Bear Creek Church, 1765 Restoration Rd SW, Rochester, MN 55902, US

We average 365 worshipers, including Saturday evening and Sunday morning, and 120 children in Sunday School. We have three full-time staff. Our sanctuary seats 320. We are one of the 11, 000 congregations affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, one of 184 congregations with 130, 000 baptized people in the Southeastern Minnesota Synod, and one of 15 ELCA churches within 15 miles of our location. Our synod Bishop is Harold Usgaard, with office at Assisi Heights. We have listening aid devices to assist people with hearing impairments. They are located in the narthex, so please ask an usher to assist you. We most frequently use worship services from the Lutheran Book of Worship, the With One Voice blue book, and the Haugen maroon book. Occasionally we develop our own service or have a hymn-sing or musical. Good Shepherd took grand prize in Rochester's 2008 National Night Out event in August, and Rochester was third in the nation for cities of our size. In 2007 Good Shepherd was presented a Church in Community award for our NNO event. Good Shepherd was one of sixteen ELCA congregations among the 600 outstanding Protestant and Catholic churches identified by a two-year study at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Good Shepherd was one of fifteen ELCA congregationslisted among 300 excellent Protestant congregations in this ( subjective, and now dated ) book, Paul Wilkes, Excellent Protestant Congregations: The Guide to Best Places and Practices, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.