I’m here to learn how to step into Christian leadership in my congregation and/or community.
This week on FirstThird.org we begin sharing the amazing thesis work of our Luther Seminary Children, Youth and Family Ministry MA students. We have five finalists, and will feature one writer and their topic for each of the next five weeks. You’ll be blown away by their ideas and the quality of their thinking about…
Presently Separate & Separately Present By Derek Tronsgard Last Christmas my wife’s sister joined us while we opened our presents. A few weeks ago I did pre-marriage counseling for some friends. Yesterday I showed a friend a picture of my dog. Pretty unremarkable… …except when you consider the fact that I live in Minnesota. My…
We have spent almost two months offering various perspectives on mission and service, but at the end of the day…What’s the point? I love Chicago, and a few weeks ago I has in Chicago for a meeting. Taking the train into the city and walking the streets is exciting, at least for me. As an…
Trinity Lutheran College is continuing its study on what makes service projects and mission trips transformational. It’s all part of the SALLT (Service And Learning Leadership Team) program. What they have found is so vital that they have even developed and APP to help leaders through this process. Check it out at www.sallt.org/store. This…
By Eric Elton, Mission Outreach Director at Prince of Peace Church in Burnsville, MN Ah yes … the mission trip. As many of us know, on these trips, God often takes us to a new mountaintop place. A place we may have never been before spiritually. We return home … we are fired up ……
By Pastor Nancy Lee Gauche It has been a rich dialogue on mission over the past month. As I reflect on this trip, I will bracket some key practices that shape my understanding around outreach and short-term mission to add to the conversation. Enjoy! Not too long ago I led a Women’s Mission Trip to…
Want to dig deeper in the First Third conversation on mission? Webinar: Inculturating the Gospel; Dr. Colleen Windham Hughes A webinar from the Practice Discipleship Initiative by Dr. Colleen Windham Hughes, or California Lutheran University. Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence by David A. Livermore (Apr 1, 2006)…
by Andy Sahl There’s an often-repeated (and actually true) story at the church I serve about a meeting our mission and outreach team once had with local leaders of a Honduran Community. The team had just spent the week working on the schoolhouse for the local village and performing some medical services. Having had a…
By Dr. Nancy Going, Director of the CYF Distributed Learning Program at Luther Seminary What happens on Mission Trips? Yes, kids get exposed to parts of the world that they haven’t seen or experienced before. Yes, students have to come up against tasks that they think they aren’t capable of. Yes, kids learn…
By Dr. Terri Martinson Elton, Director of the Center for First Third Ministry at Luther Seminary Yes, I’ll serve…but where am I needed? And what is needed? After listening to numerous people, inside and outside the church, I’m convinced one of the reasons serving collapses into service projects or mission trips is because most of…
By Paul Bertelson I am on a mission. My mission is to change the world. Kind of grandiose, I know. I tend to like to think big. So, how exciting it is to have been used by God to create a youth missions organization that has mobilized over half a million teenagers to be change…
by Erik C. Leafblad What’s Normal? The group from a rural, farming community in Midwestern America descended the steps of their pristine church bus with palpable energy. They were achievers. Their parents were successful, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth people. And they were ready to help. They had just driven four hours to this storied urban neighborhood, with…
By Dr. Terri Martinson Elton, Director of the Center for First Third Ministry at Luther Seminary Today we leave the celebratory experience of Palm Sunday and head straight into Holy Week. As we continue reflecting on the theme “Reclaiming the Servant’s Heart,” I want to pause a moment and change our focus from the doing…
By Andy Sahl “It’s like my first world problems really are first world problems.” I could hardly believe the words came out of her mouth as we sat in a circle reflecting on our trip to Bolivia this summer. One of our very high functioning, gifted, intelligent kids reflected that the “joke” she had been…
Want to dig deeper in the First Third conversation on mission? Here are three articles on mission experiences for different audiences: Terence D. Linhart, “Planting Seeds: The Curricular Hope of Short-term Mission Experiences in Youth Ministry,” Christian Education Journal (Series 3, Vol 2 no 2, 2005), 256-272. This paper describes the curricular nature of short-term…
