NATCHEZ &045; Officials of Mississippi’s Episcopal and Lutheran churches announced Saturday the creation of a joint mission organization to minister throughout the state.

The organization is the first group of its kind in the nation and involves the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Southern District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

The announcement was made at the 178th Council of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, held this weekend at the Natchez Convention Center. The council concludes this morning with a service at the convention center.

While Lutheran-Episcopal Services in Mississippi’s Board of Directors hasn’t decided what further missions it will undertake, a joint task force has during the past three years spearheaded several mission projects. Those include disaster response, literacy programs for inmates and their children, camps for the children of inmates, camps for young disaster victims and summer cultural enrichment programs for children.

The diocese has discussed establishing a social service organization for more than 20 years, said Carol Stewart, a deacon at Grace Episcopal Church in Canton and one of the group’s organizers.

But Lutheran officials, who already ran Lutheran Social Services, were the first to approach the Episcopal Diocese to form the partnership. As a result the Rev. Duncan Gray III, bishop of the diocese, created the task force in 2001. &uot;This is the first step to bring all of God’s children together (to minister to) a hurting world,&uot; Stewart said.

The Rev. Bob Blanton of Ascension Lutheran Church, another of the group’s organizers, thanked the state’s Episcopalians &uot;for helping make this dream come true,&uot; also calling &uot;a toast Š to the one body of Christ in common mission.&uot;

With water bottles raised in a toast, the more than 1,000 clergy, delegates and visitors filling the main exhibit hall watched as balloons were released to symbolize the takeoff of the new mission.

And mission was the theme of Gray’s Saturday afternoon message to attendees. In fact, church groups were asked to spend time discussing how to best respond to, and minister to, a changing world.

Gray called on attendees to focus their efforts on missions to &uot;a hungry culture searching for something and not finding it in the church.&uot;

While doing so, he said, they must have a &uot;sympathetic appreciation of the cultures&uot; to which they minister.

&uot;I think we’re finding a way in the midst of questions of human sexuality to find a common foundation in Jesus and a commitment to missions,&uot; Gray said following an evening prayer service.

&uot;It’s the nature of humans to be most concerned about themselves,&uot; but the church is called to be about God’s business, he said.

&uot;We have clearly taken some important steps toward that &045; just staying in the same room but, more importantly, really listening to each other.&uot;