For confirmation leaders and teachers
Sessions for your group, ready to use.
Two ways to lead. The Learn the Faith books come with a script, prayers, and answer keys for every session. The eleven Luther's Trail units below each make a complete session: a story to read, two puzzles to play, terms to learn, and a passage to take home. Use as much or as little as you like. It costs nothing, and it always will.
Learn the Faith leader toolsScripts, prayers, and answer keys for The Big Story (6 sessions on the whole Bible), The Creed Path (5 on the creeds), Teach Us to Pray (7 on the Lord's Prayer), Ten Words (6 on the Ten Commandments), Washed and Fed (6 on Baptism, Confession, and Communion), He Is Risen (6 on Holy Week and Easter), When We Gather (6 on worship and the church year), Called and Sent (6 on faith in daily life), and How the Church Got Here (12 on church history). Add yourself as a leader to open them.A Luther's Trail session, start to finish
Built for a forty-five minute class. Shorten it by dropping the puzzle, or stretch it by playing both.
Luther's Trail: scope and sequence
Eleven units, roughly chronological. Units marked in gold form the six-week short course for classes that meet less often or start late in the year.
The six-week short course
If you have six sessions rather than eleven, use units 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, and 10. That keeps the turning points of Luther's life, the whole of the Small Catechism, and the church year, and it drops the units that are richer in detail than in doctrine. Nothing in the later units depends on the ones you skipped.
Using it in the room
Quick answers for the most common setups.
No devices?
Print the handouts. Every unit works on paper, with the answer key.
One screen at the front?
Run the crossword as a group. Students call out answers and one person types.
A tablet per table?
Have each table add its own player name so progress stays separate.
Mixed ages?
The word search has three levels with the same words. Younger kids can play the same unit.
Sending work home?
The printed handout and that stop's memory passage are the take-home for every unit.
Good to know
About the memory work
The Memorize page has a short passage for every stop. It also has the Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Daily Prayers, and Luther's words on Baptism, Confession, and Communion. Some stop passages are things Luther really said or wrote, put into plain English. Others sum up the main idea of the stop. The line above each passage tells you which kind it is.
What students keep, and what you can see
Progress is saved on each person's own device, under their own name, so several students can share one tablet in a classroom without writing over each other. There are no accounts and no sign-ups, which also means the site cannot report back to you who finished what.
If you need proof of work, the honest answer is paper: collect the printed handout, or have a student open the Passport page and show you their stamps. That is a deliberate trade. We would rather not hold a roster of minors' names on a server.
Helping every student feel ready
The What to Expect page has step-by-step guides for a worship service, communion, a baptism, confirmation day, and a funeral, plus a list of church words that don't mean what they sound like. It was written with neurodivergent learners in mind, and it helps anyone who is new. Share it with families before a first communion or confirmation.
If a student tells you something hard
Writing prompts and kitchen table questions sometimes open a door. A student may say that someone is hurting them, or that they feel hopeless or want to hurt themselves. Stay calm, thank them for telling you, and keep listening. Don't promise to keep it secret.
Then act the same day. Tell a pastor or another church leader, and follow your congregation's child safety policy. If your state requires you to report abuse, do that too. If anyone is in danger right now, call 911. For thoughts of suicide or a mental health crisis, call or text 988.
Confession in these lessons is only ever about our own sins. Someone else's harm is never a student's sin to confess or carry. The Forgiven Out Loud stop says this to students in plain words, and the Forgive Us and Deliver Us stops show them how to reach 988.
A word about Luther himself
Luther's later writing about Jewish people was harsh and shameful. It was later used to justify real harm. The ELCA formally rejected those writings in 1994, and this site follows that lead. The units cover his life, his translation work, his hymns, and his teaching.
If it comes up in your class, and with confirmation students it sometimes does, it is worth saying plainly rather than working around. The About page has the same note in language a student can read.
Copy it freely
Print as many handouts as you need, for any congregation, without asking. Grace is a gift, not a payment, and it seemed wrong to build something in Luther's name and then charge for it or count the copies.
Questions, corrections, or something that does not hold up to a second look? We would rather hear it. See the About page.