Concordia University is a Lutheran higher education community committed to helping students develop in mind, body, and spirit for SERVICE to Christ in the Church and the world.
At Concordia, we believe, teach, and confess service to Christ in the Church and world. This assertion comes directly from our mission statement. CUWAA prepares students for service; we confer academic degrees with a purpose. We strive to shape minds AND hearts. In Ephesians 5:2 the apostle Paul encourages us to “live a life of love.” And Jesus exhorts us to love one another so that “by this all men will know that you are my disciples” (John 13:34-35).
At CUW faculty, staff, and students live lives of love with various and many acts of service. Last year CUW students reported doing more than 23,000 hours of service. And this year we are on track to match that number. All this despite COVID! We recently completed our annual Week of Service in which we collected nearly 200 shoes for Souls for Jesus, donated 75 servings of macaroni & cheese along with 54 jars of peanut butter for Family Sharing, collected $240 on Jeans at Work Day for the Milwaukee Rescue Mission, made 500 sandwiches for The Guest House, and painted over 600 hearts and fish for Lutheran Church Charities. We also collected more than 200 units of blood via 4 blood drives throughout the year.
Hundreds of campus ministry students at CUW engage in service from September through May by visiting nursing homes, writing letters to prisoners, sorting food at Feeding America, sorting donations for A Place of Refuge’s Blessed Again resale shop, holding lock-ins at local churches, and traveling abroad on mission trips—just to name a few!
Our freshmen-required Christian Citizen class incorporates a service project to encourage community service early on in our students’ stay at CUWAA. And many faculty engage in service-learning endeavors where course content is wed to community outreach.
All the above is done with a purpose: to reflect to the world the love that God displayed to us in Christ Jesus. We serve because Christ first served us by paying for our sin on the cross. Through Christ, God reconciles us unto Him, bringing us into the body of Christ. As such we care and love for others, especially for those in need. This is what the body of Christ does. This is who we are. This is why we serve.
—Randall Ferguson, PhD, serves as Director of Christian Service and Associate Professor of Communication
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