Nebraska Synod ELCA

On Friday mornings last summer, the quiet block around Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church in downtown Omaha started to hum a little differently.

Minivans pulled up to the curb. Junior high kids—some still rubbing sleep from their eyes, some already chattering—tumbled out, backpacks slung over shoulders. Inside the church, Director of Faith Formation Kristin Boe waited with a simple idea and a lot of hope for an experiment she and her team were calling “Service Fridays.”

It wasn’t a polished, decades-old program. It was, in her words, “one of those things we throw at the wall to see what sticks.”

The idea: invite middle schoolers—those heading into 6th, 7th, and 8th grade—to spend their Fridays in service. All day. Every Friday of the summer, if they wanted. No trip to a distant mission field, no bus rides across state lines. Just the square block around Kountze and the ministries that already lived there: the food pantry, the low‑income senior housing at DeFreese Manor, the health clinic, the Sunday School rooms that had quietly collected decades of “church stuff.”

They started small. A sign‑up sheet. A handful of kids. On their biggest day, twelve students showed up; over the course of the summer, about eighteen participated.

But something happened.

The pantry quickly became a “fan favorite.” Kids sorted canned goods, packed bags, and greeted guests. They assembled homeless outreach kits and hygiene bags. A few of them took on a particularly tender task: stocking the access point for menstruation supplies—pads and tampons that would quietly, practically, restore dignity for women and girls who needed them.

They walked a hot casserole across the street to Youth Emergency Services (YES House), a nearby shelter for young people in crisis, and delivered a meal they had prepared together. They spent a morning in the garden at DeFreese Manor, pulling weeds and tending flowers, then sat down for a social lunch with the residents, learning names and stories that didn’t sound like their own but felt strangely familiar.

At the health clinic, they did the kind of behind‑the‑scenes work that doesn’t show up in glossy newsletters: pulling staples out of stacks of paper, scanning documents into a computer. Back at the church, they dug into closets and classrooms, hauling out years of accumulated “we’ll use that someday” supplies, cleaning and freshening up Sunday School rooms for the children who would come after them.

It wasn’t glamorous. It was service—small, concrete, sometimes tedious.

And the kids loved it.

So much so that when several Omaha school districts had a day off in the middle of the year, six of those same middle schoolers showed up at Kountze on their own, unprompted, asking, “Can we work in the pantry today?”

The momentum of summer had spilled into the school year.

Beneath the tasks, something deeper was taking shape.

Kristin has a deep love for social justice. She’s quick to admit that she farms out the big theological vocabulary—words like “accompaniment”—to colleagues like Gretchen from the Nebraska Synod, who came one Friday to talk with the kids about what it really means to walk alongside others.

But Kristin embodies the heart of it in language her younger kids can understand: “Jesus is good. Love people. We are stronger together. We have a responsibility to be good stewards of the earth, our community, and others. It’s not about doing for people; it’s about being available for what’s needed in the moment, and listening to what people are actually asking for.”

For kids raised in a culture that often tells them that service is something you do for “the less than”—those who have less money, less stability, less of God—Service Fridays has a different posture. It’s not about being saviors. It’s about being neighbors. Not “bringing God” to people, but discovering God already at work in the pantry line, at the senior lunch table, in the waiting room of the clinic.

It’s an early, embodied lesson in accompaniment.

And it’s also about community. Junior high is a hard age—awkward, in‑between, full of questions about where and with whom you belong. At Kountze, Service Fridays are quietly helping to answer that. Kids from Kountze are inviting friends. At the end of the summer, the program linked arms with neighboring congregations that share confirmation ministry with Kountze. The result: kids who might only see each other at a big synod youth gathering years down the road are starting their shared story now, shoulder to shoulder over crates of produce and stacks of paperwork.

It’s “pre‑service work,” as Kristin calls it—laying a foundation of relationships and habits for the bigger trips and experiences that will come in high school.

The wider congregation is beginning to catch the vision too. Parents are thrilled to have a meaningful place for their kids to be on summer Fridays—a safe check‑in and a chance to see their children discover that they have something real to offer the world. This year, Service Fridays will invite the whole church to participate more actively: collecting toothbrushes, shampoo, and other hygiene items for the kids to sort into outreach bags; stepping in as extra adult volunteers as the circle widens.

Because it is widening.

Last year, most of the work stayed within Kountze’s square block. This summer, Kristin wants to take the kids further into Omaha, partnering with ministries like Urban Abbey and other congregations rooted in social justice. Gretchen has already shared a list of contacts; now it’s a matter of phone calls and planning.

The name will stay the same—Service Fridays. But the scope will grow.

Through it all, the days will keep their rhythm: real work, real impact, and real joy.

There will still be breaks for hide‑and‑seek in the church’s secret nooks and crannies, moments when Kountze kids proudly give newcomers a tour of their spiritual home. There will be laughter over shared lunches, small inside jokes born from tasks like de‑stapling mountains of paper. There will be tired legs and full hearts at the end of long days.

If you stand on that corner on a Friday this summer, you’ll see what Kristin sees: not just teenagers volunteering, but a small picture of the church Kountze believes in—one where kids grow up knowing they belong to a community, that they are needed, and that faith looks like showing up, listening well, and making room for all.