Tag Archives: school

Gospel Friends

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Most who know me—at least those who know me well—will affirm that I’m a people watcher. Though I spend much of my life standing in front of rooms, I’m far more comfortable sitting in the back, watching others in motion. I might contribute to the conversation on occasion. But more often than not, I’m content to absorb rather than radiate.

This past Thursday, I was given the chance to do just that.

Our Savior’s Stewardship Committee hosted its first-ever Golf Outing and Silent Auction at Dunham Hills Golf Course in Hartland. If you weren’t there, I mean it when I say—you missed something extraordinary. Not just because the food was good or the auction items impressive. Not even because the day couldn’t have been sunnier and the venue more beautiful. But because something profound happened, and I was privileged to behold it.

Let me start by saying I don’t play golf. I’ve been known to tee up with the kids and launch a few into the wetlands behind our house. In truth, it’s been almost 25 years since I’ve stepped foot on a course. It’s not that I wouldn’t. It’s just that golf is an all-day thing, at least it is for me, and I don’t usually have all day for anything. And besides, knowing my abilities, folks should consider themselves blessed that I didn’t sign up to be on any of the teams. I’m with Mark Twain, who said something about how a round of golf is the best way to ruin a walk in the woods, which is where I’d most likely end up.

So, in short, I didn’t play this past Thursday. But I did attend the banquet afterward. Indeed, I am far more skilled with a fork than I am with a sand wedge. And it was with a fork in hand that I did what I do best: observe. While watching, I absorbed something far more meaningful than a hole-in-one ever could be.

First, a casual glance around the room revealed people I simply adore. And I don’t say that lightly. I would die for the people at those tables. That may sound dramatic, but I mean it. “Greater love has no one than this,” Jesus said, “that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). It was that kind of room, and it was that kind of evening. We’ve been through a lot as a congregation over the years. And yet, there we were, laughing across tables and recalling our togetherness with joy. Even better, as familiar friendships were celebrated, and in some cases rekindled, I watched newer church members (and some non-member guests) welcomed into the family as though they’d been there for decades. That alone was extraordinary.

I should say it doesn’t surprise me. Our Savior in Hartland is that kind of place to begin with.

In the meantime, I think a second, more important thing I took from the event was that I saw a number of individual “teams” come together as a single team and dedicate themselves to something important: our tuition-free school. They were there, not for the self, but rather, they were all in for something and someone else—namely, to preserve the Gospel’s legacy for children they might never even meet.  

That kind of selflessness stands in stark contrast to the culture swirling around us.

In most corners of the world, it seems people don’t often gather with selfless intentions. Unfortunately, I can say this is true, even in the Church. I’ve noticed it at conferences. Some, not all, but some gather to compete. They gather to be seen. They gather in a posture of self-promotion. Beyond such things, you can certainly see it on social media, where platforms meant to connect now primarily serve as stages for applause. I’m a member of a few Facebook groups relative to Linden schools, and from what I can tell, too often the driving force isn’t mutual care but mutual comparison.

I didn’t see any of that on Thursday.

There were no cliques. No undercurrents of competition. No one was keeping score of who contributed what. In fact, I heard more golf stories akin to Paul’s “Chief of sinners” theme. In other words, I believe that for everyone in the room, there was only one scorecard that mattered—and it wasn’t in anyone’s pocket. It was being carried in the hearts of people who gave, not to get, but to build and preserve something lasting, something sacred, which is precisely what we have at Our Savior in Hartland.

Again, that’s not how the world typically works. You know as well as I do that the world teaches that fulfillment often comes through accumulation. Gather wealth. Stack your achievements. Build your platforms. Be more important than everyone else. But Christ moves His people in an altogether different direction. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43–44).

That’s what I saw at Dunham Hills. It was true greatness, and it was forged in humble faith.

I suppose that’s why the event grabbed hold of me enough to write about it this morning. As a pastor, I’m forever concerned for the spiritual strength of the people God has placed into my care. In fact, I thought a lot about it while on vacation the last two weeks. So much so, that I spent time formulating some new Bible study ideas instead of leaving that all behind me until I returned home.

Then I came home, and the first church event I was privileged to attend was the “Fairway to Heaven” golf outing. Wow.

In a world of algorithms and noise, of hustle and burnout, of spiritually draining clutter, I returned to something infinitely more powerful. Sure, we talk about our churches and the friendships they naturally accommodate. But here it was for real. The friendships I saw weren’t just byproducts of church membership. The Gospel created these friendships—made them family—and it gave rise to a far better byproduct. It was and is the kind that can stand at the gate, lock arms, and be generous with its muscle. And not for anyone’s own glory, but for the sake of the same Gospel that established it, and from there, for the benefit of parents and children, we may never know this side of heaven’s fairway.

I suppose to close, if you have a moment, take a look at the promotional video we made a few months ago for our school. You can watch it here:

I’m sharing it because a few lines from it were shared before the meal. I’m glad they were. They were more than appropriate to what I was seeing.

Initially, the video was created and then sent to me with some text overlays—short theological and educational phrases that appeared intermittently over scenes with music. It was nice. But as I watched, I sensed it needed more, a clearer heartbeat. So, I sat down and wrote a short script—a few minutes to scribble a few lines that I felt captured what our school truly is. I recorded it in one take using my computer’s microphone. Nothing polished. Nothing flashy. I didn’t intend for it to be used exactly as it was. It was just my tired voice from an already long day of orchestrating and maintaining what the video would eventually promote more publicly. Still, I wanted others to know why it mattered so much to me, to the people of Our Savior—why so many of us pour ourselves into the work and then give it away to the community for free. Because, make no mistake, the world doesn’t give its content away. Whether it’s entertainment, education, or influence, there’s always a price. You pay for it, and increasingly, the price is your soul. But the Church, when it’s actually being the Church, flips that economy on its head. We give it away—truth, grace, the love of Christ—not because it’s worthless, but because it’s priceless.

The video’s director ended up using what I sent. He didn’t change anything, except to have his audio team clean up my less-than-quality recording.

Again, if you have a moment, watch it. It’s only a minute and thirty-five seconds long. If you listen closely, I think you’ll hear elements of the same theme that filled the banquet room at Dunham Hills: selflessness. You’ll hear me say how we’re doing all we can at Our Savior to lift up generations of children who know something better than what the world gives, and with that knowledge, are equipped to go out and be the kind of people I saw gathered at the golf outing on Thursday.

I saw Christian people who know what is objectively and immutably true. I bore witness to human beings shaped by the Gospel trying to make it so others could be, too. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, not for applause, but for a Godly purpose. For a people watcher like me, it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time, and I can’t wait for next year’s event. I have a feeling it’s only going to get bigger and better.

Don’t Lose Hope

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I had an interesting conversation with my soon-to-be 20-year-old daughter, Madeline, a few weeks ago before leaving for the office. Wondering what she had planned, I asked her about her day. She’s in school. She’s also nearing the end of her efforts toward a well-earned private pilot’s license. That particular day, she had a lesson at Bishop Airport, followed by an evening shift at work. Knowing she was close to finishing, I asked her if there was a final test of some sort. She said she’d already aced the knowledge tests but that she’d soon go up with an instructor who, apart from testing and observing her skills, would put her through a barrage of questioning. In her words, she said, “It’ll be like the Great Confession, except it’ll be a lot harder because I didn’t grow up in it.”

First, by Great Confession, she means what I put our young catechumens through prior to Confirmation. In other words, to be confirmed, you must present yourself for interrogation before the congregation, and I’m the chief inquisitor. It happens the Saturday before Palm Sunday, with the Rite of Confirmation occurring the very next day. Essentially, I ask the catechumens questions—a lot of theological questions—and then, if they answer them sufficiently, they must each recite Article IV of the Augsburg Confession. Article IV iterates the doctrine of Justification. It’s crucial that they do this. Justification has been long understood as the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls. If the Church gets the doctrine of Justification wrong, it ceases to be the Church.

This is the Great Confession, and to be confirmed at Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hartland, Michigan, you must endure it successfully. Some haven’t, and they weren’t confirmed; not many, but some.

Understandably, the kids preparing for the Great Confession get a little worked up over it. Of course, I’m not questioning them in a way that seeks their failure. I want them to succeed. But I also want them to dig deeply, think through, and confess what they believe before taking their place at the Lord’s altar to confirm that same baptismal faith. Too many kids are confirmed just because that’s what mom and dad want or because that’s just what happens in their church at this age. Not here. There will be kids of various ages, some much younger than you’d expect. There will be kids who’ve been at it longer than others. This year, there are five students. Next year, there could be as many as sixteen. But no matter how many present themselves for examination, none will be confirmed apart from this process. It has proven itself reliable, and I have no plans ever to change it.

To understand why I’m sharing this requires returning to what Madeline said about it that morning a few weeks ago. She is five years past her Great Confession. Still, she remembers it. It was challenging. Still, she claimed that compared to her experience enduring the Great Confession, her final flight exams would be much harder. Again, her words: “It’ll be harder because I didn’t grow up in it.” Her point was that the Christian Faith has occupied her since she was born. This is true not only because she never misses worship and Bible study or because she attended her church’s Christian day school, but because she remains immersed in it all the other moments of her life—having conversations with her family at dinner, in the pool on vacation, out shopping with her mom, riding in the car with dad, and so many others of life’s usual moments. For her, whether it’s the Great Confession with her dad or a stranger’s casual interest, she can confess Christian truths as readily as tying her shoes.

But what about others her age who’ve fallen away? What happened? Perhaps their faith was never truly integrated into their daily lives. Maybe church and doctrine were compartmentalized—reserved for Sunday mornings or the occasional youth event—rather than woven into the fabric of their everyday experiences. Of course, suppose faith is treated as just one activity among many, or worse, a burdensome obligation rather than a life-giving necessity. In that case, it becomes all too easy to set it aside for what seems more important. The world is already relentless in offering distractions and alternatives that seem more appealing or more immediately rewarding. It’s certainly hard to argue the culture’s influence, with its constant noise and competing narratives.

Here’s something else to consider.

A 2020 study in “Education Week” reported that around 27% of public school teachers considered themselves ideologically conservative. Compared with another survey from Pew Research, about half of that same group considered themselves conservative Christians. A conservative Christian is defined as someone who attends worship regularly and believes the Bible is God’s inspired and inerrant Word. The assumption is that anywhere from 10% to 15% of all public school teachers are Bible-believing educators. When you figure that the average student with a bachelor’s degree had as many as 115 different teachers throughout their public school life, it’s likely that only 17 of those teachers were being steered by Christian faithfulness. However, studies also show that most Christian teachers prefer to remain thoroughly neutral, neither teaching to the left nor the right, while ideologically liberal teachers are twice as likely to insert their beliefs into their lessons. When these are the contours of our children’s learning environment, and we figure that a third of their waking life is spent in it, no wonder so many of our children end up in rainbow-colored ditches.

Looking back at what I just wrote, I’m suddenly sensing the strange urge to plan a fundraiser for our own tuition-free Christian school here at Our Savior in Hartland, Michigan. As I said in our recent promotional video, the world needs what we bring to the table. By the way, if you haven’t seen the video, you can view it here: https://www.oursaviorhartland.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/our_savior_evangelical_lutheran_school_promo-1440p.mp4.   

Continuing, someone asked me not all that long ago what they should do to help steer their adult child back toward the faith. With a few insights relative to the context, essentially, I gave this person the same answer I give to others who’ve asked the same question.

First, don’t lose heart. The Word of the Lord does not return void (Isaiah 55:11). The seeds of faith, once planted, remain, even if buried beneath the weeds of worldly temptations.

Second, are we talking about a baptized child of God? If so, then instead of despair, parents should almost certainly remain steadfast in prayer, trusting in the Holy Spirit’s work. One of the great things about baptism is the promise associated with God’s name. A child baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus mandated, is a child upon whom the Triune God’s name has been placed. For starters, in the Old Testament, God explicitly ties His name to the temple, saying that where He puts His name, He promises to dwell (2 Samuel 7:13, 1 Kings 8:29, 1 Kings 9:3, 2 Chronicles 7:16). In Numbers 6:24-27, God’s personal name (YaHWeH) is invoked three times in the Priestly Blessing (unsurprisingly in a trinitarian way), and in so doing, He promises that His name is thereby placed on His people resulting in blessing.

All of this more than carries over into the New Testament theology of baptism. I don’t have time for all of it, but we certainly get the sense in Matthew 28:19-20, Galatians 3:27, and Acts 2:38-39. Even further, just as God placed His name upon the temple in the Old Testament, Saint Paul tells us that God places His name on His people, the baptized Church. We learn this explicitly in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 2 Corinthians 6:16, and Ephesians 2:19-22. Even better, this naming extends into the heavenly realms. God’s name is on people there, too, marking them as His own. Revelation 3:12 presents this. Revelation 22:4 does, too. Even better, I think it’s equally interesting that Revelation 7:14 describes these marked believers before the throne as those who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” That’s an interesting way to describe the people upon whom God’s name has been placed. I wonder what it could mean. Perhaps the answer to this rhetorical wondering is given elsewhere, in places like Acts 22:16, for example.

My point: a baptized child bears the Triune God’s name, and God isn’t so easily separated from His name. There’s hope in this divine reality.

Third, I recommend keeping the doors open. Engage them in meaningful conversations about life and faith, and most importantly, model unwavering devotion to Christ. If you go to visit for a weekend, start simply. For example, pray before meals. Make plans to attend worship on Sunday. Invite them to join you in both. Be a fixed point of faithful devotion to Christ no matter where you are or what you’re doing. They’ll see this. And then, keep in mind that the prodigal son returned because he knew where home was fixed, and he knew his merciful father was there waiting (Luke 15:11-32). Likewise, those who have been immersed in the faith, even when they stray, can recall the way home, especially when they see the way home through you.

The Possibilities

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It has begun. Multiple times a day, the Thoma children announce how many days remain until the last day of school. I bet they’d be ready with the hours, minutes, and seconds if I asked any of them. I’m certainly not annoyed when they do this. I know why they do it. For youth, summer and freedom are synonyms. Besides, I did it, too. As a kid, I counted the days until my only schedule-consuming responsibilities would be jumping ramps on my bike, hunting crawdads in muddy creeks, playing army in the forest behind my best friend’s house, participating in socially recalibrating neighborhood scuffles, watching late-night scary movies, and just about anything else summer could conjure.

Thinking back to those days, even though I stayed up pretty late almost every night, I don’t really remember sleeping in the following day. I remember wanting to get as much from my summer as possible. And so, I’d hop out of bed no later than 8:00 or 9:00 a.m., throw on the cleanest clothes from my floor, have a bowl of cereal, and then fly out the back door to the rusty shed where I kept my bike. I’d throw up a dust trail speeding down our gravel driveway or go off-roading through our bumpy backyard, my bike clanking and rattling all the way. But whichever direction I went, the horizon’s possibilities were limitless.

Some of the summer’s possibilities were great. Others, not so much. I remember one summer hearing that my friend, Todd Smart, fell from the tree in his front yard and died. It was July of 1983. I was ten years old at the time. My dad told me the news. I certainly knew the tree. I’d climbed it, too. If I had to guess, I’d say it was at least twenty feet tall. Although, things seemed so much bigger when you were a kid. As the story goes, Todd had just about reached its peak when the branch he was standing on broke, and he fell to the ground, hitting branch after branch all the way down. A couple of days later, my friend, John, told me he’d heard Todd looked like a pinball bouncing off the bumpers as he fell. Oddly, John and I had that conversation about ten feet from the ground in a tree near my grandmother’s apartment.

It’s strange the things one remembers from childhood. Before telling me the news about Todd, I remember the look on my dad’s face. It was uniquely unordinary. I knew I was going to hear something I didn’t expect. I remember the tree near my grandmother’s apartment. I remember which branches a kid needed to grapple with to climb it. I remember my friend John’s home phone number. I just typed it into Google. A woman with an extraordinary name—Drewcylla—appears to own it now.

Whether winter, spring, summer, or fall, each season holds more across its horizon’s boundary than what’s right in front of us at any given moment. What we experience in those lands will be with us well into the future—well into forthcoming seasons. Some things we’ll remember in detail. Other parts we’ll forget. Some we’ll observe from this side of life and realize how we didn’t fully comprehend the event’s particulars because of our immaturity at the time. Remember, my friend died climbing a tree, and a few days later, another friend and I discussed the tragedy while climbing a tree. I’m well past ten years old, and I only recognized the irony just now as I typed this. Still, the Christopher Thoma tapping on this keyboard this morning is the same one who dangled from that tree near Valleyview Heights Apartments in Danville, Illinois, forty years ago. And yet, I’m not the same person. I’m entirely different after meeting each season’s moments. That’s life. That’s development. That’s growth. And it’s normal.

Seasonally speaking, I’m absolutely certain that growing up in the 1970s and 80s barely compares to childhood today. For one, I don’t remember any of my classmates identifying as cats. (Honestly, the neighborhood scuffles I mentioned before would’ve fixed that weirdness in a hurry.) I don’t remember any of my teachers encouraging me to explore my gender identity or encouraging anyone I knew to consider gender reassignment surgery. The 70s and 80s could get crazy, but not this kind of crazy. I certainly don’t recall any of my teachers attempting one of the worst kinds of crazy: to undermine my Christian faith or divide me from my parents. For example, my son, Harrison, came to me this past week to tell me that his AP US History teacher at Linden High School overheard him talking to a friend about a scene from the Monty Python film “The Life of Brian.” Harrison hasn’t seen the movie, but I have shown him a few of its more hilarious scenes. The conversation unfolded something like this:

“Isn’t your dad a priest or something?”

“He’s a Lutheran pastor,” Harrison answered.

“He actually let you watch that movie?” the teacher pressed.

“No, I haven’t seen it. I’ve only seen a few scenes. They don’t really want me watching it.”

“Of course not,” the instructor replied. “He probably doesn’t want you watching it because it’ll challenge what he’s taught you to believe and teach you another way to look at the Christian religion.”

Nice try. But most certainly a hit and a miss. Jennifer and I haven’t kept the movie from Harrison because we’re his cruel overlords. Thankfully, he knows this. And thankfully, he talks to us openly about things like this. For the record, Mr. History Teacher, his mother and I don’t want him to watch the movie because it employs a few choice words we’d prefer for him to avoid and has full frontal male and female nudity. Other than that, it’s hilarious. And if anything, the “I want to be called Loretta” scene makes you and your dreadfully woke automaton colleagues look imbecilic by comparison.

Right now, even as Harrison is sixteen, he’s developing. It’s our job to help him along. We do this by ensuring he knows we love him more than anything, second only to Christ. When Harrison’s beyond this season of our responsibility, we’ll be happy to let him take the helm. That’s how it works. He’s already proving his ability to make his way without us. He’s already showing that he’s seeing and enjoying the world in ways far different than what the world would prefer. I’ll come back to this in a second.

In the meantime, as sure as I am of the vast differences between the 1970s/80s and today, I’m just as confident that the nature of humanity hasn’t changed all that much. Kids are developing—spiritually, socially, physically, and psychologically. What happens right now—how we talk to them, what we allow to happen to them, whom we allow in their circles, whom we allow to teach or influence them—all these things might seem irrelevant in the moment. And yet, like it or not, every one of the atom-sized occurrences relevant to each situation is affecting them. Twenty years, thirty years, forty years from now, each situation’s truest impact will be remembered and likely demonstrated. As I already said, that’s life. That’s development. That’s growth. And it’s normal.

But know this: The Lord’s normal differs from the world’s normal. And so, with Christ as one’s north star, “normal life” itself is affected. Both the good and bad seasons meet first with the One who promises to go before us, pledging to never leave nor forsake those who are His own (Deuteronomy 31:8). With that, all things meet the child quite differently. In any given moment, recognizable or not, this Gospel will be doing what our faithful God says it’ll do: cultivating joy, resilience, and a necessary endurance that will only strengthen as one matures toward a final breath and then enters eternal life (Proverbs 22:6; Deuteronomy 6:7; Isaiah 54:13; Jeremiah 29:11; Matthew 19:4; 2 Timothy 3:14-17; and the like). As parents, we bear no insignificant role in this exchange. God included us in His baptismal mandate, insisting that we teach our little ones the Christian faith and support them in it (Matthew 28:19-20).

I suppose one reason I’m probably thinking about these things leads back to where I began. We’re coming to the end of the school year. My kids are counting down. As I look around at the children in this congregation’s school, I’ll bet they are, too. Even so, I’m hopeful for their forthcoming summers. I can be. For any of our good or bad seasons (which every community experiences), each child and his or her family has enjoyed the opportunity to meet first with the Gospel of our faithful Savior. Myriads of parents and children in countless schools worldwide don’t enjoy that. In our little corner, on this fractional portion of each of our students’ developing timelines, they do—and in abundance. Forty years from now, when I’m ninety—if I’m still alive—I expect to hear retellings of the memories associated with these things. I’m sure it’ll make me smile then, just as it does right now.