Luther South is gone
The high school from which I graduated is no more.
In the old days, when there were four flourishing Lutheran high schools in the Chicago area and nearly every LCMS parish had a parochial school, I would never have predicted this. But then, I would never have predicted the apostasy that has left churches closing right and left (including two of the four congregations I served as pastor), the M.Div an economically useless degree- and our nation in the sad and sorry shape spiritually and morally it's in now.
I'm reading Jeremiah in my devotions right now. It might as well have been written for America today.
I can't say the four years I spent at Luther were, very frankly, the four best years of my life. But I mourn for it anyway. All of us were better when it, and institutions like it, were still around.
ADDENDUM: Realistically, changing demographics also played a large role. The middle class is vanishing in Chicago as well as everywhere else, and the German and Northern European stock which made up much of the Southwest Side's population has long since left. To a large degree, Lutheran high schools in Chicago simply don't have enough Chicago Lutherans to support them they way they did back in the 'Sixties.
But even so, it's tragic for the spiritual welfare of those who remain that things have gotten to this point
In the old days, when there were four flourishing Lutheran high schools in the Chicago area and nearly every LCMS parish had a parochial school, I would never have predicted this. But then, I would never have predicted the apostasy that has left churches closing right and left (including two of the four congregations I served as pastor), the M.Div an economically useless degree- and our nation in the sad and sorry shape spiritually and morally it's in now.
I'm reading Jeremiah in my devotions right now. It might as well have been written for America today.
I can't say the four years I spent at Luther were, very frankly, the four best years of my life. But I mourn for it anyway. All of us were better when it, and institutions like it, were still around.
ADDENDUM: Realistically, changing demographics also played a large role. The middle class is vanishing in Chicago as well as everywhere else, and the German and Northern European stock which made up much of the Southwest Side's population has long since left. To a large degree, Lutheran high schools in Chicago simply don't have enough Chicago Lutherans to support them they way they did back in the 'Sixties.
But even so, it's tragic for the spiritual welfare of those who remain that things have gotten to this point
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