Nearly fifteen years ago, the dream of reaching out to serve families in the neighborhood of St. Paul’s Free Lutheran in Fargo, North Dakota, became a reality.  After much prayer and planning, and with help in training from CRU (Campus Crusade) and their S.A.Y. Yes! Centers, our congregation started an after-school program. The goal is to help students grow in all areas of their life—spiritual, academic, social, and practical. In the beginning, we welcomed students from our neighborhood school and our congregation two afternoons a week from 2:45 to 6:00 p.m. Things have changed a bit over the years, and we currently meet one day a week with most of our students staying for our Wednesday evening program as well. This year we had fourteen children regularly attend the after-school program, with all but two from outside of our regular church family. 

Our schedule includes free play, snacks, homework help, crafts, structured play, and a Bible time. We have one paid staff person with volunteers from the congregation assisting in all these areas.  Prayer support has been vital—sometimes we have asked a team of people to pray for the program and other times we have matched up people from St. Paul’s to each pray for a specific child. 

While many students come and go, we have a number that return each year, so we’ve used a variety of different curriculums for Bible time. During the 2024-25 school year, I based our Bible time on the book Jesus A-Z, compiled and illustrated by Leslie Hall and published by Ambassador Publications.

In this book, each letter of the alphabet connects to a name of Jesus and includes a Bible verse to go along with it. For most of the letters, it was also straightforward to relate a Bible story to the name of Jesus. Each week, I would come up with some sort of object or picture to go with the lesson that would help us all remember the name. For example, for the letter A, I showed a line with an arrow on each end to indicate Jesus was the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. For B, we used a bread bag for Jesus as the Bread of Life. Each of these items was put in a large cloth bag, and we would draw the items out of the bag in subsequent weeks as a review. We had a year-end “final test” where the students used these items to identify as many names of Jesus as they could. I was encouraged to see how much they had learned and retained throughout the year. 

Each of the students also had a copy of the coloring book that went along with the hardcover story book. As part of our Bible time, we would break into small groups and the children could color the page for the day, as well as work on memorizing the corresponding Bible verse. It worked well to have the small group leader initial the page if the verse was memorized, and students were rewarded with “dollars” that could be spent in our after-school program store. I was a little concerned that the older elementary children would think they were beyond an alphabet book and coloring book, but it was not problematic at all.

At the end of the school year, I was able to purchase a copy of the hardcover version of the book to send home with each family. I pray that the books will continue to be a blessing to these families as the names of Jesus and the Scriptures memorized are brought to mind through the pages of Jesus A-Z. 

You may wonder if we have seen increases in our church attendance through this outreach. While we haven’t seen huge gains in attendance, we have had baptisms and confirmations in our church that are direct results of our after-school program.  Relationships have continued outside the walls of our church as well.  A former after-school volunteer, who now volunteers in a jail ministry, reconnected with a woman who had been part of our program. She was able to be an encouragement to her while she was incarcerated.  Another former volunteer met up in Puerto Rico with one of our families that returned to their home there. 

There have been challenges along the way, but the blessings far outweigh them.  We are thankful to have played a part in sharing the love of Christ in our neighborhood.

Pam Twedt serves as the Parish Worker at St. Paul’s Free Lutheran Church in Fargo, ND.