Missionary Friedrich Wyneken reached America (specifically Baltimore) in the June of 1838, just as a letter from an elder at St. Paul’s in Fort Wayne reached the Mission Committee of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, begging for a pastor as their own had died. The Baltimore pastors, having gotten to know Wyneken over the summer, recommended him in August, and 180 years ago today, the missionary stopped for supplies in Lima, Ohio, with 64 miles still to go to Fort Wayne. He was following an old Indian trail on horseback.
A German there pleaded for him to stay, and he did so: for eight days. In those eight days Wyneken preached nine times, baptized fifteen people, and confirmed a young married man who had been catechized but never communed. The missionary thanked God in a letter to a friend that “at the very beginning of my ministry, He had led me to such hungry hearts,” and in a letter to the Executive Committee of the Pennsylvania Mission Society admitted:
“I regret now, that I didn’t stay longer with the Germans in western part of the State of Ohio, and did not visit more settlements, because there are no pastors there, and also, as far as I can tell from what I’ve been told, none have been visited by a circuit rider to date”
Six years later, in 1844, he would begin tutoring the first two students of Concordia Theological Seminary out of the St. Paul parsonage, where he served as pastor in Fort Wayne and Decatur while also traveling to a number of nearby settlements, before formal classes began in October 1846.
For more details about Wyneken’s week in Lima, visit https://whatdoesthismean.blog/2018/09/10/pastor-wynekens-lima-ministry (with thanks to CTSFW librarian, Rev. Robert E. Smith).
Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne
κήρυξον τὸν λόγον. Preach the Word.