LHS Community,
There is a verse from Colossians that I keep coming back to as this school year closes: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.” LHS exists to do something specific: Empowered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we nurture spiritual, academic, and personal growth, equipping students for a life of Christian service. That mission does not happen because of a building; it happens because of people! Every classroom lesson, every practice, every hallway conversation…is ministry in action.
We recently celebrated our Faculty, Staff, and Board of Directors and gave thanks for their their years of faithful ministry, their devotion to our students, and the extraordinary ways God has used each of them to make LHS the community it is. I’d like to share a glimpse into that evening, because what was celebrated there reflects the heart of everything Lutheran High is called to be!
Service to the LCMS
Lutheran ministry is not a career path, it is a calling. The men and women we honored said “yes!” to that vocation and kept saying yes, year after year, equipping students to grow spiritually and impact their world for Jesus Christ.
Ron Stepney — 10 Years – Ron spent 28 years serving kids and communities before turning down Mexico Road and walking into LHS — and he has never stopped doing exactly what he did in every other chapter: learning names, showing up, and making this place feel like family.
Karen Thaemert — 15 Years – Karen helped to build LHS’s Sign Language program from one small class to three full courses and a team of student interpreters — and along the way discovered that teaching a language was also planting seeds of faith, as conversations about baptism in her classroom have led students to be baptized during the school year.
Kendra Rueckert — 15 Years – Kendra has spent fifteen years in ministry…serving as a DCE, teaching online, and now thriving in her fifth year as our Theology teacher, where spiderweb discussions go deep and students are known personally and spiritually.
Kelley Erhardt — 15 Years – Kelley has served as LHS’s Controller for nearly eight years, turning her responsibilities into stewardship and her daily interactions into ministry.
Tina Kassebaum — 20 Years – Tina has navigated twenty years of Lutheran ministry not with a five-year plan but with a willingness to do the next thing God sets in front of her — from DCE to substitute teacher to commissioned minister to our classroom this year, where she joined a special education team for the first time and called it incredibly rewarding.
Kim Paquette — 40 Years – Kim knew she wanted to be a teacher and forty years later she is still discovering new ways to grow — joining a collaborative special education team at LHS for the first time this year and calling it one of the most rewarding experiences of her career.
Service to LHS
These are the people who have seen our school through growth and transition, through hard years and great ones, and kept showing up. They did not stay because it was always easy. They stayed because the mission mattered more than the difficulty. Their years of service are that proof!
Dan Kreienkamp — Dan spent ten years at LHS teaching seven theology and psychology courses, coaching four sports, leading small groups and chapels — all while building the kind of relationships that made students want to open their Bibles and mean it.
Allison Tripp — Allison has been part of LHS for fifteen years, teaching six subjects, coaching three sports, launching the technology role, sponsoring Pep Club, and being the kind of colleague who finds humor on the hard days and shows up fully on the best ones.
Amber Maddick — Amber came in January 2007 for a semester and somehow twenty years went by; teaching art, coordinating Prom for a decade, chaperoning students to Italy, advising Student Council, and still having an astronaut helmet in her basement from a Homecoming costume she spent a week building. Every one of Amber’s twenty years at LHS was also a year of faithful service to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod as she brought her art, her faith, and her whole self to a ministry that shaped students and colleagues alike.
Dave Steinbacher — Dave came to LHS on a divine call, has spent thirty years in our building, and his voice is literally part of what this school sounds like — he has been the PA voice of Cougar gym for more basketball seasons than most people can count. His wisdom after three decades: “Nothing is as good as it seems and nothing is as bad as it seems — but somewhere in between, reality falls.” Thirty years of faithful, excellent service!
Those Leaving LHS This Year
These men and women did not just hold positions at LHS, they lived the mission. They showed up every day empowered by the Gospel, poured themselves into students, and left this place better than they found it. We send each of them with gratitude and celebration!
Sarah Kortze – Sarah spent eleven and a half years at LHS teaching science (astronomy, physics, meteorology, physical science) and coaching Scholar Bowl for six of them, all while quietly watching this school grow around her and anchoring her classroom in authenticity and faith.
Brian Leach – Brian served as our athletic trainer with the kind of steady, reliable presence that athletes and coaches depend on every season.
Josh Linn – Josh spent six years at LHS, including one and a half deployed, teaching science and engineering with an optimism and a gift for meeting students exactly where they were, whether that meant deep content or hard life lessons. He leaves to serve as Officer in Charge of a CBRN Task Force for a FEMA Homeland Response Force.
Carol Sayers – Carol is no stranger to LHS; three of her children walked across our graduation stage and she served on our Board before stepping back into the classroom when we needed her. She brought decades of experience reaching students and she did it with the quiet generosity of someone who had nothing left to prove and chose to serve anyway.
Grant Stadler – Grant came to LHS on a divine call to St. Charles, taught social studies, coached girls’ tennis and boys’ golf, and built his strongest relationships on bus rides and in the everyday moments when content met real life. He heads to Lutheran High Northeast in Norfolk as Activities Director.
Amy Scott – Amy spent five years teaching French and Spanish at every level, leading the World Language Department, marching in Washington D.C. three times as part of the March for Life, and watching two of her own children graduate from these halls. She steps next into the Sparrow Project, bringing the Gospel of education overseas.
A Career Celebrated – Liz Cipriano
Forty-six years in education. Twenty of them right here at LHS! She came from England with an accent, a vision, and extraordinary standards and what she built from nothing is now a program, a tradition, and a legacy.
Liz started an after-school strings club for students and what began as a handful of kids in a room that was decidedly not a music room became the LHS Orchestra, taken to State Festival every year, anchored by a standard that never wavered. This fall, one of the students she first taught as a first grader, Amber Spink, picks up the baton as her successor and that is what forty-six years of faithful, excellent ministry looks like!
Board of Directors
Not all ministry happens in a classroom, an office, or on the sideline/court. Some of it happens in boardrooms and budget conversations and the strategic decisions that make everything else possible. Brandee Iannelli served six years on the LHS Board of Directors, beginning in August 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, and was a steady, faithful voice through a leadership transition and the capital campaign that is transforming our campus. Her parting word, drawn from Proverbs 22:6: recognize the unique gifts God has placed in every person, be patient, support one another in love, and never stop encouraging young people to consider a life of service to the Church.
What a team! What a God!
Every name we celebrated represented something that cannot be manufactured, it can only be lived. These are men and women who chose to give their professional lives to something eternal. Lutheran High does not run on programs or buildings. It runs on people who believe that equipping young men and women for a life of Christian service is worth everything they have. The faculty and staff you see above are proof of that. Year after year, they have chosen our mission, to Grow and Serve in Christ!
Soli Deo Gloria — To God Alone Be the Glory.
