By Bishop Michael Rinehart
The Gulf Coast Synod has 20 schools and early childhood centers. Across the ELCA there are something like 1,300 schools and early childhood centers, with 145,000 children and 17,500 staff. Why do we have church schools?
ELEA Board
Recently, the ELEA National Board (Evangelical Lutheran Education Association) met in New Orleans at one of our ELEA schools, Concordia Lutheran School at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Marrero, on New Orleans’ West Bank. The board met in the afternoon, then held a gathering in the evening where local chefs served New Orleans’ fare: gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, and more.
Hanging out with these educators, principals, pastors and lay leaders, I learned a lot. Some were familiar faces. I sat with Gulf Coast Pastor Janelle Hooper, who serves as a director of Children’s Ministries for the ELCA. Mike Rottman, principal at an LCMS school in Winterhaven, Florida is the chair of the board. ELEA Director Cory Newman also led the meeting.
Cory Newman, ELEA Director
Felicia, the principal at Concordia, served as our host. Formerly, she was the principal at St. Paul Lutheran School (LCMS) in the Fauberg Maringy. Sadly, St. Paul’s school closed after 175 years. When she came there were 50 kids here at Concordia. Now there are 140. Concordia is an ELCA school, but Trinity LCMS also participates and has several people on the board. Felicia is a member at St. Paul.
This group takes seriously the value of Lutheran education. Not every Lutheran school is a member of the ELEA. The ELEA offers resources, guidelines, policy templates and all kinds of useful help congregations. If your school is not a member of the ELEA, I would encourage you to consider it. To learn more about ELEA/ELCA Schools, visit this site: https://elcaschools.org.
So, back to the question of why we have Lutheran schools. God’s church is founded in the proclamation of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The mission of the church is to proclaim the hope of the gospel, making disciples and baptizing, while preaching and teaching the good news. Following Christ, we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, and visit the sick and imprisoned, serving in the name of Jesus for the life of the world.
Janelle Hooper, Gulf Coast pastor and a director of Children’s Ministries for the ELCA
Lutheran schools participate in this mission by teaching the Bible and the Christian faith not just within the congregation, but to those outside the congregation’s membership. Children in a Lutheran school learn Bible stories and songs on a daily basis, much more than a child in a one-hour-a-week Sunday school. Lutheran schools embrace children with the love of Christ, while forming faith and values. As one preschool director joked with me, “Every day we are feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and welcoming the stranger!”
Lutheran schools also provide the congregation healthy interaction with the community and the culture. In shepherding students, the congregation is exposed to the everyday joys, challenges, and complexities of the lives of children and parents.
Lutheran schools are not better than public schools nor an indictment of them. They simply provide a unique opportunity to share the gospel, form faith, and engage the community. Because there aren’t enough schools, the public school system actually needs private schools. Those who send their children to Lutheran schools pay for those Lutheran schools, and also pay for the public schools, through their taxes.
ELEA Vision Statement
One of the challenges is strengthening Lutheran identity in Lutheran schools. There are lot of versions of Christianity out there. Lutheran schools don’t want to reinforce fundamentalist or premillennial dispensational theology. We don’t want to be reinforcing a turn-or-burn version of the faith, or an exclusive theology. It is important for the pastor and several members to sit on the school’s board. Additionally, because so many staff are often not Lutheran, in-service training around “What is a Lutheran?” or “What does it mean to be Christian in a Lutheran key?” is important. What are the core values? Carefully choosing the curriculum will go a long way. Incoming pastors, deacons, staff, and members provides spiritual leadership.
ELEA Mission Statement
The purpose of the Lutheran school is the intellectual and spiritual development of the child. Lutheran schools prepare young people to be servant leaders in their communities. Even if the family is irreligious or unchurched, every child is introduced to the faith. Children inherently learn to integrate faith and life. A value of serving others finds expression as awareness of their vocational calling begins to emerge. The school plays a vital role in Christian formation, from preschool to the highest grades the school offers.
Choosing and training staff is a critically important task. The faith is not just taught. It is also lived in every small daily act from feeding to cleaning to learning and play. Teachers and staff need not be Lutheran, but must understand and live the culture, vision, and core values of the school. In this way, the school can often become a blessing to the teachers as well.
A Lutheran school as a solitary outpost will not be as strong as a school that is part of a network that brings wisdom, experience, expertise, and core values to the work. This is why we encourage all our schools to become ELEA members.
When the church school does it’s work well, students of integrity are formed and sent out into the world to be a blessing. The church school can provide the world with leaders who love the world, building bridges rather than walls. The church provides citizens formed in the Christian faith who serve the world selflessly.