Hans, a member of the Friday morning Bible Class said he and his wife would be going to the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League convention in Mobile, Alabama this week.  I said, “Their conventions are the only ones I really ever enjoyed.”  Hans replied, “If we let the women run the synodical convention, it would be done in two days.”

I first really got involved with LWML in about 1971 at Zion, Albert Lea. We did have an active women’s group and happy to be asked to be the counselor to the zone LWML.

They even paid my way to the district convention at Gustavus Adolphus college, in St. Peter’s MN.  The college is rooted in Swedish Lutheran heritage.

What took me by surprise was the realization that for the first time in my post high school education I was in a setting with several hundred women and only a few men.  I was only 4 years out of the seminary and except for 2 years at Concordia College, St. Paul, my next six years were in an almost total male environment.  At that time pastors’ conferences and conventions were overwhelmingly attended by men.

Things have changed since those days.   I have always appreciated the work of the LWML and the great support they give to the missions of the church.  And my experience at Gustavus Adolphus college in the summer of 1971, has made me sensitive when I see a minority amid overwhelming majority; whatever the make up of the minority and the majority in the group.