Potential Impact on Students, Churches, Community:
IN 1524 MARTIN LUTHER WROTE TO THE COUNCILMEN OF THE GERMAN CITIES:
“Since a city should and must have educated people, and since there is a universal dearth of them and complaint that they are nowhere to be found, we dare not wait until they grow up of themselves; neither can we carve them out of stone nor hew them out of wood. Nor will God perform miracles as long as men can solve their problems by means of the other gifts he has already granted them. Therefore, we must do our part and spare no labor or expense to produce and train such people ourselves. For whose fault is it that today our cities have so few capable people? Whose fault, if not that of authorities, who have left the young people to grow up like saplings in the forest, and have given no thought to their instruction and training? This is also why they have grown to maturity so misshapen that they cannot be used for building purposes, but are mere brushwood, fit only for kindling fires…Therefore, I beseech you, my dear sirs, to let this sincere effort of mine bear fruit among you.” (LW 45:356-57, 377)
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Our Aim
Our school seeks to be intentionally Christian, and particularly Lutheran. We believe that a Lutheran ethos of doctrine and practice, carried out in the school as well as the home and church, will aid our children in their fight against sin, death, and the devil, and form within them the wisdom and virtue that overflow in faith toward God and love toward the neighbor. We pray that such an environment—both catechetical in instruction and sacramental in its view of liturgy and worship—will support the numerous area churches in sharing in the task of locating the young around the Word and finding their identity in who they are as the baptized children of God.
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C.S. LEWIS ONCE WROTE ON THE JOY OF READING OLD BOOKS. HE SAID,
“There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about ‘isms’ and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavors as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.” (C.S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books,” an introduction to St. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation)