Make it Genuine

Story: Hope Nelson '25
Photos: Courtesy of Rev. Dr. Andrew Watkins and Concordia Marketing

Rev. Dr. Andrew Watkins uses his past experience to meet his M.Ed. students where they are.

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Rev. Dr. Andrew Watkins believes that growing up on a dairy farm taught him to recognize how people learn. “Cows...they don’t all learn at the same rate. You know, this one can do this, and this one you have to wait for,” he says. “I didn’t even know that I was learning this when I was little.” I first met Watkins over a Zoom screen in October 2023. Neither of us could figure out how to get the sound to work, so we ended up hearing each other through our cell phones and seeing each other on our computer screens. Watkins asserts with years of experiences, "God finds a way to help us learn and connect with one another." 

“I like seeing pictures, [and] seeing who I’m talking with,” Watkins explains. He knows, however, that people learn in different ways – in 2013, he earned his doctorate from the University of Arizona in differentiated instruction, a field that teaches the importance of education methods that optimize learning for all students. 2014 marked his first semester as a graduate professor at Concordia University, Nebraska. Since then, he’s taught a course during almost every eight-week instructional period. The course he teaches is entitled “Serving and Leading in the Community and World” – and Watkins knows service.  

After graduating from high school, Watkins joined the Army, where he said, “I like to be outside. Give me a job where I can be outside." After working as a topographic surveyor in the U.S. Army for four years, he went to college for geology and became a high school science teacher in Lynchburg, Virginia.  

It was the LCMS church in Lynchburg that planted a new idea in Watkins’ head. “I started inviting [my students] to church,” he says. “Then other families in church started saying, ‘Andy, you really ought to go and be a pastor.” But tuition, as Watkins discovered, was not cheap. However, committed to becoming a pastor, he took on an electrician internship that provided him with a comprehensive education as well as an increase in salary. Four years later, he enrolled at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.  

“I don’t try to connect [people] to me, but through me, they have to be connected to God,” says Watkins. In his current role, where he serves as a pastor at the Lutheran churches in Bennett and Stanwood, Iowa, as well as the East Side Mission LCMS church in Davenport, Watkins has the opportunity to connect with many people each week. Perhaps the word connect is an understatement. “They [the kids at the mission church in Davenport] are learning to read, so I...help them to read the words like ‘Hazael,’ from Israel in the Old Testament.” Shepherding his congregations as family, Watkins also bakes homemade treats every Saturday night, which his congregants enjoy every Sunday, plays games with the children of his congregations, and even offers his skills as an electrician when needed.  

“You find things that you enjoy...if you get too uncomfortable, then you’re not going to [help others], right?” For Watkins, reaching out to others means not only meeting them where they’re at, but finding them in a place where he can function at his best as well. For him, this often means baking, fixing things and working with children.  

Find things that you know a little bit, and care about, and use that. God will show you.

“I play games with the kids outside,” he says. “How do you get to know people...you figure out where they are.” Much of Watkins’ service to the church and to the world has focused on meeting people where they are and making connections with them. Despite teaching completely online classes at Concordia, he still finds ways to reach out to his students, talking with them over the phone or over Zoom about school issues, major life events, or whatever else the student wishes.  

“I’ve talked to tons of students. Maybe somebody is depressed. Maybe somebody lost a child. Somebody is out of work.” No matter their station in life, Watkins knows how to reach out to his students, which in turn, he hopes, makes his students into better teachers. “I teach people who are getting a master’s degree...they already teach somewhere,” he explains. When his students ask why he is willing to give them feedback on rough drafts of projects that, if they follow, will result in them receiving a perfect score on the project, he replies: “It actually helps you; it affects the way that you deal with all your students...it helps [your] family, just like being a pastor.”

In 2019, Concordia asked Watkins to write a new course for their graduate education programs aimed specifically at teachers in Lutheran schools who did not graduate from the Concordia system. He wrote rubrics, activities, projects and even made sure that students enjoyed a highly relational class experience without even buying any textbooks. “Online classes can sometimes be just very static,” he said. “So in week 5, I made [my students]...use a graphic organizer and show me how things fit together. It just made that whole week pop.” His class, entitled “The Teacher in a Lutheran School: Vocation,” incorporates student-made videos, Zoom meetings with Watkins if students desire and other visually engaging, creative projects.  

When Concordia invited Watkins to be the commencement speaker at its 2021 graduation ceremony, he was overjoyed and humbled at the thought of being able to meet some of his students in person for the first time. As part of his address, he invited an instrumentalist to play the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” “When she started to play,” says Watkins, “I could see some people with tears in their eyes and even laughing...what an honor.”  

“Why am I going to keep talking about the glory of God if you don’t already get the humility of Christ?” Watkins asks. “You really need to listen so that you can tell where people are, so that you can help them along each step of the way.” There is a common thread among Watkins’ service to his three Iowa churches, his Concordia classes and the way in which he lives his life, and that thread is service that is grounded in God’s Word as well as the relationships he forms with other people. Whether he is baking for post-Sunday service snacks at his churches, on a video call with a student who may be struggling, or helping people fix things in their homes, Watkins uses what he knows to connect with others.  

The last question I asked Rev. Dr. Watkins was: “What advice would you have for people who want to get out into the world and serve others?” He immediately started in on a response, and I could tell that I’d touched on an important topic for him. “My wife enjoys painting,” he explains. “So when she’s done painting in somebody’s house, she’ll ask them about life.” He encourages people to use their interests and abilities as a platform for serving others.  

“If you don’t take care of you, you can’t be good for other people,” says Watkins. “Work, just for work’s sake, gets tiring.” Watkins wants people to know that taking time for themselves is not selfish. Instead, he emphasizes that it better enables a person to use the resources and skills at their disposal as a way to serve and build relationships with others. “So find things that you know a little bit, and care about, and use that. God will show you. He’s always been faithful; He has the bigger picture; He knows tomorrow before we do. And He knows how to set things up.”  

Serving others doesn’t have to be difficult; it doesn’t have to feel foreign. There is no secret formula for living a life of service, and although it may look different for everyone, every person can serve both the church and world in a way that best suits them. “You have to make it genuine,” as Rev. Dr. Andrew Watkins might say.  

Learn more about Concordia’s graduate programs at cune.edu/graduate.