Youth ministry approaches for the upcoming school year

Planning out your youth ministry for the next year? Check out the resources available!

Fostering Faith in the Next Generation

Did you know The Foundation is also designed to assist your congregation in reaching out to unchurched souls in your community?
The Foundation - welscongregationalservices.net

Using The Foundation to Reach the Unchurched

Did you know The Foundation is also designed to assist your congregation in reaching out to unchurched souls in your community?

Who Am I? – A Youth Ministry Video Resource

What’s going on with teens today?...

Helping God’s People Become Christ’s Ambassadors

They are long-time friends of my parents and life-long members of WELS....

Baby steps

Our congregational evangelism chairman was following up by phone on a visitor to worship....

Wrong number evangelism

Our congregational evangelism chairman was following up by phone on a visitor to worship....

It’s not what you say . . .

You know what they say, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it, that counts.”...

More called workers for free!

Does it seem to you like the vacancy rates at our churches and schools has grown to a troubling level?

Is this the Power Glove?

When Nintendo came out with the Power Glove, I was eight years old. Never had I seen anything so glorious in my short life. When it premiered in the movie The Wizard starring Fred Savage, I could not think of anything greater, more fun,…

You Are God’s Mask

“I just feel like I have no purpose in my life. I’m not accomplishing anything, and I feel guilty.” Those words were spoken by a wife and mother of three as we sat together in my office. So I asked her, “Take me through a typical…

Congregational Challenge

“I triple dog dare ya.” Doubtless, you’re familiar with the scene from the classic movie “A Christmas Story.” Ralphie explained: “Now, Schwartz created a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple dare and going…

“Whole” Life Stewardship

Giving God Glory and Going All In Everything we have is a gift from God. If you think through the gifts God gives, the most important ones fit nicely into five categories. They can be called the 5 “T”s. God gives us everything we have,…

Welcoming the Struggling

You don’t know…Everyone has a story. You don’t know me until you know my story, and even then, you might not see my heart as Jesus sees it.

Coming from Congregational Services in 2019

In 2018, Congregational Services coordinated the synod-wide C18 program, which had the ambitious goal of reaching one-million souls prior to or on Christmas Eve 2018. It was an outreach focus. In 2019, Congregational Services will roll out two…

C18 – The importance of the family altar

Imagine a 16-year-old WELS member. What are the chances that individual is still WELS when he’s 30? We have studied this multiple times in our church body’s history. My commission, Congregational Counseling, has churches who work with us…

Ways to utilize To the Ends of the Earth

The fourth and final evangelism movie from WELS, titled To the Ends of the Earth, is complete. The video tells the story of the apostle Paul’s work in Philippi. There are literally dozens of ways to use it. We thought it might be good to summarize. Immediate…

To Voucher or Not to Voucher

That is a question many more WELS school leaders are asking themselves. Government-funded programs that give parents vouchers or tax credits for school tuition are on our national landscape for the foreseeable future. Accepting state funding…

MissionInsite – Know Your Audience

If you Google “know your audience,” you will find that the first returns are all about marketing. To sell a product, you need to know your audience. Yet we don’t “market” the gospel. We proclaim it. Moreover, we do so with the confidence…

Is the Decline of Scouting a Mission Opportunity for Us?

The Boy Scouts have been in the news a couple times in recent years. In 2013 it ended the ban on openly homosexual Scouts that had been in place from its formation in 1910.  In 2015 the Boy Scouts began accepting openly gay Scout leaders...

Welcome to the Resource Center

Welcome to WELS Congregational Services Resource Center. I’d like to explain why we spent time building this site, and why we’re going to spend a lot more time populating it with all sorts of resources. Our mission statement: “WELS…

A Tour of the Resource Center

The Parts of the Resource Center Why another WELS website? The primary audience for wels.net has been very wide. WELS members can go there for news or devotional thoughts. Non-WELS members can go there to learn about our church. This site,…

Preventing child abuse in church

Churches should be the safest, most loving places on earth. Church leaders should be on the front-lines of protecting children. So why is child abuse so prevalent in churches? I believe there are two reasons: Satan targets churches.  The…