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ӣ������ President Summer McGee, Ph.D., and The Rev. Dr. Chad Rimmer, rector and dean of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary (LTSS) joined church leaders, clergy, and voting members from across the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) for the 2025 Churchwide Assembly, held in Phoenix, Arizona from July 28 – August 2.Chad Rimmer, rector and dean of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary (LTSS) joined church leaders, clergy and voting members from across the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) for the 2025 Churchwide Assembly, held in Phoenix, Arizona from July 28 – August 2.

“The ELCA Churchwide Assembly is an important opportunity to demonstrate and deepen Lenoir-Rhyne’s relationship with the Lutheran Church,” McGee said. “As a university rooted in this faith tradition, we are eager to engage with the broader church community and its leadership, and to play an integral part in the ELCA’s mission and vision for the future.”

Held every three years, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly serves as the denomination’s primary decision-making body. Voting members gather to worship, elect leaders, adopt a budget and establish churchwide policies. According to the ELCA website, the assembly is a “process of communal spiritual discernment” grounded in word and sacrament, prayer and song.

One of the most anticipated outcomes was the election of the ELCA’s next presiding bishop. On the fifth ballot, Bishop Yehiel Curry was elected with 70.34 % of the vote, becoming the first Black presiding bishop of the ELCA and beginning a six-year term.

Among the finalists were two LTSS alumni: Bishop Kevin L. Strickland, M.Div. ’08, of the Southeastern Synod and Bishop Tracie L. Bartholomew, M.Div. ’89, of the New Jersey Synod. Bishop Strickland was elected on May 29, 2025, to his second six-year term as bishop of Southeastern Synod, covering Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Bishop Bartholomew, elected originally in 2013 and reelected in 2019, leads the New Jersey Synod with a ministry focused on reducing gun violence and eradicating racism.

Curry, who has led the ELCA’s Metropolitan Chicago Synod since 2019, previously served as a mission developer and pastor at Shekinah Chapel in Riverdale, Illinois. Speaking after his election, Curry described his early call to ministry and the ELCA’s investment in emerging leaders.

“I never saw myself as good enough, so for two years, I said no,” Curry told the assembly, as reported by Living Lutheran. “When I said yes, your support, this church’s support, of that ministry meant everything. So, if you want to know what your benevolence dollars look like, it looks like me. And I want to say thank you.”

Rimmer offered his support as well.

“I’m proud that LTSS alumni were well represented among the strong candidates. Their leadership demonstrates a profound dedication to community engagement, thoughtful pastoral care and adaptive ministry approaches,” Rimmer shared. “I’m thrilled to see Bishop Curry be elected. His leadership has always been rooted in love, justice and the kind of pastoral imagination for public ministry that the church needs right now.”

Rimmer also delivered a half-hour on July 30, reflecting on the assembly’s theme, “For the Life of the World.” He opened by inviting the assembly into a call-and-response recitation of a short poem by Rabindranath Tagore:

Silence my soul
These trees are prayers
I asked the tree
Tell me about God
And it blossomed.

The presentation would return to the poem’s image of blossoming, reflecting Rimmer’s suggestion that God frees us from anxiety to take action for the life of the world. Trust, he said, allows Christians to confront the brokenness of the world with courage and love, and participate in creating a more just and peaceable world.

“I think this claim is the only purely theological statement that we can ever make: God is love,” Rimmer said. “All else that follows by revelation and reason is constructed culturally on this theological point of divine simplicity.”

His remarks explored a tension at the heart of Christian faith—how a loving God could coexist with a world marked by pain and injustice. Yet he grounded his reflection in the conviction that love is the enduring center of all things that guides our vocation

“Love is the only thing that is eternal,” he said, referencing 1 Corinthians 13. “Even faith and hope will end when you’re in the presence of God, but love will remain because love is the stuff, the glory of God, the beauty of God. God is love.”

Video livestreams and recent recordings from the 2025 ELCA Churchwide Assembly are available on the ELCA’s official YouTube page at