Pastor Gil Splett 
What Is Tommy Thinking? 
Stories Based on the Gospel Readings for Sunday, Cycle A

With insightfulness, artistry, and grace, Pastor Gil Splett weaves stories that children can understand, stories that allow adults to listen in and enter more deeply into the paschal mystery. Whether he writes (and draws!) of Tommy stumbling in the dark at scout camp and learning about the light of Christ that guides him or lying on the grass, looking up at the stars, and reflecting on the largeness of heaven, Tommy always has something to learnand more, something to pass on to other children. I have personally witnessed Pastor Gil weaving his craft. Children identify with Tommy, the little boy with a big heart who plays like them, questions and learns like them, and is always surprised like them. Children enjoy listening as Pastor Gil shares his Tommy stories and watches in awe as he draws the story for them on a whiteboard, allowing Tommy to come alive right before their eyes. What a wonderful way to preach to childrento preach to all of us!

Über den Autor

Pastor Gil has been drawing pictures as far back as he can remember. He attended grade school in a country school that didn’t have an art teacher, but they got lessons in drawing from a public radio program called Let’s Draw. The pictures they drew were sent to the University of Wisconsin Art Department, and with their responses of encouragement, Gil was on his way. In his middle school and high school years, Gil lived in a larger city that had art teachers, and even though there wasn’t room for an art class in the college prep track, he gave up his study halls to include them.

In high school, he did the art work in the school annual. At the University of Wisconsin, he designed the homecoming button, and in seminary he again did the artwork for the yearbook. He also did the artwork for a youth ministry manual where he created his Tommy character. As a seminary student, Gil visited Bethel Lutheran Church in Madison, which was in the process of developing the Bethel Bible Study program. Gil was impressed with the effectiveness of using pictures to reinforce learning.

Pastor Gil’s first parish was in a small mining town north of Spokane, Washington. It was here that he began telling stories about a young boy named Tommy who found insights for his own life in the Gospel lessons on Sunday morning.

For the next fifteen years, Pastor Gil served as a campus pastor at Central Washington State, University of Southern California, and University of Montana. As a university student himself and as a campus pastor, he responded to the new knowledge constantly being discovered, not as a challenge to faith but as a window to new and even more profound insights into God and creation. In writing his stories Pastor Gil’s goal is to set forth a theological background that will stand up when the child moves from Sunday school to the university.