This is Keith, and this is Ben, and this is Main Street Lutherans. Today's topic, we're going to talk about Lutheran schools. Keith, I don't know what your experience was growing up with Lutheranism and schools. I actually grew up at Trinity Lutheran Church in Marysville, Ohio, and they had Trinity Lutheran School, which was a K through 6 school leading into middle school. So you did sixth grade, middle school, moved at seventh grade. You moved into the middle of middle school, which was probably the worst transition possible. Middle school's bad enough, but to be the new kid in the second year of middle school was wild. But I grew up.

Although you did survive.

Some would say. Yeah, some would say. So the school started with Pre K with Mrs. Dellinger. She was a. She was wild. She had some sort of deal with Hallmark and the Precious Moments stuff. And so she wrote Precious Moments books. So the. The whole classroom was full of Precious Moments things. We had food on our lockers. I had pizza. I think pizza was my favorite food. And I probably started that pizza food truck in Columbus, Indiana, because of that. Because of having pizza on my locker as a pre K kid. Right.

Wow.

But we went up through that. You know, the second grade teacher, first grade teacher, lived in the house between the church and the school building, and she and her sister lived there until they passed away. And then the church took it over and built an annex between the two buildings. And so, you know, church contained two blocks. One block was the playground and the other block was the church and the school. And so it felt like we never really left that building.

So.

So it was part of that. And then unity. The church I go to now, when it was built, the building that we're in was built with the intention to have a school. And so they built an education wing, and they built it so it could have a second story, so they could expand it. But because of the split in the lcms, in the Missouri Synod, it was a Missouri Synod church that became aelc, and they had a massive decline in membership and funding, and so it sort of sat idle. It has a preschool there now, or daycare. I'm not sure how they operate, but it operates there. An independent organization that does that. And so, yeah, it's like Lutheran schools. Follow me. But it's kind of common here in Ohio and Michigan, especially with that Missouri Synod backing that a lot of our churches started out as, before the separation there with Seminex. What about you?

So I grew up going to public school and was not at all aware, you know, as a young kid about Any sort of private schools. As I got older, I did, you know, come to recognize that there were various Christian parochial schools, typically more of a. A Baptist or an evangelical kind of bent. And then of course, Catholic schools. And, you know, here in York County, Penns, there is a York Catholic school, high school, and then a number of smaller feeder schools operated by various congregations, Catholic congregations that lead into that I've shared on the show before, that not related to Lutheran education. I went to kindergarten at my church because the school district was growing in population and hadn't yet added buildings, but they had a contract for just a brief number of years with a couple of churches in the area. And so my kindergarten class was in one of the Sunday school rooms at my home congregation, completely by chance connected to that. My mom at the time was the director of the senior center, which met in the church basement. And so I would go to kindergarten in the morning and then go downstairs and hang out with the old people for the afternoon. And that was my, that was my experience going to kindergarten, which was really cool.

Yeah.

And then, you know, now as an adult and living back in York county again, having been gone for 13 years, I think it was my second child attended a Withburn preschool at another congregation here in the. In the same city where I live. And that was, that was a wonderful experience for all of us. And then the congregation that I served, St. Matthew, did in the past have a preschool and a daycare, but they have been closed since before I became a part of the congregation. So I don't really know a lot about the, the history of that. I just know they operated it quite successfully for a long time. And then as, as things decreased or costs went up, I'm not sure entitled what the story was, they had to make the decision to let that, that ministry go.

Yeah. Was there anything mentioned about churches with schools in seminary?

Not that I recall. I know that it was a reality that some of my classmates were looking at either on internship or as we were getting lined up for first calls. Typically, I'd say it was more the preschools than even the elementary schools. And I know Corey's planning on talking about the differentiation of the various options that are available. Yeah, I know that there's more preschools and elementary schools than any others, but. Yeah, I don't remember there being any specific programming offered at the seminary when I was there. Does it mean that it didn't exist then or doesn't now, though?

Cool. Well, that leads us into introducing Corey Newman. Corey Newman is executive director of the Evangelical Lutheran Education association, which is the ELCA's grouping organization. Well, we'll dig into that. How it, you know, deciding what's part of the ELCA and what's not or what's affiliated is probably part of it. Welcome to the show. It's so good to have you.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, let me. I'll jump right in on that one. We are an independent Lutheran organization of the elca. So we have our own governing board and we are related organization. So we have one board member who is a liaison for us to the elca. That's Janelle Hooper. She's the program director for ministry with children.

Awesome.

All right. Yeah. I got to say, Corey, I'm excited to have you here because as I shared before we began recording, even as a Lutheran pastor myself, I had never heard of the ELA until this opportunity for this interview came up, which was not unrelated to our last episode. And so I'm really excited to be here and get over my embarrassment and hear something new. I get to learn something about the EOS game myself today.

Not our last episode, though. Two episodes ago.

Oh, that's right. Thank you.

Yeah, you're not alone in that, Keith. There are. I run into people all the time who say, I didn't know you guys were out there. I didn't know that the ELEA existed. And, you know, so I thank you for having me on. And hopefully we throw some awareness out there for others who come in contact with congregations with schools or want to learn more about congregations with schools and centers. And yeah, the ela has about 1200 schools and centers across the country, and those are entities Education and weekday educational programs. Birth to grade 12 heavily focused on that early childhood age. So we kind of say that 3 to 5 year old age range is probably the most served age range through schools and centers of the. Of the ELCA. So that's roughly 150,000 children and roughly fifth staff people employed in educational ministries.

I'm sure the ELEA has lots of different functions. What would you say its purpose is? Is it educational? Does it provide resources?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. So the ELEA serves kind of two distinct roles. One, we basically serve as the office of schools for the elca. So. So the ELCA had an office for schools until 2011, and with that restructuring, there was a dissolution of that office and the ELA kind of took on then that perspective as well. So operating as the office for schools. So we collect data on those schools and centers, you know, everything from the name of the Directors and the principals and some of the staff to the number of children served. We do a school survey to learn more about the curriculum that's being used, the hours of operation, the types of programming that's being done, you know, before and after school programming, infant programming. You know, do you have a high school, do you have a middle school? And then we're also a membership association. So our dues are able to allow us to create and distribute resources for congregations with schools. Our membership is institutional or organizational, you might want to call it. So we support all staff at that congregation with the school. And we offer everything from leadership, professional development and resources to insurance to HR resources to help congregations navigate employee handbooks. And, you know, we do offer consulting and coaching events. We have a conference coming up in November. We also do regional events, synodical events. So just a tons of ton of support and resources for leaders who engage with ELCA congregations with schools.

Yeah. So is there. Is there an element of promotion? You talk about synod, Synod events. So do you go to synod, synod assemblies and churchwide assembly to talk about the thing, I think of my congregation, we do have that preschool program and it's not affiliated with our church. It's actually run. They've got some other locations, but I think if ever we should consider moving that in house and having staff of our own, we'd want to look for resources to do that sort of thing.

And so, yeah, yeah, we try to attend as many synod assemblies as we can. And we recently created a synodical membership to really allow synod staff to tap into the resources and better support the schools and centers in their synod. So we have several synods who have become members. And so we might. For example, the South Dakota Synod had one of their schools to representatives from the school, staffed a table, and really just encouraged all of the other congregational leaders who were there that had congregations with schools to just touch base, check in on the resources that we have. Check in. As you said, Keith, you didn't know that we existed. So we're there to say, hey, let me tell you, if you're a member and to really support that church and school connection, those are so important to allow both congregation and school to thrive. We really have to do it together.

So you named the number of schools, roughly the estimate that you have is there is. Are they sort of clumped in any parts of the country? I'm just curious if there are certain synods that tend to have more. More institutions than others.

Yeah. So they are clumped where our Lutheran congregations are clumped Right. So where we have more Lutherans, we have more Lutheran congregations with schools. Our website does have a school locator, which can be a great tool for people who are just discovering congregations with schools in the elca. So you just hop on our website, it's right there at the top, says school locator. Put in your zip code, it'll give you the schools in a radius. You can adjust that. You can go all the way out and kind of see. I think you go to 500 miles actually kind of see where those hotspots of congregations with schools are.

My synod. My synod's in there. Yay.

Hey, do. So does any ELCA congregation that operates the school, are they automatically affiliated with ELA or are there ELCA congregations that have schools that are independent of your organization?

So. Right. So that's back to that two hat kind of notion in that we hopefully know about them, we hopefully have some data on them. And they may not be a member of the association, but they still receive a lot of our resources, especially those resources that we collaborate with the ELCA on. So we have an annual devotion guide and that's a collaboration with the ELCA that's available for digital download for anybody who goes to our site. They can get. Whether you have a school, don't have a school, or are a member of the ela, we also just developed a Nurturing Faith Communities resource. We're just getting a cohort off the ground to begin training leaders how to equip their congregations with the resources needed. So this was a collaboration with the ELCA and data from BARNA and, and what was created were tools and a self study so that congregations can create programming that meets the needs of their communities by learning what the needs of their communities are. And it really taps into early childhood and early childhood centers and early learning centers because so many communities don't have enough child care to serve their community. And so the process will equip a congregation to fully understand what it might be like to have an early learning center and if. And to find out if their, if their community needs that.

Yeah, I know that's something that, you know, my own congregation and others in our area have, have at least wrestled with that notion, the notion that there is not enough child care available in the community. And, you know, at least there have been some kind of off the record conversations here and there about that reality for us. For sure.

Yeah. In our area, we've got daycare and preschool programs that are just looking for space. They're looking to Lease space. And so a lot of congregations are opening up their doors to take those on. So I know that's how we're doing it around here. Is there a history. Did Lutheran folks come over from Europe and just start building schools? Do you know. Do you know what the. Is it something that Germans or folks from Norway and Sweden, did they come over and just have that as something that they did, or is it something that's come up more recently than that? Do you know?

That's a really good question. I don't know the history that far back. My assumption is that as congregations started to be formed, that these people needed education in their community. So why not have this faith formation and education kind of alongside as. As growth was, was kind of taking off. But I, I really don't know. The, you know, the ELEA was. Was started in. So not. It was the ALEA in 1961. And then, then, you know, with the changes in AD 8, then we became the ELA and there was a lot of work, I think, from like 81 to 88. I remember this little. This little time space where a lot of work was done to figure out what the educational association was going to be. And so then we became the ELA in 88 and have existed that way since. But prior to that. I don't know.

I don't know. Just curious. Yeah.

Well, that's interesting, too, because we've. We've talked sometimes about the, you know, the merger that created the ELCA and how some, you know, bits and pieces of what are the ELCA today came out of some of our predecessor bodies. And so we have this sort of legacy organization that was a part of one of the predecessors that is now has continued on. So it's great to hear a story like that. Thanks.

Now, you talked about having a national event and then some local stuff. Do events happen on. Do you maintain synod boundaries when you do, like, regions and things like that with 1200 organizations? That's a lot. So there's got to be some sort of divisions. So do you use those synod boundaries or regions?

Maybe, you know, we really, we really don't. Only because when we go into a hub, like let's say we go into Chicago, it doesn't make sense to just call in Region 5. Right. We want to say, you know, hey, you know, if you're in region three, come on over. If you're in region six, come on over. Right. Because the proximity is there. So we really have to look at our radius a little bit differently. But we do host Kind of synodical events, depending on the other events that a synod might be hosting or local events. We have a lunch and learn coming up in Houston in October. And so, you know, it's just kind of the Houston area because it's just a midday lunch and allows all of our school leaders and congregation leaders to kind of come together and get a little refresher on the ELEA and the resources that are offered and, and kind of connect to one another. Our national event this year is just ELA specific. So we're hosting that in Cleveland November 5th through the 7th and really excited about that because it's just our network. So you're gonna connect with all of the ELCA people. Right. But just last November and we will do it again in 2026. We are collaborating with the Episcopal Schools, so the NAES, the National association of Episcopal Schools, which holds a biennial conference. And we just found that this is such an excellent organization for us to partner with. Their events, bring in upwards of 600 attendees, everything from heads of schools to school board presidents to rostered leaders. And so every other year we tap into that collaboration and have a joint event, which we're really excited to, to be doing that will be out in San Francisco in November of 2026.

Wow.

So we really try to, you know, tap into other events that are going on across the country. We are a really small office, so there is myself one full time person. I have a membership director who's about three quarter time. And then in the last year we had a communications. She kind of came on as social media, Internet and now she's our communication manager and she is like 15% time. So we do all of this work with a really small staff. We have a working board, so we have board members across the country who are engaged in many different ways who advocate and support the ministry through different events and different collaborations and partnerships. So we work really hard at getting the word out and trying to be in as many places as we can.

Yeah. Hopefully our listeners will be able to spread that word a little bit further here.

Great. That would be wonderful.

Yeah. So we've talked a lot about the factual things, the things that are, you know, how it operates as far as schools and congregations go. What's the importance of having, and this is a loaded question probably, but what is important about having a school to the congregations that have them? What do they value in that for the folks who aren't involved in that sort of thing?

Sure, sure. So I would say that Lutheran schools operate fundamentally differently because they're not based on performance, acceptance, those kind of things. They're really based on unconditional love, on grace, on care. And I think that as we listen to our churchwide organization, want to grow, grow younger, grow more diverse, if we look at our schools and our early learning centers, I believe that's where that growth is going to come from. I like to officially say without the data. Exactly. To support it. I think that our schools and early learning centers are the most diverse ministry of our churchwide organization. They're definitely the youngest since we serve infants to grade 12. We can't really argue that one. And it's vital to our congregation's sustainability to support those families who are coming into our congregations three, four, five, five days a week for hours on end, and a lot of times paying a decent tuition for their children to be there. So we have to figure out a better way to tap into this desire of families and caregivers in our communities that are choosing to bring their children to our congregations. And, and now we need to see that continue. How do we continue to nurture those relationships, not to take them preschool to pew, but to really solidify the faith formation that we're called to offer. And I think if we're not engaging our schools and our early learning center families, we're missing the boat. We're just completely missing the boat.

So, Corey, I don't hear you suggesting that, you know, operating or especially say, opening a preschool or, or another Lutheran educational institution at your congregation is directly an evangelism tool, you know, something to bring people into the church, that they join your congregation. But I do hear you saying that, you know, at the congregational level, operating one of these institutions really is an extension of the congregation's ministry. It is, it is certainly a form of, of outreach into the community. It is a way of welcoming people. And, and yeah, maybe we don't always, you know, bridge the welcome in one aspect with the welcome of another. But. So, yeah, so, so, so that's. So at the congregational level, this is, you know, again, an extension of the congregation's ministry. Would you say that that is true of the ELCA as an institution? Do you think that these, that these schools are an extension of the ministry of the Evangelical Wisdom Church in America?

I absolutely think they can be. I don't think they always are. I see a lot of disconnect between congregation and school, and there are some wonderful examples of congregations who have school ministries who. They're so tied up together that one just flows into the other. You know, I use the Example, we have a congregation in school in Washington who's grown to a size and a structure where they have a worshiping community that became a. A synodically authorized worshiping community because the families in that school wanted a different kind of worshiping experience that's all wrapped up in that ELCA identity of that church and school together. We have a similar example of a school In Florida, in St. Augustine, that has had a director who has led that school through so many transitions and just kept working with those families to figure out what they wanted and how those families wanted to exist as part of this church and school community. And now they have a service that is specifically for families between their other two services where children lead the service. Children, I believe, work on creating most of the service. And children and families and caregivers are all worshiping together in a creative and innovative space in the. In between. Then on the other side of that, we have congregations who really look at their school as a separate entity and aren't sure how to engage holy in the life of that school. And in. In my background, I started a preschool program at a congregation many years ago that didn't have one. They had a parsonage that wasn't being utilized. And the pastor at the time wanted to know how we could, you know, try to use this space. We're paying utilities on it, and asked me if I'd be willing to start a school. And at the time, I. I said, sure, yeah, I can figure that out. And so we. We renovated this house and we made a wonderful school experience for these preschoolers. It still exists in this community, but, you know, through some pastoral transitions, I had worked with some pastors who, you know, really. And. And I. And kudos to this pastor who said, I'm not sure what to do. You know, I would say, like, can you come over? Like, we're having our. Our open house or we're having a parent orientation. Can you please come? Like, this is really important. And he did finally ask me, what do you want me to do there? And I thought, oh, okay. Like, I didn't know that. You didn't know, so. And I can fully understand that now because, you know, there wasn't any training in seminary. There had never been a school at this congregation, and the school had been new enough that it wasn't part of the call of this pastor. And so thankfully, he asked me, what do you want me to do? And I said, oh, my gosh, like, I have so many ideas. Like, let's talk about what you feel comfortable doing. But this is just a way for parents to feel, feel seen and recognized by you, and such a huge opportunity for you to start building relationships with these families. You know, and let's fast forward now, you know, 14 years. They've seen a significant increase in Sunday school. They've had an increase in baptisms. They've had school staff that has become church staff. And, you know, does Sunday school programming and does youth ministry. They have events that have a huge attendance. I don't know their membership numbers, you know, but are our rules and regulations around church membership, are they ready to change a little bit? You know, what does that look like? But you see that this congregation has events where all of these families and young people are present. Why? Because they've built relationships, and now they want to be in this space. I can't tell you how many directors have anecdotal stories about families who come in, major loss, major tragedy. And they come into a director's office and they say, do you think I could see your pastor? Right. Because where else are they going to go when they feel this need to. To. To seek the guidance of. Of a pastor or a church leader? Well, now they have this relationship. So if our pastoral leaders can really engage in those schools and start building these relationships, we're building this. This foundation of faith and so many different doors that might open. But if we just think that it's going to be, you know, if they come into the preschool, then they're going to definitely be, you know, a giving member. Come. Come next Sunday. That expectation, I think, can really lead to a lot of. Of disappointment. But if we. If we go into that relationship saying, I have so many opportunities every day, for hours a day, to captivate and support and pastor these people in the hopes that someday they might come into my congregation. But who knows, right? They might go into another congregation. And I never even know that I planted that seed. And so that's the data I wish we could have from these little kids in preschool. But where do they end up? And what are their memories? You know, Ben has this wonderful memory of preschool, and here he is, right? Podcasting about Lutherans. I mean, you know, but. But his school doesn't have that data point. The Elia doesn't have that data point. But, you know, we'll have.

Now it does. Now it does. You're going to write it up on your board now?

Yes, I will. I will.

Cory's going to make a note.

That's right. One. Yeah. So, you know, we talk about challenges to congregations. It seems like schools have particularly different challenges. We were talking before we started recording a little about sort of like preschool mandates. So how some states have required, well, that they provide free preschool universally and sometimes it's required to be in the public schools, or sometimes they can use those sort of as vouchers or something to pay for preschool anywhere. That seems like a challenge. It seems like there are probably other challenges that are coming up related to that sort of thing.

Yeah. So I would say challenges are really around early childhood and some in our elementary, but really having to be our school leaders really have to be experts in licensing and other areas of policy, in employee policy and things like that that maybe our church staff isn't completely aware of. And so that presents a challenge only because it requires a lot of open dialogue to share what's going on in, you know, in the scope of the school. Because it's very different than what might be going on in the scope of the congregation. So I'm always a proponent for just open and transparent conversation between church and school. And then, yes, many states are turning to universal pre K. So the state is funding preschool for the really just the school year right before kindergarten. It's typically just one year. And some states really have very loose parameters around that. The children can just go to the preschool of their choice. Funding might go directly to the families, or it might go to the schools themselves, but for the students. And then we have states and actually sometimes it's even school districts that are making these policies and the states a little more loose. But you might have all the children are going into public school buildings for universal pre K. So that's taking them out of our ELCA centers. But sometimes parents are choosing to not send their child to free PK because they see some advantages that universal pre K maybe doesn't offer. One, most public school buildings are not developmentally appropriate for early childhood. They've just been built differently. And so, you know, if the school's school district has a lot of money to kind of remodel and re equip these programs, they might be developmentally appropriate. Now, a lot of times the size of classes is different because typically licensing doesn't have the same kind of oversight over public schools as they do over independent or private early childhood centers. And then you can have some really interesting iterations of that. You know, we had that come in to the school where I was serving as a director, where the school said, these are going to be. The school district said, these are going to be site based. We don't have Enough space in our public schools and they're not developmentally appropriate. So we're going to have site based pre K and religious schools could be a site. And as long as we didn't have religious programming during the school day. And that was really easy for us. Not only did it increase the amount of money we were taking in because the public school was paying a stipend, it was more than what our tuition rates had been. It also gave us the opportunity to participate in all professional development that the public school offered. So any of my staff didn't matter if they were preschool teachers or my two and a half teacher or my three year old teacher, everybody, all of the staff was able to go and participate in that. And it ended. It was a really funny duration. It was like three hours and ten minutes or something was what they decided. It was four days a week. And so we offered a lunch bunch and chapel that was immediately after. Right. And, and so what we created and probably didn't realize it as much when we created it was this peer pressure for families to attend chapel with their children because they came to get their children after three hours and 10 minutes. Some of the kiddos were going to go over and have chapel. And now all of the kids wanted to go over to chapel. And so guess where the parents were going over to chapel. And so it became this great tool again for this connection with the rostered leaders to be able to have families coming for chapel. And it allowed us to still have religious ed if parent wanted to take their kiddo. Absolutely. But it really worked out as an advantage for us than anything else. And we just had to be flexible and we had to kind of look at those opportunities as everything was evolving and not look at oh my gosh, here comes universal pre K. What are we going to do? We just really had to kind of roll with the punches. And there was a serious conversation with our council who was very concerned about the separation of church and state. And what was this going to look like? And again it just took a lot of conversation, a lot of just answering those questions as they came on. What is this going to be like? And then a little bit of grace and a little bit of time to let it play out and you know, really just conveying some, some flexibility like let's try this and see how it goes and see how it feels to you. The school is still operating and is a very sought after program in, in the school district. So you know, everything worked. Everything worked.

That's fabulous. So as far as going into the Future. How. How does a congregation, a congregation that doesn't currently support one of these programs, how's a way for them to support those schools without. Without just stepping out and saying, hey, we've got an early childhood learning center. Are there ways for them to get involved?

Yeah, lots of ways to get involved. So, you know, starting an early learning program is not for every congregation, you know, and I'll start with that. But the ELA does have an endowment. That endowment is 100% funds grants for our ELCA schools and centers. We do. We have a grant program that gives grants three times a year in three different areas. Innovative programming, faith formation, and professional development. So if a congregation wanted to just support the leaders in schools and centers across the country, that's a great way to do that, engage in the other resources. So every year, the first full week of March, we celebrate Lutheran Schools with Lutheran Schools Week. And our website will have a plethora of resources available to congregations with. And congregations without schools and centers as just another way, you know, share the bulletin insert with your congregation to make people aware that there are schools and centers of the ELCA out there. And, you know, download the Devotion Guide. The Devotion Guide is great for anybody who works in children's ministry. Written by different people every year. You'll see names you recognize and new names that you don't. We get great writers for our Devotion Guide. So that's another great resource that we offer to anybody who'd like to download it. It's also available in Spanish, downloadable from the website. And then I'd say, you know, to a congregation who's thinking, maybe there is a need in their community for an early learning center, use our Nurturing Faith Communities resource, which is available on our website, or somebody can reach out to me and I can give more information. But a great way to really start better understanding the needs of your community. And then how does, you know, an early childhood center fit into that? Is that really something that your congregation can do? I love the idea of communities who need child care. Kind of bringing together ecumenical leaders to figure out, how can we do this together? You know, not every. Not every church building is suitable. And. And so how can. How can ecumenical partners create more opportunity? And we have resources to help with that as well.

If a congregation wants to, you know, explore starting a school, how should they go about it? Like, what would be. What would be good first steps, both in terms of contacting your organization, but also outside of that, what do they do?

Yeah, so definitely reach out to me so I can be [email protected] that's really easy. You can go to our website and find links to reach any of us. We have a couple different resources on the website. I really encourage people to start with a community needs assessment. While it sounds great, and while we think we know where child care centers are needed most, we want to make sure that it truly is a need in our community. We don't want to build something that no one comes to because I don't know of a congregation that has the funding to do that. But we do have some other resources that can help a committee or a council better understand just the considerations. Right. What is child care licensing in my city, in my state, in my county, what kind of regulations are there around me starting a program, days of the week, hours of operation, requirements of a director or a principal? And then you have to look at your regulations from your building inspector. Are, are our hallways wide enough and our doorways wide enough? Do we have the right number of toilets for the number of children? All of those things we just take for granted when we walk into a building. Right. And then, you know, it's usually, it's usually licensing building inspector and a fire inspector and, you know, making sure that the, that the building is equipped with the right safety to be able to have children in the building for long periods of time. But lots of other pieces too. We can help support questions around liability insurance and accident insurance for students. We can help with information around HR and the requirements of school leaders and staff. We're really here to answer those questions and give some resources to help committees work through. Through what, what would this look like? Right. What do we need to know that, that we maybe haven't thought of yet?

Yeah. Is that, would that be a similar process for, you know, I'm thinking about in my own community. I don't know why I would consider doing this. But, but you know, the older students as well, the middle and high school students. So in, in New York, for example, you know, of course there's the public school systems in our county, but there's also seems like a, a ton of, you know, my own daughter goes to a charter school. There's private schools, most of them parochial, some of them charging tuition, some of them not, you know, with, with, you know, a grant based education process. So would it, would it be a similar kind of starting point, you know, if, if a congregation were looking to open, you know, a K through 8 or a K through 12 offering.

Yes, it would be very similar. So you kind of get rid of the licensing and you talk about resources through the Department of Education in your state and navigating that process of understanding the requirements for private schools. And then who do you work with in your school district for shared services title funding, all of those other programs that offer assistance for private school students. And then, you know, we'll kind of watch the federal changes and that's something that we really lean on. The Council for American Private Education, the CAPE Network, they are our lobbying and federal advocacy group. I sit on the board for CAPE as the ELCA representative. And ELCA advocacy has also really taken a really renewed interest in helping support kind of navigation through all of the changing federal processes. But those are, yes, we have the support to help congregations who might be looking to add elementary, middle or high school.

Anything else you want to let us know?

You know, just celebrating our schools and early childhood centers. They are amazing ministries, you know, happening all over the country with just amazing leaders and staff who are just devoting so much of their time to create spaces of love and really wonderful grace filled faith formation through education. So just really lifting up all of those people.

In thinking about this program, I think we talked with Drew Tucker, who's directing. So he was at Capital as a campus minister, but after that at camps in Ohio. And then we also talked with folks in campus ministry. And so the camps, the campus ministries, we talked to the youth gathering folks. And now the lower, the elementary early childhood learning and up through high school kind of connects all that together in that these are all groups that are organized sort of alongside the elca. We've sort of pushed the coordination away from churchwide. And it's good to know that there are people who are devoted to keeping these things going, even though it doesn't get as much of a focus in our offices in Chicago. But it's good to know that people have picked up the mantle and taken it that next step. And it seems that those folks are energized to do the work. And it's really a pleasure to get to know about these programs and get to see them work.

Yeah, it's really interesting that you mentioned that, Ben, because a colleague of mine, Janelle Hooper, was just at the ELCA Colleges and Universities Conference.

Yeah.

And she was just amazed after her presentation that colleges and universities kind of exist in the same space that we do. Like, do people know that we're out there? And how can we connect our camps, our colleges and universities, our schools and early learning centers so that everybody knows that these entities exist in our country? And. And that they're wonderful institutions, but. Yeah. That they deal with a lot of the same struggle for awareness, for advocacy. Yeah.

Yeah. And so I think it's really great that we get to share. It's no effort of ours. We're nobody as far as getting to share this, but I think getting to share this with the folks that do listen and being a resource for folks who are coming to the ELCA and learning about us and learning about the possibilities and things that are happening, maybe not in their community directly, but maybe in a community nearby they can learn more about and maybe participate that way. It's just been really wonderful to do that.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity.

Yeah, we're so glad that you're here. And really, what I think, not only is it the age groups of this sort of children through young adult span of life, you know, that. That kind of first. First third of life, but it's. But the other. The other uniting factor, I think, in all of this is that notion of grace that, you know, the Lutheran Church is known for extending that, that welcome, that invitation and that acceptance to people of, you know, of all ages that. That thread carries through all of those different entities, the camps, the colleges, these. These schools. And so, you know, it's. It's another way that. That, that God, I think, works through these different agencies and organizations and entities to. To share that love. So thank you for the work that you do.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Well, that was a great conversation we had with Corey Newman from Elea. We're recording this last section a couple days later, and we've had some time to think about our conversation about Elea. And I think one of the things we both noted about this is that we have these parachurch organizations, as we call them, organizations that help the ELCA do the ministry, the congregations do the ministry, our programs, and. And they're hard to find sometimes. I don't think we knew about ELA until someone brought it up in a. In a Facebook message.

Yeah, I. I definitely didn't. And so, yeah, we started. I've been thinking about other organizations like.

Reconciling Works and, well, the Campus Ministry organization.

Campus Ministry, the CAMP Ministries. You know how these, These organizations are doing a lot of great work sort of in the name of the ELCA or on behalf of the elca. And it's not that the ELCA doesn't. Doesn't support them. Oftentimes they. They do, but they really are separate orgs. And so it's. Yeah, our polity Makes it kind of confusing to find these groups or know about them or know how they work.

On that note, so if you know about some organizations, gee, I'm kind of hoping that maybe there's like a quilters union in the ELCA that we can talk to or something like that. But if you know of some organizations that are working in this area, we'd love to know about them because that's the only way we will ever find out about some of them. And we'd love to share them. So bring it on. We'll talk about that. We decided to move on from our catechism questions. One of our listeners suggested a few months ago that we try an adaptation of Stephen Colbert's Better Know a District that he did at the Colbert Report. And so we're going to try to do betterknow a either a congregation or a synod. Also, what these words leave out are things like synod authorized ministries or worshiping communities. I'm sorry, there are all sorts of organizations within the church that don't quite fit synod, don't quite fit congregation. So go ahead and submit those. Put those on the congregation submission. So we have a form out there. Someone did submit a congregation. Who was that, Keith?

That was New Spirit Lutheran Church in Tucson, Arizona. The person that filled out the form for us chose to remain anonymous. So we're going to try to get in touch with the pastor. There's who is Pastor Greg Hartman. New Spirit is located in Tucson. It is a part of the Grand Canyon Synod and if you'd like to see more about them yourself, you can find their website, which is newspiritlutherantuscon.org and they have about the the person that filled out the form said they thought there were about 100 members. The ELCA's stats page actually shows them a little over 200 and their average worship attendance is about 72. So it's a fairly common size for the ELCA congregation.

Yeah, I looked up They've got a YouTube channel. We'll link that in there for a specific reason. We'll get down to later. But yeah. So looked around and they look like a thriving congregation there. They've got a beautiful worship space. We asked what kind of programs they're proud of. They're very proud of their homeless ministry. They have a ministry to the local schools. They have a sewing ministry, which sounds interesting. I saw that they had a program where they taught people how to sew, which I need desperately. Right now my ALB is about 3 inches too long and it's Hard to find somebody to alter it. So I need that. I can't get to Tucson this week though. Noisy offering. I think that's a really popular thing in churches with the change going into a tin can. They have Trunk or Treat. They have a jazz Nativity. That's gotta be awesome. They are proudly an RIC congregation. Reconciling in Christ. That just happened this year. One of their partner congregations in Tucson also became RIC this year. They also partner with Community Garden and the Food Bank. And one particular pride is that they like how much lay leadership they have for all the programs, which is great because the pastor doesn't have all that put on themselves completely on their own. Yeah, yeah.

New Spirit has two worship services. They are a sort of a contemporary only church. They do not have what what many of us would think of as like a traditional liturgy on a regular basis. But they have a service at 10am but they simply call their contemporary service on Sunday. They also have a 9am Wednesday service entitled Pray Without Ceasing. And again, the person that filled out this form made this proud comment. You have to hear our pastor preach. So that must be a highlight for them.

Yeah. And you can see that the sermons and full worship services are on their YouTube channel. Absolutely. We asked about favorite hymns and songs. The hymn, they said this is widely regarded as the theme song and that is Changes on the Rise. The closest I can come to that. It looks like it's by AV Kaplan, who was the bass singer from Pentatonix who's gone out on his own. This is a more recent song there. I'd love to hear what it sounds like as a hymn, but I think their praise band does it, so that's probably how that works out. They also said they recently did an entire service that was written by Agape, the rapper who Keith actually knows. And the name of that, that service is called Just Move. You can see that on the YouTube channel as well. And we'll make sure to put a link in the episode notes here.

Yeah. David Shearer, who goes by the stage name Agape, is an amazing person and theologian and hip hop artist and has done a lot of. He's been to our national youth gatherings a few times. He's been to a number of other youth events over the years and I first got to meet him about oh geez. I was in my first call still out in Lansdale. So in the early 2000s he was the stage band for a retreat that I was connected with. And yeah, I got to know him a little bit then at first, which was really cool.

That's awesome. So we also asked what a mascot would be for the congregation, and they said Fire, which sounds really great.

Makes sense being New Spirit, you know, Lutheran Church. So, yeah, the New Spirit Fire, I.

Think, is actually a great name for.

A sacrifice soccer team.

It would be. Yeah.

Or.

Or a quilting team.

Absolutely. Yeah. What does everyone need to know about your congregation? We are out in the world living the good news of God's grace to all, which is a really wonderful summary.

Amen to that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. So that is New Spirit Lutheran Church in Tucson, Arizona. Thanks for sending that in. We look forward to hearing about other. Other congregations and synods around the elca. We won't run out of those anytime soon, so if you want to send those in, we have links on our website. We'll have links in the episode notes as well. It's just a Google form. Send that in. Submit with your name and email address or phone number, if that's how you prefer to be contacted. And. And we'll get that all going. Yeah. So this has been a wonderful episode. We learned a lot of stuff both about new congregation I'd never heard of beforehand, about a program I hadn't heard of before. Looking forward to learning about more things like that. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fot, and the show is produced by Phote Media Productions. Find all our contact information, links, and a transcript in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.