On October 14, 2000, Campus Lutheran celebrated their 30th anniversary as a Campus Ministry site. The history of Campus Lutheran is a model of congregations cooperating and reaching out to students who are in search of Christian community and Spiritual growth.

      I have been CL’s pastor since January of 2004. I enjoy getting to know students, serving them and serving with them, helping them to relate their faith to their academic setting and to the vocation for which they are preparing, modeling for them adult Christian faith and lifestyle, attempting to facilitate their learning, testing, and giving leadership in the church, and then (once they have left here) getting news of the various ways in which many of them continue to be leaders in congregations and synods all across the country.

WHAT CL OFFERS

      While CL is not a congregation, it offers the opportunities of regular church life most Lutheran congregations’ offer; regular opportunities for worship, education, fellowship, outreach and service.

      Every week begins with Lutheran worship in both Word and Sacrament (Sundays at 5 p. m.) and a meal follows.  This offers not only a time of worship, but also a time to form friendships with CL staff and other students. Additional weekly programs include Bible studies and a mid-week worship (Wednesday’s at 9:30 p.m.).

      Our building is open every day. It is a place where students may come for meditation and prayer, for the quiet pursuit of their studies, for meeting and making friends, and/or for reading the newspaper, watching TV, do laundry, or conversations to sort through life’s issues.

      Through out the year our programs will offer students the chance to grow in faith, to make some friends who share that faith (indeed, to have an experience of Christian community at UNK), to relate to their academic life and work the hallmarks of Lutheranism (especially, a deep and abiding sense of the graciousness of God and an understanding of the vocation to which God calls every baptized son and daughter), and in their being a Lutheran Christian, to find a place to stand amid the many and competing ideas, claims, and options that they encounter in campus life and study.

PASTORAL AND PEER MINISTRY

 

      As students feel the need, I am readily available for pastoral listening and counsel and I offer to assist them in any way I can. They may also turn to our peer ministers, students whom we train and stipend to be a friendly and welcoming voice from the church and a receptive ear to students’ needs and feelings.  These peer ministers will play a particularly important role in our ministry.  Since many students say and show they need time and space to determine how they will express their faith and relate to the church now that they are away from home and on their own, the peer ministers will be the ones who first attempt to arrange a visit with them.  These visits offer both friendship and the invitation to come to CL and get involved.

MY OFFER TO YOU

      If there are ever any ways in which I can be helpful to you or your family, please do not hesitate to contact me.  Should any emergency or crisis arise in your family, I am ready to be with your child to provide pastoral care as he or she calls home to get the news.

      Whenever you are in town, I invite you to stop by Campus Lutheran for a cup of coffee and a visit.  If you are here on a Sunday evening, please join us for worship at 5 p.m.  Finally, I ask you to remember Campus Lutheran in your prayers.

God’s peace to you and yours,

Pastor Tom