ways of addressing the 8 elements of our disciplinary mandate. Our focus includes African ">Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. So far, we have developed a

budgeting process, organized the ELCC into 4 work areas, developed a conference-wide ethnic ministries task force to enable the ELCC to better direct the work of the conference regarding ethnic ministries, and developed a grant application process. (The grant guidelines and application can be found at vitalchurch.com/incubator.) The 4 work areas are communications, activities/trainings, Annual Conference planning, and listening to the local church, but our primary  posture at this time is listening. All of our strategies, plans, and events must fow from a clear understanding of the needs and assets, strengths and challenges of ethnic churches and ministries. Rather than assume we know what those are, we are planning ways to begin to listen to our brothers and sisters in an ongoing way. Two listening events are taking place at this Annual Conference. The annual ELCC dinner will not only be a time for all ethnic churches and ministries to fellowship together but it will also be a listening event, a time of sharing one with another ways the ELCC and Conference can strengthen our ministries. We also have a display table at this Conference to listen and share information about the ELCC. And, we are in the process of developing an ELCC website to more effectively listen and disseminate information.

We have also organized an ethnic ministries task force to coordinate ethnic ministries conference-wide and at the conference level. So far, the task force has had an initial meeting where we began to establish goals and action plans for the quadrennium. Tamara Brown, as chair of ELCC, chairs this task force and the groups included are ELCC (Aaron Mansfeld), New Church and Congregational Development (Tom Eblen, Karen Stigall, Mike Albertson, David Calhoun), the three associate directors (Anthony Everett, Hunn Choi, Eliseo Mejia), Black Methodists for Church Renewal (Annie Haigler), Commission on Religion and Race (Annie Haigler), and Kenneth **** The plan is to meet monthly to fnalize the goals and action steps for each goal, designate the person responsible for accomplishing each goal, and set deadlines for each goal. Once this process is completed, it will be posted on the vitalchurch.com/incubator website and presented to the Primary Task Team for comment. In keeping with The Book of Discipline, the goal is to create a living document and transparent process that effectively directs Annual Conference strategies related to ethnic local churches.

If you have any questions or comments or need information, please contact Tamara Brown.