Gather as God’s faithful people in South Dakota for the 2020 Synod Day on November 7, 2020 beginning at 11 AM CT. This is a livestream event that you can join from wherever you are in the synod.

What is Synod Day?

There is no doubt that 2020 has seen its set of challenges. After the cancelation of the 2020 Synod Assembly, the synod staff and assembly planning committee wanted to create a space for us to still gather in a synod-wide event. We will do so virtually, trusting that the Holy Spirit knows no bounds and will unify us as the Body of Christ even when we are physically apart.

Synod Day will begin at 11 AM CT/10 AM MT with worship live-streamed from Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls. Worship will be followed by a State of the Synod address by Bishop Constanze Hagmaier where we will launch the new vision of the South Dakota Synod. Later in the day, you will have the opportunity to engage with three speakers from across the ELCA as we commemorate the 50 years of Ordained Women, 40 years of Ordained Women of Color, and 10 years of the full inclusion of our LGBTQIA+ siblings into the ministry.

Synod Day will close with honoring our rostered ministers who have retired, those celebrating a milestone anniversary, and we will also celebrate new rostered ministers and seminarians assigned to South Dakota.

Stay in the Know

Synod Day is completely free and open to all. We’d like to stay in touch with you about event details. Sign-up by clicking the link below.

Livestream

Synod Day is a fully online event. Livestream synod day right in your home from any device. We will post the link to join us for the livestream broadcast here.

Use #SDSynodDay to join the conversation on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Deacon Ross Murray

Ross Murray is the Senior Director of Education & Training at The GLAAD Media Institute, which provides activist, spokesperson, and media engagement training and education for LGBTQ and allied community members, the media industry and advocacy organizations desiring to deepen their media impact. Ross uses the best practices perfected by GLAAD to train a new generation of advocates in order to accelerate acceptance for LGBTQ people, as well as other marginalized communities.

Ross is also a founder and director of The Naming Project, a faith-based camp for LGBTQ youth and their allies. The Naming Project has also been the subject of much media, including the award-winning film Camp Out, as well as the controversial episode “Pray the Gay Away?” of Our America with Lisa Ling.

Ross has secured national media interest in stories that bring examples of LGBTQ equality across diverse communities in America. He specializes in relationship between religion and LGBTQ people. Ross contributed to two books focused on LGBTQ Christian youth: Queerfully and Wonderfully Made and Welcoming and Affirming. His forthcoming book, Made, Known, Loved: Developing LGBTQ-Inclusive Youth Ministry comes out in April 2021. He has written and appeared on numerous media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, and Religion News Service.

Ross is a producer for the “Yass, Jesus!” podcast, a faith and sexuality affirming podcast that believes you don’t have to pick between gay and God. Hosts, Daniel Franzese (Actor, Mean Girls, Looking) and Azariah Southworth (former host, The Remix on TBN) meet each week in this hilarious take on a Sunday service to explore big questions and find out what it means to be a Christ-loving member of the LGBTQ community during these divided times.

Ross is a consecrated Deacon in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with a specific calling to advocate for LGBTQ people and to bridge the LGBTQ and faith communities. In 2014, he was named one of Mashable’s “10 LGBT-Rights Activists to Follow on Twitter.”

About the Rev. Mytch Pierre-Noel Dorvilier

The Reverend Mytch Pierre-Noel Dorvilier is the mother of three wonderful human beings, a product of slavery, an ELCA minister, a Mission Developer, a coach, an adapting leader, and a community organizer.

Reverend Mytch Pierre-Noel Dorvilier holds a certificate in community development, community organizing, strategy planning, monitoring, and evaluation from the Akademie Klausenhoff, Germany, and a bachelor in business. She graduated with a Master in Divinity with a Spanish concentration from Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. After her ordination, she served as the Multi-Ethnic Mission Developer at the Eastern North Dakota Synod while serving as priest-in-charge at St John Episcopal Church in Moorhead, MN, for three years. She served churches in North Dakota and Minnesota as an interim pastor. Reverend Pierre-Dorvilier is currently serving Bethel Lutheran Church, Fresno, California.

In addition to planning and leading forums for groups that foster communities’ inclusiveness and challenge community perception on spiritual diversity, her teaching interests include Haitians spirituality as a form of liberation and resiliency, interreligious dialogue, and issues of gender and racial injustice. Her most recent article is Lutheranism in Haiti: The Birth of a Church in Exile (Journal of the Lutheran Historical Conference 2016) is based on Koinonia, solidarity between the Lutheran World Federation and the Haitian people.

Rev. Mytch Pierre-Noel Dorvilier has an intellectual understanding and practical experience with other religions and cultures. She grew up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the site of empires, the starting point of New World slavery, and the first black revolution. She grew up speaking Creole and French and later added fluent Spanish, English, and Wolof to her language list. She studied the Bible with seven different denominations and since then has lived in four different continents. In West Africa, where she and her family served the ELCA for four years, she was blessed to engage in relationships through Muslim-Christian dialogue with the Senegalese since Islam is the religion of the country. She also traveled to Guyana and Suriname to walk alongside the people in their journey and learn how God has worked in their context and their life. Living all that together gives her a lot of room to think and a lot of room to be.

About the Rev. Andrea DeGroot-Nesdahl

Andrea DeGroot-Nesdahl served as Bishop for the South Dakota Synod, ELCA from 1995-2007 for two terms, the maximum allowed for a Bishop in the South Dakota Synod. Prior to that she served five years as assistant to the Bishop for the Western North Dakota Synod.

Originally from Jamestown, N.D., Bishop DeGroot-Nesdahl graduated from the University of North Dakota with a bachelor’s degree in speech with minors in religion and theatre. She earned her Master of Divinity degree from Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, where she also received Doctor of Divinity honors. She served her internship at United Lutheran in Grand Forks, N.D., and her clinical pastoral education at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids. She has served congregations in Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota, and was a supervising chaplain for St. Joseph’s Hospital in Minot, N.D. In addition, she served as coordinator for the ELCA Malaria Campaign and HIV and AIDS strategy from 2008 to 2011.

Bishop DeGroot-Nesdahl retired from active ministry in 2015 and has continued to occasionally serve in interim or other settings in the Sioux Falls, S.D. area. She also serves on the Wartburg Theological Seminary Foundation Board of Trustees. DeGroot-Nesdahl has three adult children and six grandchildren.

With gratitude for those who have gone before and hope for the future, the ELCA gives thanks to God for the ministry of women. In 2019 and 2020 we celebrate 50 years of Lutheran women being ordained in the United States, 40 years of women of color being ordained, and 10 years of LGBTQIA+ individuals being able to serve freely.

As part of this anniversary year, we lament that women have been barred from serving and have been bullied, dismissed and excluded. We also celebrate the gifts and service that women have brought to our church and our world as pastors.