leave these notes about publishing, I also want to emphasize that more and more, books and other materials are being published electronically as E-books. They can be read on the web and may be downloaded in "pdf" and read with Acrobat Reader (http://www.adobe.com/). We fully intend to make Bible studies and seminar/workshop materials available in this manner. Once again, share your materials. Perhaps we can assist in making them available worldwide. Next time around I will be saying more about the Confessional nature of these materials. I am quite convinced that not all so-called Christian materials are of equal value. In fact, some of them are quite dangerous. More later. Let me hear from you.
Dr. Al Franzmeier (alandsyl@airmail.net), Theological Advisor (note my new title) CrossTies Counseling Ministries
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