The Church has been blessed, but those blessings must spread outside its walls. The Church has a ministry in its neighborhood. We reach out as believers, eager to share our lives with others. Here is a practical example.

Dr. Steven Schave shares news on vital mission work by the Lutheran Association of Missionaries and Pilots (LAMP) in Northern Canada throughout the past few years of the pandemic.

I have been in the Lutheran church and school community for most my life. Growing up, I had religion class five days a week and went to church every weekend. All the people I was surrounded by were almost always Lutheran, and the combination of all of these things created a Lutheran bubble around me. I never knew about this bubble until it popped.

I appreciate the uniqueness of every church I have attended. Each one spoke the Gospel and served their community in their own way while leaning on the strengths of their congregation members. Each had its own way of evangelizing and creating opportunities to bring others into their community.

No matter where you are or how large your church is, I think that learning about the different ways churches evangelize can be helpful. Below are some ideas for how every size congregation can evangelize in their unique circumstances.

If you couldn’t give someone a complete Bible, only a few books of it, what books would you choose? Likely, your answer includes one or more of the Gospels. As the true story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the Gospels are of utmost importance in evangelism (and in our own faith). And last month, we looked at how the Psalms are helpful in outreach. We looked at how they help us express a range of emotions that show us that God not only understands but that He is also okay with our feelings. We also talked about how they show community and point us to Christ.  

Planning a mission trip is a lot of work. I am not super experienced in this realm; I don’t have years and years of experience. But I have planned and led two mission trips for the church I went to in college (shout-out to the University Lutheran Chapel in Ann Arbor, MI—much love). The first trip I was a part of planning was to Houston, TX, in 2018 after Hurricane Harvey. We were part of the wonderful disaster response efforts with Heart for Texas, an LCMS-affiliated organization.

Imagine asking 22,000 youth to take roughly twenty to thirty minutes, or even more, out of their busy National Youth Gathering schedule—a trip they’ve planned for and anticipated for years—to pack boxes with forty pounds of books each. And not one box but many. And more. And more and more. And then to stack those boxes on pallets so they can be sent to complete strangers throughout the United States. Easy, right? They’d jump at the opportunity, wouldn’t they? Well, they would—and they did!

Just a few weeks ago, stories of Nebraska flooded headlines around the United States. The combination of melting snow, heavy rain, and flat farmland resulted in catastrophic flooding across hundreds of miles of the state.

Imagine struggling to find community, but you can’t afford housing and need to keep moving. You’ve had a cough for a month, but you don’t have health insurance so you can’t afford to see a doctor. And you have a Bible, but it’s in a language you don’t understand.

It was the day before Christmas break, and the whole school had come together in the gym for chapel. There were young wiggly kids and kids who had lost several baby teeth and the more mature preteens, all dressed in their uniform pleated skirts, slacks, and polos. With the excitement of Christmas break ahead, the usual semi-organized chaos was ticked up to another level.