2025 Main Speaker #1
REV. NATHAN SHERRILL
Rev. Nathan Sherrill
Rev. Nathan Sherrill is Senior Pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Council Bluffs, IA and Executive Director of David's Harp: A Center for Musical Development. Pastor Sherrill is married to Tina and together they have seven children.
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Music as the Family's Great Teacher
In 1996 Julie Aigner-Clark founded a business out of her home in Georgia anc alled it, "Baby Einstein." Driven by her passion for the arts, she wanted to introduce the fundamentals of music, language, poetry, colors, chapes and more to chidlren at the earliest of ages. Baby Einstein became an instant hit for many homes, mesmerizing countless children who drifted off to sleep, their last waking moment full of sights and sounds that were wholesome, pure and lovely. Music education and enrichment doesn't need to be relegated only to the early childhood years or those years of our formal education. If music is, as Luther said, "God's greatest gift," then it can and should be part of daily Christian life. In this presentation we will consider ways in which we can intentionally use Music as the Family's Great Teacher in our homes from beginning to life's end.
2025 Main Speaker #2
REV. HEATH CURTIS
Rev. Heath Curtis
Rev. Heath Curtis has been the pastor of Trinity & Zion, Worden & Carpenter, IL, since 2005. He has also served the LCMS as the leader of its Stewardship ministry since 2013. He and his wife are blessed with 8 children from a senior in college to a preschooler. He is also a back-to-back Illinois state champion in the revolver division of the International Defensive Pistol Association.
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Character Formation: Action and Reaction
What is the relationship between external action and internal motivation or piety? Do actions or motivations come first? Is one's character formed from the outside in or the inside out? Pastor Curtis brings a parent's and a parish pastor's perspective to bear on a question at least as old as Aristotle.
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2025 Main Speaker #3
REV. BENJAMIN BALL
Rev. Benjamin Ball
Rev. Benjamin Ball has served as Senior Pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Hamel, IL, since 2012 and is also the 2nd Vice-President of the LCMS. A graduate of Concordia University, River Forest, IL, and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO, he has also served parishes in Dedham, MA and Brookfield, IL. He was elected a Vice-President of the LCMS in 2019, and also serves on the Board of Regents of Concordia University, Seward, Nebraska. He is married to Serena and they have 5 children, who hunt with their dad.
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What to Do About School: Lutheran School, Public School, Home School, or No School?
God exhorts us in the Scriptures to "Train up a child in the way he should go." Christian parents desire to do this very thing and the Church has assisted throughout the centuries. How we do it today is of utmost importance, especially in light of ideological movements waging war against the truth and beauty of God's Word, and God's children.
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2025 Main Speaker #4
REV. DR. D. RICHARD STUCKWISCH
Rev. Dr. D. Richard Stuckwisch
Rev. Dr. D. Richard Stuckwisch has served as the pastor of Emmaus Lutheran Church in South Bend, Indiana, since his ordination in May 1996. He remains a part-time associate pastor of Emmaus but now serves full-time as the President of the Indiana District LCMS, having been elected to that office in 2022. He is a graduate of Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (M.Div. 1993, S.T.M. 2003), and of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend (M.A. 1998, Ph.D.. 2002). He served on the Lectionary Committee, the Lord's Supper Working Group, and the Hymn Selection Subcommittee of the Lutheran Service Book project from 1998 through 2006, and contributed to the LSB: Companion to the Services (2022). He and his wife, LaRena, were married in June 1985 and now make their home in Fort Wayne. They have ten living children, seven of whom are now married, and they rejoice in their ever-increasing number of grandchildren.​
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The Church as the Household & Family of God
There are many parallels between our earthly marriages and families and the household and family of God, as St. Paul alludes to in 1 Timothy 3. This comparison is more than an analogy, as both institutions are established by God and reflect His Image and LIkeness and to foster relationships with Him and one another in holy faith and holy love, such as we find in the creation of man, male and female, in Genesis 1-2, and as St. Paul addresses in Ephesians 5. Each congregation of the Church is a "big family," and every family is a "little church," as surely as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the One by whom all fatherhood on earth is called (Ephesians 3:15). So, then, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters learn to live in love for one another, each within his or her own respective vocation, in view of the life of the Church; and by the same token, the Church understands how to live and love as a family of pastor and people, brothers and sisters in Christ, in the ight of God's Word concerning marriage and family.
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