Our eight ELCA seminaries all have programs to address the interests and needs of high school students and young adults. Our author gives us a personal glimpse into the programs, "Life Together" and "Faith Active in Love" hosted by Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California.

Our Mission and Vision
The primary mission and vision of "Life Together" and "Faith Active in Love" is to assist Lutheran high school and college students in deepening their sense of Lutheran identity. We are doing this in order to empower and enhance both their ongoing faith development and their future vocational choices.

Our program emphasizes a distinctively Lutheran approach to the study of the Bible and to the concepts of grace, freedom, theology of the cross, and vocation. In addition, our program seeks to empower youth and young adults, ages 14-21, to find concrete ways of living out their faith in service to the church and the world.

We have chosen this focus for our work because we want to offer young people what they themselves have asked for:

Generally when teens described their reasons for participating in church, they mentioned either the sense of belonging they enjoyed there or the church's worship and teaching, which offered meaning to their lives.... Teens were attracted to high goals, standards of excellence, demands worthy of their attention and energy, and rites of passage marking steps toward their adulthood.¹

Over the course of ten years, we have learned and experienced more together than we ever imagined we would! What follows are some of the highlights and significant learnings from our work.

Program Mechanics
Our program consists of two different theological education opportunities for high school and college students. "Life Together" is an annual retreat for high school students only and is conducted on the seminary campus each March. The retreat is planned, conducted, and evaluated by seminarians and forms an important part of their own contextualized learning opportunities while at seminary. Usually, between thirty and forty high school youth attend the three-day retreat, where we engage together in study, service, fellowship, and worship.

When asked about their favorite aspect of the most recent "Life Together" retreat, participants mentioned the following:

"Studying the Bible in small groups was my favorite thing."

"My favorite was the small group reflection time."

"I liked making connections between the movies and my own faith story."

"The fellowship with everyone, the adults, the speakers, and my new friends was the best part."

"I liked Jane's [Prof. Jane Strohl] presentation about the woman whose daughter was possessed by a demon. I never thought about the way 'the demon' is present in everyone's life at one time or another."

From evaluations like these we continue to learn how eager high school youth are to study Scripture and the tradition from a Lutheran perspective, as well as how much they value the chance to make connections between biblical stories of faith, their own faith experiences, and the stories of exemplars of faith (Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others). In fact, the retreat is called "Life Together" in part to recall our experiences of studying Bonhoeffer's book Life Together in the first year of the program.

The second yearly educational opportunity for high school and college students is "Faith Active in Love," a three-week urban immersion experience. Education, immersion, advocacy training, and theological reflection form the backbone of this program, which is aimed at those young people seeking to dive more deeply into reflection on their faith and its relationship to social justice and advocacy work.

Participants in "Faith Active in Love" were asked to identify their most meaningful experience and what they learned that they would take home with them. What follows is some of what they wrote:

"I wanted to let you know how important everything that happened here was. You and all the crew changed my life in no way that anyone has changed my life before.... I will keep you in my heart forever."

"Everyone is a child of God — compassion and understanding was the biggest learning for me."

"Maybe it's weird, but the most meaningful thing was getting to know the people here [at PLTS] because they helped me realize that there are people who are living the life of ministry I want to be living. It was an inspiration for my future as a pastor."

"Jesus really revealed himself to me this week in meeting the homeless and having the hands-on experience of interacting and observing their life. I will take home the realization that life is precious and the faith community and even one person can make a difference."

From our experiences with young people who have participated in "Faith Active in Love," we believe that the reason many young people are dissatisfied with the church is that we have not offered them a vision big enough to satisfy their hunger to participate in a venture larger than themselves. We need to give them a vision of what they can be that is bigger than what most of us have settled for, something big enough to capture and stretch their idealism. We need to challenge them to commit themselves to some One who will ask everything of them — and give everything in return.²

Not only have we learned how much young persons of faith welcome the chance to dive more deeply into explorations of the relationships between their faith and the ways in which they live their lives, but we can say with conviction that they especially appreciate the mentoring relationships they can develop with seminary students working in our program. These relationships, which emphasize theological conversation and mutual faith formation, have taught young people to "extend hospitality to the big questions"³ which they think about constantly but may feel unable to discuss, even in the congregation. These big questions are questions of meaning, purpose, and faithfulness, questions that are rightly asked in young adulthood and throughout adult life as well.

Partners in Leadership
"Life Together" and "Faith Active in Love" are significant partners in the advancement of the mission and vision of both our seminary and the ELCA. Our mission statement reads, "PLTS develops leaders for the church by deepening faith in Christ, expanding the heart, challenging the mind, and energizing for mission." Our theological programs for youth are integral to the seminary's realization of this mission because they provide opportunities to encourage young people to grow into leadership in the church even before they have made a decision to enter seminary.

We believe these programs provide an integral, if not always initial, component of leadership development in the ELCA. We believe that developing leaders for the ELCA necessarily means equipping young people with tools for theological reflection (challenging the mind), with skills necessary for the effective exercise of leadership (energizing for mission), and with time to explore and hone life-giving faith practices in which they can experience challenge, comfort, and God's ongoing presence in their lives (deepening faith in Christ and expanding the heart).

We know that, whether a participant from our program eventually chooses a vocation in rostered ministry or not, we have nevertheless played a part in setting that young person on the road toward effective leadership in church and society through our interactions with them at "Life Together" and "Faith Active in Love."

These programs also are important partners in the work of ongoing theological education for persons of all ages and church-related vocational aspirations. Many local Bay Area congregations incorporate "Life Together" and "Faith Active in Love" into their annual congregational youth ministry calendar and have come to depend upon these "times away" for their youth.

The programs have taught us that it is essential to offer courses in our curriculum that specifically address ministry to, with, and for young people. We believe that graduates of our seminary will incorporate what they have learned about youth and family ministries into their understanding of what is essential to effective pastoral and diaconal ministry in the ELCA.

Most especially, we value the opportunity to travel with young people on their paths toward being leaders in our church and are honored to be part of the conversation with them about discerning God's call to ministry for the sake of the gospel.