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My Home Congregation Of Beautiful Savior

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I chose to evaluate my home congregation of Beautiful Savior in Omaha, which was an interesting challenge. Having grown up in the church as the son of a DCE (now a pastor) there, I was already pretty familiar with the educational opportunities provided, but it was interesting to take a much deeper look at it and evaluate the shortcomings as well. The Dirt on Learning offered a strong basis for the critique of educational ministry from the perspective of the parable of the sower, making parallels with how it relates directly to education. Beautiful Savior is a unique church in the LCMS. It is a large, contemporary, and progressive church that is pushing the boundaries of ministry in some areas (as well as pushing the buttons of some people in the synod). The overall sense that I got from the time I spent observing, interviewing, and teaching is that a lot of the different ministries blur together and there is a bit of a Beautiful Savior ‘bubble.’ Being a large church, it is easy for people to blend in to the crowd and not go deeper than attending a service on Sundays. Having spoken with the three DCE’s on staff, the all had very similar things to say regarding this.
A few quotes from the DCEs attribute educational struggles to people who just don’t want to get involved. “People have a natural resistance to anything that threatens their comfort zone. People are too busy [to get involved in educational programs],” said Jim Haack, DCE.
Scotte Hansen, DCE, likewise said,

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