It's not only about receiving the gospel; it's also about passing it on.

Sharing your faith can be done at any age.

Think of the six-year-old who comes home from school and sings “Jesus Loves Me” to her non-churchgoing mom. Think of the new mom who invites her neighbor to the Moms ‘n’ Tots program at church. Think of the elderly man in the hospital who shares with the nurses why he is not afraid.

Think of teens from Eternal Love, Appleton, Wis.

Through WELS Kingdom Workers’ Faith In Action program, eight teens and four chaperones traveled to New Jersey this summer to help two WELS congregations—Immanuel, Long Valley and Our Savior’s, East Brunswick—conduct vacation Bible school (VBS). The teens helped distribute flyers about the event and then helped run the VBS, doing everything from supervising recess to teaching Bible stories to a roomful of children.

“Initially they had the deer in the headlights look—can we really do this?” says Don Tollefson, pastor at Long Valley. “But it became apparent that they could. With help and some guidance, they did a great job.”

Receiving the gospel

The help and guidance started before the teens even arrived in New Jersey. “It wasn’t just, ‘If you want to go, you can go,’ ” says Kirk Lahmann, who served as a vicar at Eternal Love last year and also chaperoned the trip. “There was a lot of training involved.” In special classes over the summer, teens learned how to teach Bible classes and how to canvass.

On the trip, the teens gained more than just hands-on experience. “I learned that I just have to trust that God is with me and that he will do what is best for me and for the work of his kingdom,” says Malachi Wallander, a 16-year-old who went on the trip.

He illustrates his point by talking about his canvassing experience: “The last time we were out canvassing I ran across a man eating lunch in his truck, and he asked for one of the flyers I was handing out. I gave him one, told him a little bit about the church and the VBS there, and we got into a little conversation. During the conversation I realized that I wasn’t afraid to talk to that guy at all. I didn’t know why because I usually got really nervous talking to people like that, especially when I never really know what to say. . . . Then it came to me: God was there with me feeding me the words to say.”

Passing it on