
Lutheran Hour Ministries has created convenient resources for anyone and everyone to connect with Jesus and spread hope and faith throughout your community. Many of our products are free, easy to use, and digital, so you can use them in your home, on the go, or wherever you may be.
In addition, we have a long history of partnering with congregations to enact outreach activities that work in concert with their Gospel proclamation mission. These resources can be used to address situations in people's lives from a faith-based perspective or answer questions about Christianity.
Pastors of St. John's West Bend, in West Bend, Wisconsin, shared how they have used LHM resources based on research done in partnership with Barna Group.
"St. John's has definitely been blessed to serve and grow through the LHM-Barna partnership and the corresponding materials created for Spiritual Conversations in the Digital Age, Households of Faith, and Better Together," says Pastor Jeff Hesse. "Our church's mission statement is Connecting, Caring, and Sharing in Christ. We do our best to live this out via our vision statement: Discipleship in as Many Places as Possible."
"Spiritual Conversations was a great way to begin our first year using those LHM materials together, and I think it helped give us a language and an awareness of the role of spiritual conversations as an active part of discipleship," says Pastor David Nieman.
"It was out of Spiritual Conversations that we began using the language of "discipleship stories," where we'll often ask members of the congregation what God has been up to in their lives-challenges, joys, etc. It's been a great way for our people to not only reflect on active discipleship but learn from each other and uplift what God is doing in our lives.
"Pastorally, what I'm most excited about is how discipleship stories are built into many of our life groups-from our large congregational meetings to our leadership board meetings to many of our study and service groups, we make room for discipleship stories before we get to the business of the day.
"In that way, Spiritual Conversations really helped us recognize the importance of speaking to our walk with Jesus in everyday ways and to be more open to those opportunities. The act of speaking to these encounters is encouraging to others and reminds them that God is powerfully at work in their lives, too.
"Spiritual Conversations was a great starting place that helped us launch into Households of Faith and Better Together with a common language and appreciation for the role of conversation and sharing in all that we did."
"I arrived here in January of 2020, and St. John's already had a mission partnership with LHM in place with a plan of utilizing Households of Faith as our ministry year theme in the fall of 2020," says Pastor Stephen Reynolds. "We set up our ministry plan and goals under a theme each year as a way of giving people a common understanding of what we are striving to accomplish as a congregation."
"Well, March of 2020 and all of those realities hit, but we still moved forward with our plans to use Households of Faith as it sort of fit with the fact that we were all at home with one another. We really encouraged people to live out their faith by doing what the Households monograph suggests-showing hospitality, participating in spiritual disciplines together, and having spiritual conversations.
"We live-streamed our normal adult education discipleship hour on Wednesday nights and interviewed a number of different people on those subjects to help people see a breadth of different ways that the Lord is at work in and through their households. We utilized the Households monograph as well as The Spiritually Vibrant Home book written from the Households research. We frequently heard that this material encouraged people to connect in their own households.
"Fast forward two years, and we launched into Better Together in our congregation. The asset-based way of thinking and God's call to be a part of a larger community to seek its good was a different way of thinking and talking for our members. We asked them to consider what the community valued and what role St. John's and its members might play in the betterment of our community in West Bend.
"Some members shared that they moved their firepits from the backyard to the front to better connect with their neighbors on a social level. Additionally, members of our board intentionally went out and sought to connect with larger community organizations to meet the needs of our community. This has blossomed into a mentorship program with a local crisis pregnancy center as well as a new partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
"As a pastoral team, part of our role as shepherds is to equip the saints to live life as followers of Jesus everywhere God has placed them," says Hesse. "Spiritual Conversations, Households of Faith, and Better Together were very helpful in creating a wider vision of what the Lord is doing in and through His Church and the various people and places He sends us."