Finland: Lutheristi
Salvation - not for sale
"Lutheristi": Empowerment for Action
Young reformers: Rev Sini-Maaria Kataja, Rev Tapio Leinonen and Rev Heikki Repo
Church: Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
Implementation period: 2015-ongoing
How many people were involved? 32
How many people did you reach? 864
Links to the Project : www.lutheristi.fi
What did you aim at?
We aimed at raising awareness about Lutheran identity among young people in parishes around Finland.
What did you achieve?
We developed enough material to reach many people, especially those working for the church. We are still working on how to reach young people and to inspire youth workers and teachers in schools to use the material available.
What did you do?
We produced a short film, built a website, and did some coordinated Social Media campaigning for our video and website on Facebook.
Interview with young reformers
- What is the ongoing reformation you want to see in your church?
The participation of the youth in the church and the learning of the Lutheran identity during the Reformation year.
- What has been the reaction of the project among the youth?
The youth have been interested in learning more about the Lutheran identity through our project. The youth in Finland do not know about other Christian denominations, they have an idea that everyone is Lutheran (Christian) as it is in Finland.
The reaction is been generally positive from the youth and those who work with youth such as youth workers, youth pastors, school religious teachers, etc
- How has been the participation of the youth in the reformation project?
Since the webpage was launched around 800-1000 people have checked the webpage created for the projec. Different groups, schools and teachers have also used this for religious teaching about reformation at schools. The process of using social media is still going on.
- What has been challenging about creating the project?
We tried to get support from the church agency for media and communications but we have not received the backup and support we wanted. It takes some time to be able to spread the word and the use of our material for the teaching of the Reformation and the facts. Social media has been used and different people interested in it have shared it, but it has not been more active lately
- Did everything go as planned?
Yes and No. Yes, because we could make the project and fulfil the main objective to produce the video and the webpage as a material tool of teaching the Lutheran identity and the main fact of the reformation. No, because it was difficult to have a common timetable with the project leaders, the filming and all the process that takes its time to be ready. Although, everything has work well as we did it.
- How do you see the continuity of the project?
There is continuity for the project as the material for teaching about reformation and Lutheran identity is ready to use for parishes, church staff, teachers, etc.