Building Meaningful Lives

Gregg has served for over thirty years in Lutheran schools and organizations with students from pre-K to grade 12. From Detroit to Anaheim to St. Louis and finally to Orange, where he and his wife Melanie and their three children have lived since 1997, God has allowed him to be a teacher, youth director, coach, summer camp director, product manager, principal, and executive director.  He thanks God for the overflow of blessings He has provided along the way.

In December I accepted a Call to become the next Head of School at Concordia International School Shanghai.  My wife, our youngest daughter, and I will be moving in mid-July to begin this new adventure in ministry.  Our daughter started her own blog a few weeks ago to describe what the transistion will be from Orange Lutheran.  Here is one of her most recent posts...

Don't Tell Me I'm Brave...

The dictionary would define being brave as being ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage, and being ready to endure or face (unpleasant conditions or behavior) without showing fear.
But I don't like that. I think that puts it all on me. Like there is some inner power that I have that is letting me do this. But since we decided this I have had so many people tell me how brave I am, and we are as a family. Please don't.

I believe that anyone could do this. We aren't special or brave or anything like that. We aren't moving to China for us. We are following God to China. It's a leap of faith into the unknown. God is big, and God is brave. Without God, we couldn't do this. Really.

So I think there has got to be a better word for all of this. I don't know what it is. :)

But please, don't tell me I'm brave.

SDG!

Two Lutheran elementary schools and one Lutheran high school in our area closed in the last year.  Of those staying open, many others are struggling to attract students.  Staffs are being reduced.  Budgets are being slashed.  The percentage of member students is becoming less each year.  The morale of the teachers is being affected.  The finger pointing has begun.  Tensions within congregations are high.  The focus becomes “How do we survive?” instead of “How do we reach these families with the Gospel?”

Whom do we blame?  The recession caught us off-guard.  Our families are not able to afford the costs.  The neighborhood is changing.  We don’t have that many member students anymore.

How do we fix it?  How do we reset our future? Whom can we learn from?  Who is not struggling in this economy?  Which schools are growing in neighborhoods/areas like mine?  What changes do we/I need to make right now?

What do you think?  If you were in charge of a school ministry today, what would you do that is not being done to chart a course towards a brighter future?

SDG!

Reinvent high school.  It was a challenge laid before our administrative team about 10 years ago by our then Executive Director, Dr. Ken Ellwein.  Think about what can be, not what is.  Embrace new possibilities, not retreat from inevitable change.

Rethinking how to deliver curriculum was a major challenge for us at Orange Lutheran.  We had a small campus (by high school standards) and a ruling from our city not to exceed 1150 students on our campus.  We had waiting lists of people wanting to attend the school and receive a Christian education.  How were we ever going to meet their needs?

It is fun to look back now on how God orchestrated exactly what we needed to do, many times in spite of how we initially responded to His direction.  The establishment of an online platform opened us up to so many new types of opportunities to connect students with the Gospel.  We could offer our courses to students anywhere in the world.  Orange Lutheran was not bound to a 13-acre parcel in Southern California any longer.  An enrollment cap of 1150 students wasn’t a lid.

How we do high school is changing.  We need people who are innovative.  We need teachers who are not afraid of change.  We need inventors.

I remember my first year of teaching in the fall of 1980.  I was the youngest on the staff by quite a few years.  The veterans had all been at it a long time: 20, 30, 35+ years.  To still be a teacher after 30 years seemed like a lifetime.  I guess that is why my friends and I called them lifers.  We wondered if we could make it that long.  Yet, I find myself starting year number 32 this year, and I am as energized as ever.

As a young person, my goal was to have a job that didn’t feel like a job.  I wanted to make a difference.  I tried a lot of things in high school and college from busboy to grocery clerk to campus maintenance to factory worker to construction gopher.  All of them felt like jobs. 

When I started teaching, it was very different.  Everyday was a new adventure with different possibilities and characters.  It didn’t get old in the early years, and it’s not old today.  I may not always relish what I have to deal with on a specific day, but I do enjoy the variety of opportunities God presents continuously. 

Thirty-two years.  My name is Gregg, and I’m a lifer.

SDG!