Friends,
It’s pretty old school. I can’t even remember when I learned it. My best guess is that it was probably when I was in grade school. I went to St. Paul-First English Lutheran School, a K – 9 school that was jointly operated by my church, First English Lutheran Church, and its “mother church,” St. Paul Lutheran Church, one of the oldest existing congregations in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a congregation started in 1839 by German immigrants who arrived in New Orleans before the civil war.
In the 1880’s the German Lutherans at St. Paul were finding husbands and wives among the diverse populations in their neighborhood. New immigrants were coming all the time. Some from Sicily where there had been a famine, others from Ireland and Britain, and some from Mexico, Spain and Portugal. These new immigrants found it impossible to worship at St. Paul because the services and sermon and Bible classes were all taught in German. Long story short many of them decided it was time to start a new church, a “First English” Lutheran Church where they could worship in the language they knew now – English.
My father was confirmed at First English in the 1930’s when he was in his teens. His folks couldn’t afford to send him to the Lutheran school, so he attended public school with his brother and sister. That meant to be confirmed he had to attend confirmation classes for two years. He married a Roman Catholic woman who took adult instruction with the pastor of First English and was confirmed there before they were married. When I came along in the early 1950’s my dad made up his mind to send me to the St. Paul First English Lutheran School. Whatever animosities were left in the dispute over the language question were laid aside so that the two churches could do ministry together, including the Lutheran School they now jointly operated.
I started as a kindergarten (all day) student in 1958 and didn’t go on to public high school until 1968 when I finished 9th grade. Somewhere in those ten years I was taught that one way to pray was to remember the anagram ACTS: which stands for Adoration, Confession of sins, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.
It is so easy for me to pray a list of what my concerns and issues are at the moment, that sometimes I forget a lot that I really should and need to say to God in my prayers. The ACTS anagram helps with this. For example when we were under level two (be ready to go) and fires were raging ten miles or so south and east of us, my prayers were naturally for God to keep us and hour home safe. But the old school anagram I learned so many years ago reminded me that God deserves better from me when I come to him in prayer. So, as I lay on that cot in the library of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Salem where my wife and I evacuated with our dogs went to be safe, I tried to focus my prayers on ACTS:
A: ADORATION - there is reason always to adore and praise God for all his mighty deeds of love. “You have filled all creation with light and life, heaven and earth are full of your glory.”
C: CONFESSION OF SIN - that I daily sin much and indeed deserve nothing good from God, rather that God’s protections and provision for me and my family are undeserved gifts of mercy.
T: THANKSGIVING - that even if the fire would have swept away our home we have much for which to be thankful not the least of which is the Lord Jesus and his gift of himself in his cross and resurrection.
S: SUPPLICATION - and yes, God does invite me to tell him my needs and concerns as a little child would to a loving parent. God welcomes me as a supplicant into his divine and holy presence and rejoices in that I look to him for all that I need in life and in the hour of my death.
I am so grateful that my parents sacrificed in order to send me to the Lutheran School that was operated by my church and St. Paul’s. The things I learned there, in those one hour religion classes taught every school day, have served to provide me with spiritual resources that I rely on now as a “senior citizen.”
Yet I meet and hear of many parents that are worried about “forcing religion” upon their children, parents that will not even have them baptized, let alone bring them to worship and find opportunities for them to learn the faith. Ironically at Peace we have done about as many adult baptisms and child baptisms. I’m grateful for this, but I am worried too.
The comfort and spiritual strength I receive from God in his mercy through prayer is a direct result of the determination of my parents to provide for my education not only in academics but in the Christian faith, and that’s a commitment they made when they brought me for baptism. And they had enough fear of God in them to know it would not be good to renege on that commitment,.
It strikes me that two things that sadly correlate are the decline of many congregations of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod with the closing of the Lutheran Schools they operated. I’m not saying that operating a day school is the only way to do it, but my experience with prayer has led me to wonder whether many of us are even asking the question of how to share the faith from generation to generation.
By the way, St. Paul Lutheran School is still in operation had about 140 students last year, and celebrated the 175thanniversary of the church and school in 2015. Here are some pictures:
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May God bless you in your prayer life!
Pastor Joe Hughes
October 5, 2020