(From: Directions – November-December 2023)
by Virginia Flo
At the 2023 LFL National Conference a few weeks ago, we introduced the Frontline Playbook concept. With this new initiative, it is our intent to provide valuable materials to the Frontline that will give you ideas and useful programs that you can easily pick up and utilize in your churches. If you weren’t there to hear firsthand what this is about, here is an overview of what the Frontline Playbook will consist of:
- A Frontline Playbook is designed to gather and share new and creative ways to repurpose existing Lutherans For Life projects and materials to utilize their full potential. In doing so, it is our hope that what may have been overlooked or not fully understood in the past will be seen as new possibilities for the future in your Frontline efforts.
- Just as a playbook might be used by a sports team to keep the team focused and working together with positive outcomes, so is our goal in providing new opportunities for the work in the Frontlines. There is an enormous number of valuable materials in our Lutherans For Life arsenal that we intend to gather and repurpose in ways the Frontline will be inspired to utilize.
- Sometimes our Lutherans For Life programs are so jampacked with important information that due to the sheer volume and timelines when introduced, the data and useful materials are not totally utilized in the field. It is our goal to revive these materials as much as possible over time and create playbooks that will help you in planning new and exciting ways to implement these programs in your local environments.
As an example, we will provide both thematic approaches and life topical approaches to implement. We may select four appropriate topics from previous Life Week programs that will consist of devotions, fact guides, activity sheets, and videos that might be implemented at various intervals. You may use the four selections over a period of time, e.g., one a week for a month or one each quarter for a year. You may also simply choose to pick one topic with its complementary components and use it at your next planned event. We will make every effort to give you ideas and strategies for implementation with options for each. And you can use your own creativity to come up with new ways to implement that we may not have provided. Our goal is to provide you with the prepared components, and all you need do is apply them to what works best in your environment.
We pray you will find this effort both useful and effective in your Frontline For Life ministries. Sometimes it’s a small tweak, and sometimes it’s a bigger revamp to make what is already available more useful for your needs. We value any input you choose to provide. Please feel free to reach out with any suggestions or questions you may have to our Volunteer Relations Team through Virginia Flo, Director of Volunteer Relations at vflo@lutheransforlife.org. It is our plan to start developing these Frontline Playbooks in early 2024 and continue them going forward as they prove useful.
May God continue to guide and bless your life-affirming work!