What happens when you combine the work of Home Missions and Lutheran Schools? You get opportunities, according to Matt Brown, pastor at Beautiful Savior, Clarksville, Tenn.

"As we do mission work, a lot of congregations that start seem to involve children's ministry," he says. "To use our background in education in our outreach efforts just seems to make a lot of sense."

Beautiful Savior, a home mission that started in 2000, used that combination as it developed its ministry plan. It worked with Lutheran Schools to determine the need for a preschool in its area. Then when the congregation was ready to build a permanent church home in 2006, it included space for a preschool right in the facility. A loan and grant from WELS Church Extension Fund for land purchase and facility construction as well as a grant from Home Missions to get the preschool off the ground set the rest of the plan into motion.

Beautiful Savior Lutheran preschool opened in 2006 with one teacher and six students. Now, five years later, the preschool is self supporting, with more than 50 students a year and two full-time teachers. Ninety percent of the children in the school come from either unchurched families or families from different denominations.

"We look at this as our time to get the truth out to them," says Barbara Noon, preschool director and teacher. "And we pray for them and hope that some day this will have an impact on them."

With Clarksville being located near a military installation, 80 to 90 percent of the children also come from military families. "It provides us with a great opportunity to give them that spiritual family and that physical family that you need," says Noon.

Both pastors at Clarksville are involved with the preschool, whether it's meeting with families interested in sending their children to the school, conducting chapel for the kids, or greeting preschool families as they arrive every day. "We set aside time to make small talk with parents so that, Lord willing, we can be there to make big talk too," says Brown.

Preschool families are also invited to worship, Bible classes, and fellowship activities at the church so they can get to know the entire church family.

Since the preschool started, Brown says that two to three families join the church every year. Others worship at Beautiful Savior all year but never take a Bible information class.

But it's not all about the numbers. "It's more that we have this year to present God's Word to these children and to these families," says Noon. "If the children leave here knowing that Jesus is their Savior and he died for their sins, then we've done our job."