Study Guides

Study Guides

Study guide: The grace of adoption

Opening your heart and family to welcome a child who needs a home is an incredible act of generosity and love. Thousands of children are adopted every year, but thousands…

Study Guides

Study guide: Freed in Christ to serve the neighbor

What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? Christians of every age, including our own, have asked this question, and the answers have ranged all over the religious…

Study Guides

Study guide: Recipes from the heart

Mealtime fellowship has been a Christian tradition from the beginning of the Jesus movement. Eating and drinking together was not only a way to love our neighbors as ourselves, but…

Study Guides

Study guide: The secret life of dairy workers

Not just on dairies, you see them everywhere—walking on the street, shopping in supermarkets, dining in restaurants, driving on the highways, and working in factories, farms, orchards, construction sites, hotels…

Study Guides

Study guide: Thy kingdom come

Jesus taught and preached on the kingdom of God and heaven more than just about any other topic. The reign of God features prominently in Jesus’ parables, in his encounters…

Study Guides

Study guide: After the media leaves, Lutherans stay

Everyone in the ELCA can be proud that Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR) has earned respect, admiration and gratitude for its approach and dedication to helping people whose lives have been…

Study Guides

Study guide: Tent of Nations

Because of our strong relationship that dates back to when Lutherans sent missionaries to the Middle East, we have been intimately involved with the struggle for peace in Israel and…

Study Guides

Study guide: Unity in diversity

In a time when it seems fragmentation and rancor are the world’s orders of the day, ELCA Lutherans and three denominations of the Reformed tradition—the United Church of Christ, the…

Study Guides

Study guide: “E Pluribus Unum Deus”: Out of many, one God

We share a world with people who hold beliefs that are different from ours. This simple truth has been apparent from the beginning of history, and yet humanity has never…

Study Guides

Study guide: Living out our commitment

The ELCA’s 1993 social statement “Freed in Christ: Race, Ethnicity and Culture” reminds us that when it was formed in 1988, the denomination established a goal to grow its membership…

Study Guides

Study guide: Grief with no warning

Death and transition are universal human experiences. Acknowledging our common mortality, some anonymous plainspoken philosopher coined the phrase: “Nobody gets out alive.” But that realization doesn’t lesson the pain that…

Study Guides

Study guide: Alaskan village tries to preserve its culture

Residents of Shishmaref, Alaska, may be our country’s first “climate refugees”—people forced to leave their homes because of rising seas attributed to climate change. But they probably won’t be the…