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We Invite You To Worship With Us! Worship Services in English: Junior Confirmation Classes in
English: Worship Services in
Lao: Sudanese Worship Service in the
Nuer Language:
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Trinity Lutheran
Church
Making Disciples Of All Nations!
Go and make disciples . . .
( Article excerpts from Aid Association for Lutherans (AAL) - November/December Correspondent )
Trinity Lutheran Church in Des Moines, Iowa has always looked at mission fields in its own backyard and has experienced growth through it.
In the 1950's when the LCMS church relocated near the campus of Drake University, church members opened their eyes to the mission opportunities with student on campus. In the 1980's, large numbers of Southeast Asian refugees were welcomed into Iowa - and into Trinity. And then again in the 1990's large numbers of Sudanese immigrants settled in the Des Moines area and found the doors open at Trinity.
"It provided an opportunity for the congregation to get involved in refugee resettlement," says the Rev. Steven Olsen, who was the pastor at Trinity through the growth of the Sudanese ministry. For many, Trinity became their mother church," says Olsen an AAL member who recently left Trinity for New York City where his wife has been called as a deaconess. "We welcomed them into our congregation and built close links with them. Many of the early refugees were sponsored by members of our congregation."
Today, Trinity is a trilingual congregation with weekly worship services celebrated in English, Laotian and Nuer, the language of a Southern Sudanese tribe. Members of the church's ministry team include both Southeast Asian and Nuer Deacons.
"The church is a group of people of all backgrounds," Olsen says. "Our Church becomes a mission school where, just by living together as people of different cultural and language backgrounds, we learn how to communicate the gospel cross-culturally."
But their growth hasn't been all cross-cultural.
"One year we received 95 new members through baptism and confirmation and they were not all Sudanese," Olsen says. "A lot of people in our community look at our congregation, at our ministries, and say, 'This is the type of congregation I want to be a part of.'"
Correspondent (ISSN 0740-6452) was the
official publication of Aid
Association for Lutherans (AAL), Appleton, Wisconsin, a fraternal benefit
society. Correspondent, AAL's member magazine is published bimonthly by AAL,
4321 N. Ballard Road, Appleton WI 54919-0001.
http://www.thrivent.com/