I don’t have any issue with websites that seek to gather liked minded people, whether those be Christians, Lutherans, or WELS teens. What I wonder however is the reasoning behind doing so in some cases. The reason that is often given is that places like Facebook and MySpace attract all kinds of “undesirables.” The conversations going on there are not Christian, and the subject matters challenge our faith. Almost as if to say, there are “sinners” there. Let’s go someplace else where the people are more our kind of people. Things are so “messy” there. I might get dirty.

God has placed us, and equipped us for being in a sinful messy world. Facebook is a part of that. Clearly there are places a Christian should not be, but I don’t think Facebook is one of those places. Christians on Facebook have great opportunities to be salt and light. Our faith is not checked at the door. It is an important part of our digital selves.

I’m often reminded of Jesus’ approach while he was physically among us. He rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty. He spent time with “sinners.” After all, those were the people he came to spend time with. (Luke 19:10, Luke 15:7)

So rather than spending our time building clean places where we Christians can cloister, why not spend time building relationships with those we come across in our digital travels? This requires a commitment to God’s Word. A strong and vigilant faith is necessary when you are constantly being tested. Faithful disciples make great digital citizens in spite of the messy landscape they live in.

In many WELS congregations, teens are given fairly basic things to do ministry-wise.  While ushering, babysitting, and cleaning up after the pot luck are good ways to serve, they represent some of the simplest, least creative things teens can do.  Appointing spiritual, talented, and responsible teens to greater service would be awesome for them and the church. 

Teens are extremely busy but they are also craving more adult ministry opportunities.  Also, they are still learning and growing, so that means great interest and intentions may not always be followed by finishing the job 100%.  If part of the goal is to train/develop your youth while they are helping with the congregation’s ministry, then you have to allow for failure, goof ups, let downs, and dropped balls. 

Teens don’t want to be that way, but sometimes are.  Of course, the opposite is also true.  Teens may blow the adults away with their focus, follow through, attention to detail, seriousness, and passion.  WELS Commission on Youth Discipleship (CYD) has found the teens that we appoint to the International Youth Rally Planning Committee (9 now after three rallies) are incredibly engaged, spiritual, and talented.

How about raising the bar with what your congregation asks its teens to do.  Consider the following things your teens could be asked, trained, and released to do.  If you can think of additional ideas, send them to cyd@sab.wels.net:

1. Outreach:  Train teens to connect with/visit prospects who are teens.
2. Retention:  Train teens to connect with/visit their peers in the congregation who are straying.
3. Nurture:  Train teens – especially girls – to visit mothers/families who have just had a baby, maybe while still in the hospital.  Train teens to make hospital visits on peers and younger children who are in the hospital or home with longer-term illnesses.
4. Governance:   Appoint teens to an advisory council to the Church Council (CC).  Let them react to some of the same issues the CC does and feed back their input to the CC.  Maybe even allow representatives of this group to periodically sit on the CC as advisory members.
5. Worship:  Appoint teens to whatever committees you have that discuss/evaluate/plan worship.  Involve teens in the worship service itself in various ways.
6. Stewardship:  Train teen teams to go and give the “every-member-visit” stewardship talk to their peers or even adults.
7. Preaching Evaluation:  Appoint teens to an ad hoc group to respectfully “critique” the pastor’s sermons and Bible classes offered in order to provide feedback from the teen perspective.
8. Opinion Sharing:  Formulate teens into focus groups to periodically react to things going on at church.  Toss out the issue to them and then listen to what they say.
9. Teaching:  Train a panel of spiritual/responsible teens to teach their own teen Bible study group at church.  Involve teens as teachers and teachers aides in Sunday school and VBS.  Maybe even have some older, confirmed teens present a topic at a confirmation class.
10. Community Networking:  Train and allow a group of teens to make regular contact with representatives in the community (mayor, Chamber of Commerce, police chief, librarian, hospital administrators, etc. ) to learn what service opportunities exist in the community and to build networks of congregation teens to potentially address these needs.
11. Support:  Train and equip a group of teens to, in various ways, stay in touch with/minister to the members away at college or in the military.  Maybe even planning a “Welcome home for the holidays!” activity or a gift give-away that home-on-vacation college members could receive.
12. Planning:  Have teens serve as members of long range planning committees. 

Now that the elections are past, do we believe this? Do our daily words and actions reveal to others that we believe this? What is our responsibility as Christian citizens now that the elections are complete? Let’s hear some thoughts.

In many respects, it was a Homecoming like other colleges. We had a theme that loosely tied to our athletic mascot – “Saturday Knight Fever.” We had inter-class athletic competitions such as flag football. We had the fall interscholastic sports such as football, volleyball, soccer, golf, and cross country. We had videos, a talent show, and a fantastic Homecoming Day gala on our campus, but there was something different here that made our celebrations more meaningful than the typical college Homecoming events.

Maybe it was the campus Bible study that was nestled in the middle of the week’s activities Wednesday night. Maybe it was the piano player who made an impromptu announcement during the Talent Show to pray for our student teachers who had just started their work that week. Maybe it was the cross country team kneeling in prayer before their meet, or the football team being led in prayer by Tutor Bode.

I know all those things make our MLC campus family unique from most any other college experience. But what really sticks with me after Homecoming are the deep ministry connections that are celebrated over that weekend.  See slide show at bottom of this article!  (more…)

In our congregations in the West Indies, it has become increasingly difficult to get our young people who have the gifts to serve the Lord full time into the States to study. Often, when those young individuals do make it to the States, the Lord uses them to serve other congregations in the States. That difficulty has led us to develop our own leadership training courses. It is called the “Caribbean Christian Training Institute” or “CCTI.” Currently, we have dedicated the funding to put a full time pastor to promote and train our leaders. Pastor Paul Workentine in Antigua is currently the head of CCTI.

On a local level, we also recognize the need to identify and encourage our own young leaders. They may not all become pastors and teachers, but they will be instrumental in the future of the Lutheran Church in the West Indies as elders, deacons, deaconesses, teachers and leaders. Our local group of young men and women have named themselves “Christians in Action” or CIA. (more…)

Upcoming Chat and Live Streamed Service

Multi-Language Publications and Cristo Palabra de Vida , our WELS Spanish outreach ministry is partnering to bring two events to our Spanish speaking WELS members. Pastor Gonzalo Degadillo writes with excitement in anticipation of the celebration:

“Spanish speaking WELS members will celebrate the 491 years of the Reformation with the following two events:

1. Chat about the 491 years of the Reformation on Tuesday October 28, at 8 p.m. central.
   Member from different parts of the world are already invited.
   Those who do not have an advanced knowledge of Spanish are also invited to visit.
2. Live streaming service on Friday October 31, at 7 p.m. central. The service will
   be celebrated at Risen Savior, Milwaukee, WI”

Visit CristoPalabra.wels.net or streams.wels.net for more information.

If you’d like to know what the internet “says” about you, Google yourself. Go to Google and enter in your first and last name in quotes. Then read what others might be reading about you. And now with things like The Wayback Machine, this content is permanent (or at least as long as the internet exists as we know it).

So what have you already etched on the internet about yourself? As Christians, this is an important question as we consider Jesus’ call to let our lights shine. If you are going to put your stamp on the internet, shouldn’t it be a good representation of who you are in Christ? The answers are obvious, but I think sometimes we don’t apply that in our online lives. I’ve seen many people I know who are Christians, but wouldn’t know it by their online persona. Sad. Just because we are online, where we think we can be semi-anonymous, doesn’t mean we aren’t Christ’s ambassadors and sending messages about what’s important to us.

So the next time you put finger to keyboard while online don’t check your faith at the door…etch it on the internet.