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Experience is the best teacher
It is 1982 and Pastor Richard Pagels asks me, a fifth grader, to read the Gospel lesson for church. The following Sunday, 11-year-old Clark reads the prologue to John’s gospel.
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Fast-forward to my vicar year at the seminary. It is my first week serving at St. Mark in Green Bay, Wis., a 1,000-plus-member church. My supervising pastor, John Parlow, lets me know he’s leaving for the weekend and I’m in charge. Gulp!
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Let’s jump ahead again to my teaching days at Lakeside Lutheran High School, Lake Mills, Wis. While working through the book of Acts, the goal was to teach the teens what it meant to be part of the early Christian church, establishing churches and spreading the gospel. Taking a page from my mentors, I divided the students into groups to form their own churches. They brainstormed places where they could plant a church and then had to come up with an idea for sharing the gospel in that community.
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For me, as for most, experience is the best teacher. Teens are not the future of the church; they are the church now. We need to look for creative ways to get them plugged in.
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Read how two schools and a church are doing just that.
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Bonus photos from this feature:
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Photos: (Top) Members of the Kindness Task Force, New Hope Lutheran Academy, Melbourne, Fla.; a student at Wisconsin Lutheran School, Racine, Wis., helping a toddler at a community reading center; and young members of Heritage, Gilbert, Ariz., ushering during the congregation's Teen Service Sunday
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What does God look like? We don’t know for sure, but we do know this: He has a really long nose. . . .
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For Evan Chartrand, recruitment director at Luther Preparatory School, Watertown, Wis., it’s all about the connections. “It’s all about connecting with people, and it’s about connecting people with the mission of the church, which is to take that good news . . .
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Every year WELS members from across Europe gather for worship and fellowship at an Easter retreat led by the WELS European civilian chaplain. This year, WELS brothers and sisters in faith celebrated a confirmation at the retreat as well. Robert Weiss, the current
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