Every congregation operating a Lutheran school needs to recognize that the school is and should be an essential part of the ministry of the congregation and closely connected to its mission.

The Christian parents holding their newborn baby are overwhelmed with emotions, with thankfulness and joy for the miracle of life that God has created. They are also filled with a sobering realization. Here, in this little human being, they are presented with the huge, life-changing responsibilities of feeding, clothing, and protecting their child. They are ready to assume these responsibilities, trusting that God will provide them with the ability and the means to carry them out.

But Christian parents are also mindful of another, even greater responsibility. Into their hands God has not only placed a little body but a new soul. Within hours or days of that child's birth, they will be the ones to initiate a second, even more important, birth through the water and Word of Holy Baptism. And in all the years that follow, until that child leaves his father and mother to begin his own home and family, they will teach the child to pray, to worship, to hear the words of the Savior, and to follow him as his disciple.

Undeniably those spiritual responsibilities rest first with the parents. But from the very founding of our synod, it's been recognized that congregations can provide valuable assistance to parents as they strive to bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord. Many, if not most, congregations in the early years of our synod worked and sacrificed to establish Lutheran schools, where the foundation of faith laid first in the home could be built upon. Congregations saw these schools not just as a means to preserve German culture and language in their new American setting, not just as an alternative to secular education, but as an essential part of the ministry and work of the congregation.

For many decades Lutheran schools have proven their value to congregations and to the synod. But that system of Lutheran education seems to have fallen on some hard times in recent years. School enrollments are declining. Teaching positions are being eliminated. Some congregations have closed their schools, and others are facing that very real possibility. Why is this happening, and, more important, what can we do to reverse this trend?