Nebraska Synod ELCA

On a typical Wednesday night in the program year, cars pull into the lot at St. Timothy’s from every direction. Families from Lord of Love, Kountze Memorial, St. Timothy’s, Immanuel in Bellevue , Messiah in Ralston, Trinity and sometimes a couple of other congregations open doors and send middle schoolers tumbling out with backpacks and Bibles in hand.

Some of these kids arrive already knowing each other from school. Others recognize only their own pastor’s face. By the time the evening is over, they will have prayed, learned, and laughed with young Lutherans from across the city. Many of these kids would never have crossed paths if their churches were not doing confirmation together.

This is collaborative confirmation in Omaha. An experiment that has quietly grown into a shared ministry across multiple congregations.

“What if we did this together”

The idea began the way many good church experiments do. Around a table at text study.

In the years after COVID, an associate pastor from Kountze Memorial named what many were feeling. Families wanted to see more kids in confirmation, but people were not all back yet. The question to colleagues was simple. Would anyone be interested in doing it together?

Pastor Kathy Gerking from St. Timothy’s did not hesitate. “Yes. Me.”

From there, what started with two congregations quickly grew. Within the first year, Pastor Becky from Lord of Love joined in. Other pastors reached out as they realized they had only one or two confirmation age students, or some years none at all.

Each congregation could have tried to go it alone. Instead, they chose a different question. What might be possible if we stopped worrying about whose program this is and simply formed our young people together?

A ministry that keeps evolving

Pinning down the exact start date has proven tricky. As Pastor Lucy Wynard from Kountze Memorial puts it, “It is a very organic thing.” The collaboration has shifted and expanded each year.

It began with a single curriculum borrowed from one congregation and adapted for shared use. Over time, the pastors began thinking in terms of a clear two year cycle, planning content and experiences that would build on each other.

“This year, as a group, we got together and decided a couple of things,” Pastor Wynard explains. “One was to deliberately put the invitation out to the clusters in Omaha that anyone else who would want to join us could. And somewhat to our surprise, two congregations that I do not know that we would have expected said, yes, we want to jump on board.”

Other smaller congregations said, “We do not have students this year, but in a year or two, we expect to have one or two, and so we will join you then.”

The numbers tell part of the story. Last year, roughly 25 to 30 students participated. If everyone’s expectations hold, there could be 35 to 40 students this coming year, representing six to eight congregations.

Why they gather at St. Timothy’s

Most Wednesday nights from late August through early May, the group meets in person at St. Timothy’s. It is not because St. Timothy’s is the largest congregation involved. It is because it is central, with easy access from across Omaha and close to Interstate 680.

In Advent and Lent, when each congregation offers midweek worship, confirmation students stay home and serve in their own congregations instead of traveling. They usher, acolyte, help with meals, and take worship notes. Each church sets its own expectations for how young people participate in the life of their particular community.

The rest of the year, though, the center of gravity shifts. St. Timothy’s becomes a kind of shared classroom and community hub for young Lutherans from across the city.

This year, at the request of families who drive from longer distances, the pastors are adding a simple supper before class. As with everything else, the work is shared. Congregations rotate responsibility for meals just as they rotate teaching and leadership roles.

Shared leadership, shared voices

From the beginning, the pastors have understood that together must mean more than simply combining rosters.

They divide up the teaching, so students hear different voices, perspectives, and stories from week to week. They share responsibility for special events, like orientation night and a fall lock in. They honor each congregation’s own expectations beyond Wednesday nights, such as worship attendance, service roles, or faith practices at home.

The fall lock in has become a kind of tradition in itself. Kountze hosts the overnight, and confirmation students:

• Volunteer together at the Kountze food pantry on Friday evening
• Spend the night in the church building, with time for games, prayer, and conversation
• On Saturday morning, walk together to Table Grace Cafe, another Nebraska Synod ministry, for breakfast

Along the way, the pastors build in teaching and reflection. Conversations about mercy and justice, prayer walking through the neighborhood, and seeing how faith connects to hunger, community, and daily life.

Each year the team also experiments. One year the focus may be on a new special event. The next year it may be on deepening parent engagement. This year the new experiment is the shared meal.

“I did not know you were Lutheran”

If the logistics and planning meetings sometimes feel more complex with more cooks in the kitchen, the pastors are clear. The benefits far outweigh the extra work.

“In some ways it is less efficient and more time consuming to do collaborative confirmation,” Pastor Wynard admits. “There are ways in which some things would be faster and easier if we just did it by ourselves, because the more cooks you get in the kitchen, the longer it takes to work things through. Even having planning meetings, right, we have to drive across town and meet with each other and figure out what we are doing.”

There is some benefit in not having to teach every week, because they can take turns. But for her, the real value is in what the students receive.

“What that means is the students are getting different voices from different pastors, are seeing different minds, and hearing stories of how different churches do things,” she says. “The biggest benefit right from the start, I think, is that our students felt not so alone.”

In smaller churches, a confirmation class might be one, two, or five students. Even in larger congregations, there may only be a handful of youth in any given year.

“To be in a room with 20 kids, 30 kids, feels for them much more energizing, much more engaging,” Pastor Wynard says.

Pastor Gerking is seeing the same thing. “We are starting to see more of that, the connection growing with the kids,” she says. She recalls that when Kountze held its confirmation service in the fall, “at least one, maybe more, of the kids from other churches went to Kountze’s confirmation because they knew the students, just to go and be supportive.”

The collaboration is also giving students a broader sense of the church they belong to.

“We hear students say, oh, I did not know so and so was a Lutheran and went to that other congregation,” Pastor Wynard says. In a city with multiple school systems, that matters. “Like, they meet kids from other churches who are in their own schools,” Pastor Gerking notes.

The diversity within the group has become another gift. Each congregation brings students with different personalities, backgrounds, and needs, including kids who are neurodivergent or have other special needs.

“With more kids in the room, there is just more space and welcome,” Pastor Wynard reflects. “There is more mirrors to them, there is more people who, they can find their niche, their people, their place. And for congregations that only have one pastor right now, we have got multiple genders. It is just all of that diversity that is a benefit to the kids, and to us.”

Confirmation that does not end on confirmation Sunday

The relationships formed on Wednesday nights have a way of showing up elsewhere.

When Pastor Gerking and Pastor Wynard compared summer calendars, they intentionally chose the same week at Carol Joy Holling Camp so their youth would find familiar faces when they arrived.

“And I asked my kids when they came back, did you see any of the other confirmation youth,” Pastor Gerking recalls. “Yep, I saw confirmation kids.” Parents have started asking, “If I sign my kid up for this, will their friends from confirmation be there.”

At Kountze, seven of the eight eighth graders who were just confirmed and are going into ninth grade signed up to go on the Nebraska Synod Journey youth mission trip. Pastor Wynard believes the collaborative nature of confirmation played a role in that.

“I think a big part of that was confirmation,” she says. “They already knew and were excited about who they would see.”

The collaboration does not just help congregations sustain a confirmation program. It sends young people out into the wider church already connected to one another and to synod ministries.

Seeing the wider church and their place within it

For the pastors, one of the quieter joys of this work is watching adults connect across congregations as well.

At shared events, they have started to recognize lay leaders from other churches, remember names, and see the gifts congregations bring even in seasons when they do not have many children or youth of their own.

That shared mindset extends to how the pastors talk about mission and ministry. The same group of leaders who plan confirmation also talk about how to support synod ministries right in their own backyard, such as San Andres and Niles Chapel.

“The other benefit that I know we have noticed is the opportunity for cross conversation and promotion of shared mission,” Pastor Wynard says. She points to their use of offerings and service projects as examples. As they plan together, ideas spark. How might confirmation classes support a local pantry. How might youth service projects connect directly with nearby congregations doing community ministry.

“As we have these, it is the cross pollination and proximity of just being near each other means we are including those things naturally in confirmation in ways that it spins off other ideas,” she says. “It just feels like a lot of benefit.”

A glimpse of the church we are becoming

Collaborative confirmation in Omaha is not a polished program with a decade-long strategic plan. It is an experiment that keeps unfolding. More congregations asking to join. New elements like shared meals are being added. Evolving roles for lay leaders. A community of pastors who are learning as they go.

It has also become something more than a stopgap solution.

In a time when many congregations feel the weight of shrinking numbers and shifting patterns of participation, this story offers a different picture. One where scarcity becomes an invitation to creativity, and where young people discover that their church is bigger than a single building.

On any given Wednesday night, you can see it in the small things.

A student from one congregation saving a seat for a friend from another.
A pastor watching a room full of kids and thinking, “None of us could have done this alone.”
A confirmation small group recognizing a face from camp or the synod youth trip and realizing they already belong to something wider.

It is, in its own way, a living confirmation of what we say we believe. That we are the body of Christ together, called into shared ministry for the sake of our young people and the world they are growing up to serve.