Local mission in the church - and how seminaries are failing our pastors.

I continue my discussion with Alex Zenk, Pastor of Stratford Evangelical Lutheran Church in Stratford, Iowa and host of the Undying Light Podcast. We talk about how local mission efforts in the church benefit both the church and local community, and why pastors are not trained to teach worldview within their local congregations.

Reuel Sample:
I love the idea that you are teaching your congregation that mission work is not just something done overseas or someplace far away, but mission work is local. Yeah. How have they responded to that?

Alex Zenk:
They they were ecstatic when when we made that decision. I think that really helped kind of spark some of the movements and draw some people in. I've had a couple of people from the church or from the town come to church and, you know, say, Hey, you know, I heard you preach, I heard somebody talking about you preaching and I wanted to come here, you. And we appreciate what you do and, you know, this or that mission. But every month we change up our our, you know, mission approach. We have different people that we serve and we try to at least here in our little geographical circle in Iowa. We try to hit a lot of the things that people would normally be, you know, be affected by, whether it's a like January's a domestic and sexual outreach center. We're going to do one on our local food pantry. We did one last year with our local elementary school as they were in need of winter wear, and so we pulled together cash from the congregation and donated it to the school. And I think that was really impactful. I was featured in the newspaper taking a picture with the principal. And so it's just doing these little things. And again, it's not for the publicity or the fame of it, but it's doing these things to show that this our church is willing to take charge of helping this community move forward.

Reuel Sample:
It's a powerful statement, because churches often say, well, we'll be part of something, but they never take the initiative to do something. And what you're saying is, no, you're you're taking the initiative to do something and to make something happen big or small. That's your mission field. I just love that.

Reuel Sample:
Alex, one of the goals of of of this of this podcast is talk about worldview - Christian worldview. We all we all have a worldview. But I want to encourage people to live a Christian biblical worldview. The problem is, is that in my opinion, I've been around churches all of my life or I was ordained and oh, good grief, 1993. I was ordained and I've served small churches. I grew up in a very, very large church. I've been inside and outside churches, and we're not teaching our people Christian worldview. We're not teaching them how to respond to the daily challenges that come up from your from your podcast. You talk about theology and and apologetics, which were not covering in our churches. Why aren't pastors teaching their people worldview?