Tag Archive for: home missions

One of the things I love most about being a pastor is hearing the stories people tell. Each person that sits in the pew has a unique one, a fascinating account of the working of God’s grace.

Christina certainly had an interesting story. I met her only one week after I was installed as the pastor at Living Shepherd Lutheran Church in Laramie, Wyoming. She had a connection to our church previously, when her infant son Leo was baptized. But she hadn’t been to church in a while, mostly because it was difficult for her to come with her infant son, whom she was raising while her husband was deployed in Kuwait.

After sitting down with Christina, she told me her story. She was born and raised in Minnesota, but moved to Wyoming when she was 16 years old. She graduated from high school in Meeteetse, Wyoming, a town with a total population of about 300 people. She attended the University of Wyoming and graduated with a degree in Education. She began teaching at a special school for at-risk children in Laramie. And along the way, she got married and celebrated the birth of her first child.

But the bigger story is the difference God’s grace has made in her life. It may seem like a strange plot twist that Christina and her family ended up in Laramie, but this is how God again brought her into contact with the good news of her Savior Jesus. It may seem like a difficult plot twist that Christina and her husband are raising their child together even though they are miles apart, but God is using it to strengthen their relationship, and to drive them even deeper into his promises.

And then, in what may seem like another amazing plot twist, God brings his gracious blessings through Christina to others gathered here at Living Shepherd. He gives a new, inexperienced pastor the blessing of a prospect eager to learn more about God’s Word and grow in faith. He gives a congregation the opportunity to put God’s love into practice by helping and supporting a military family. And he gives all of us fresh reminders of the power of his Word working in the hearts of his people.

Christina was officially welcomed as a member of Living Shepherd Lutheran Church in Laramie, Wyoming two weeks ago. Before she joined, I asked her to answer a few questions which we could use to share with the congregation so that we could get to know her better. One of the questions I asked was, “What title would you give to your autobiography?” She answered, “Plot Twist.”

It’s a fitting title to Christina’s story. She’s eager to see what else God has in store for her family, and she’s excited to see how God’s grace will sustain her through all the plot twists that may be ahead.

Written by Rev. Adam Lambrecht, home missionary at Living Shepherd Lutheran Church in Laramie, Wyoming

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Our nation recently celebrated Thanksgiving. As most people enjoyed time with family, cooked the turkey, and ate too much pie, they were reminded of the many reasons they have to be thankful. In the strong middle class community of Falcon, Colo., it isn’t difficult to see most people through that lens: multiple new(er) cars in the driveway, name-brand clothes, nice houses.

As our mission church prepared to celebrate Thanksgiving in 2018, we wanted to find a way to give to those who weren’t as financially fortunate or materially blessed. We could have donated to a food bank in nearby Colorado Springs or volunteered at a food kitchen for the homeless, but we wanted to impact people in our community – people that lived down the street. We wanted to provide everything for them to make and enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner – a turkey, potatoes, vegetables, rolls, pies. But how would we find them?

For the last three years we have held worship services at an elementary school in our community. Over that time, we have developed a strong relationship with the school staff and leadership. So, we asked the principal if she had a way to identify families in need. She connected us with the school counselor, who connected us with other school counselors in the community. Due to privacy concerns, the counselors had to contact the families and ask if they would take us up on our offer and if their contact information could be shared with us so we could arrange to drop-off the food. In a matter of days we had five families lined up!

Our members and prospects rallied around the project by donating the food and wrapping it all up in boxes to be dropped off. They wanted to give so that others would have an extra reason to be thankful.

As we dropped off the boxes of Thanksgiving dinner supplies,

• one of the school counselors asked if we could stop by her office before we delivered the food because the boy needed shoes and the staff had pitched in and bought him a pair.
• one family invited us in and the mom shared how much they were struggling, even as they lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. The dad had left and refused to pay child support. The teenage kids were working jobs to help support the family. She broke down crying as we put all of the food on her counter. I asked if we could pray for her and she said, “Yes, please!” And right there in her kitchen I prayed for them.

As November loomed on the horizon this year, several members of our church family asked if we were going to line up families to bless with Thanksgiving dinner again. It helped them appreciate what they had by giving to others. Working through the local schools, we were able to donate to eight families that were struggling this year. And, not only did our members step up to donate the food, several of them were excited to knock on the door of one of these families and give them a box of food. Just because they wanted to give out of thanks.

Written by Rev. Steven Prahl, home missionary at Foundation Lutheran Church in Peyton (Falcon), Colo. 

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If you can believe the internet, the modern idiom “out of the blue” refers to a flash of lightning that jumps out of a clear, blue sky. It’s something completely and totally unexpected. Sometimes mission work is just that—out of the blue. Maybe this congregation and its pastor were a little frustrated. Perhaps it seemed no one was interested in members’ personal invitations to worship. Who knows? Ministry moved slowly. Energy lagged and motivation struggled. Mission pastors and mission congregations face these things too.

Then, out of the blue, a bolt of blessing that energized the mission once again. I checked the messages on the church phone. I had missed a call from Alyssa. She wanted to talk baptism. I called back as soon as I could. Alyssa desired her 3-month-old son, Stetson, to be baptized, and she hoped Beautiful Savior would be the place, and the time would be soon. We set up a meeting. We discussed the wonderful truth that baptism is all about what God does for us in the gracious waters of life, as he forgives our sins and gives us a new birth into the living hope. We discussed the importance of continued contact with God’s Word in worship, and I expressed my hope they would consider our congregation as their new church home. Alyssa’s husband shared that he had never been involved in a church and had never been baptized. Another opportunity!

Stetson’s baptism was scheduled for the next worship service. It happened so fast that it came at the congregation out of the blue too! Nearly twenty-five guests in worship with us that Sunday! A front row seat at the miracle of faith as God allowed us to witness Stetson’s entrance into the kingdom of God! His soul, in desperate need of forgiveness (as are all of us) plucked, not out of the blue, but out of the pitch, black darkness of sin and ushered into the wonderful light of God’s grace! The opportunity to meet, greet, welcome, and celebrate with the family! A time scheduled to follow up with Alyssa and Dustin and encourage them further in their contact with God’s powerful Word! How incredible!

To be honest, I don’t know that there was anything that we had done “right” as a mission to create this opportunity. Maybe it was important that we had a solid website that shared solid information. Maybe not. Maybe the pastor’s personality, kindness, and careful instruction helped them feel comfortable at Beautiful Savior. Maybe not. But we are here. In La Porte. The right place at the right time for Alyssa, Dustin, and Stetson. We are serving. We are proclaiming God’s grace. God chose to bless us abundantly. . . a little out of the blue.

To be honest, I had been sitting, waiting, and wondering on what I would write this article. Then out the blue, mission work was placed in my lap, and a beautiful blessing to celebrate was given our congregation. Maybe in God’s planning and timing it wasn’t so out of the blue anyway. Thankfully, the energy it has infused into this missionary and his congregation is something like a lightning bolt.

Written by Rev. Kevin Boushek, home missionary at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church in La Porte, Ind.

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It wasn’t anything pretty. Just a small suite in an office building on a busy road in Nampa, Idaho. A gathering space with an office in the back. But it was a place to get started. It was a place to meet. It was a place we could invite people to. It wasn’t pretty when we got there, but surely the Lord was in that place.

Suite 120 in the Legend Building in Nampa is now the 24/7 ministry center for Cross of Christ’s multi-site congregation. After 25 years of God’s rich blessings on our church in Boise, Cross of Christ is branching out to the west in North Nampa to reach more and more souls with the saving and freeing message of Jesus and the Bible.

Who would have thought such amazing things would happen in this little place? One man found out on Father’s Day that his wife was leaving him. He came to our divorce support group where he reconnected with the gospel after not having attended church since middle school.

One couple tragically lost their son in a sudden death. They came to our grief support group where they heard about the resurrection and eternal life for all who believe in Jesus.

One lady stayed after class, apologizing for being so emotional (she didn’t need to apologize). She said our Cross Connections (basic Christian instruction) course was giving her just what she needed at just the right time in her life. The Good News she was hearing was so great it was all just feeling a little overwhelming, in a good way.

All we did was get a little place and open the doors so people could hear the gospel. How is it that lives are changed and people are suddenly connected to God, their purpose, and a Christian community?

Surely the Lord is in this little place.

When he woke up from his angelic dream, Jacob said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it” (Genesis 28:16). If Jesus has promised to be with us always, we’re going to try and be alert to all the ways God shows us that he is with us today.

Cross of Christ’s new worship location

Now we’re gearing up for services to start in North Nampa, and we’ll need a place a little bigger than our suite 120 ministry center. So we’ll be renting a restaurant on Sunday mornings. The opening service will be November 24, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Just a little restaurant on a busy road in Nampa, Idaho. Tables and chairs and salt and pepper shakers. But it’s a place to meet. A place to worship. A place to invite more people to. It might not be a cathedral, but surely the Lord will be in that place too.

Because Jesus has given us his Word. And we will worship in the name of Jesus. And where two or three gather in his name, there he is also.

What sort of amazing things will happen in that little place?

I can’t wait to find out!

Written by Pastor Kurt Wetzel, mission pastor at Cross of Christ Lutheran Church in North Nampa, Ida.

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Well, it’s been over 16 years of waiting, but Living Word in Waukesha, Wis., finally broke ground on its first facility on September 15, 2019. In that time, we’ve set up and taken down for worship services nearly 1,000 times.

Living Word members wrote Bible passages and symbols on rocks that will be buried under the altar and in the foundation.

Are the members excited? Absolutely! In their time renting Rose Glen Elementary School, there have been times they couldn’t use the school due to school activities, times when the custodian forgot to open the building (not so good for a Good Friday service), and whole summers where the first thing anyone saw as they drove into the parking lot was a big, ugly dumpster blocking the school entrance. There’s nothing quite like a welcome dumpster that tells visitors, “We follow the theology of the cross.”

But the members have kept things in perspective. Worshiping in a public school for 16 years is nothing compared to dealing with persecution, or worshiping in graveyards, as some early Christians had to do, or having no place at all from which to proclaim the gospel, such as in many of our foreign mission fields.

View from drone with Waukesha West High School in the background, across the highway from where we’ll build. Members are breaking ground on the perimeter of the building.

Are the members excited and happy?  Of course.  But not just because they won’t have to set up and tear down worship each Sunday. Now we get to use a facility as an encouragement to our members in their gospel outreach. We’ll have a coffee shop as the hub of the building that will encourage members to tell their friends, “Come and see what we’re all about—Jesus, our Savior from sin, and your Savior as well.” We plan on partnering with Lighthouse Youth Center to reach out to Waukesha West High School students as well as partnering with Christian Family Solutions so we can provide professional Christian counseling to anyone who needs it. And we’ll continue to invite the community to our Faith Quest for children and our worship services and Bible studies where we know God’s word will do its work to save and strengthen souls.

Above all, we thank our gracious God and so many people he has worked through who have made sacrifices to get us to this point, including the members of our 16 mother congregations. Now we pray that God blesses the construction so we can finally realize our dream of a facility from which the gospel will reach many souls—and we’ve dreamed of it reaching quite a lot!

Written by Pastor John Borgwardt, home missionary at Living Word Lutheran Church in Waukesha, Wis. 

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I was nervous this year. This was our fifth year of holding an art camp for children ages 5-10. Some experts suggest that church outreach events have a shelf life. Some say the shelf life is three years. Others say five years. But both say that after a certain amount of time a congregation needs to change the event because it grow stale. This was year five of art camp.

So, I was nervous this year. Between not being able to quickly recruit volunteers and then a slow year for registrations, I was thinking we were going to have as many volunteers as kids. We did everything we had done in the past to advertise, but two weeks out from camp we had less than half the registrations we normally have. I was worried that our volunteers coming from Wisconsin, Illinois, Connecticut, New York, and Ontario would come for nothing. Maybe the experts were right.

I continue to struggle to learn this lesson—the Lord blesses in his own way in spite of my nerves. This year we had 57 kids. Not the most we’ve ever had, but then I took a closer look at the registrations. 52 of the 57 were non-Redemption children. 21 of 57 were returning children. 16 children were registered due to referrals. Maybe most exciting was that this was the first year we had more local children registered (31 of 57) than Ft. Drum children registered. That is important for us as we continue to try to break into a community that one community leader said “lives in relationship silos.” By statistical measure, this was our most successful art camp to date.

Still, I was nervous this year. Rain was in the forecast for our gallery afternoon and barbecue. A time when we try to make connections with parents. Stats are interesting, but they mean little if connections aren’t made and Jesus isn’t shared with people. But the wind moved the clouds and the sun shine was warm. People came. Real faces, real lives, real souls came.

A soul named Danielle brought her granddaughter to camp. She had tattoos down her arms and across her chest, gauges in her ears, a ring in her nose, and a face that could tell two lifetimes of stories. She came to the barbecue with her daughter and their friend, “Aunt” Becky. We talked about Jesus and it was like water for two weary souls.

Another soul was a young mother who thought she should find a church since her daughter was getting older. But she was skeptical and wasn’t sure if there was a church that would value her daughter. “We have a message here just for you and your daughter,” I said, “It’s all about forgiveness given to you by God through Jesus. He loves children and so does our church.”

There was another soul. A mother of three. A burnt out Catholic. She was starved for grace, but Catholicism was in her DNA and she was struggling with what to do. “Are you going to church now?” I asked. She said no. “Bring your kids; come and listen to God’s message of grace,” I said.

I could keep sharing with you the real faces, real lives, real souls that God brought us for three days this past July. This art camp was successful for many reasons, but most of all it was successful because real faces, real lives, real souls came, and the Word was planted.

Written by Pastor Aaron Goetzinger, home missionary at Redemption Lutheran Church in Watertown, N.Y.

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