Category: Seminary History

It’s been awhile since we checked back with Friedrich Wyneken, missionary pastor to Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, who was so instrumental to the formation of CTSFW. We’ve missed a couple of 180 year anniversaries of his missionary journey into and around Fort Wayne.

On October 2, 1838, Wyneken reported on a cholera epidemic, devastating the people: “On the whole, from a human point of view, the time in which I traveled was an unfortunate time to work for God’s kingdom. Sickness raged everywhere. Often I entered a town where not one house was without a sick person: In many homes, everyone was sick, so that often my gatherings were very small.”

The congregations that gathered to hear him were small, struggling with sickness and in need of organization. A couple of weeks later he visited an area where the German settlers “belonged to no church.” Wyneken tracked them down at the taverns, dragging them by verbal argument to an evening worship service, after which he lectured them into agreeing to gather in prayer on Sundays.

His journey took him along the Wabash-Erie canal and the present rout of US 12. Six weeks of traveling throughout northern Indiana and South Central Michigan to determine where congregations could be gathered and begun, he finally returned to Fort Wayne on November 16, 1838.

At that time he was told (via letter) by the Mission Society who had sent him to accept the call as pastor at St. Paul’s here in Fort Wayne and to simultaneously remain a missionary. At that point Wyneken knew it was too much work for one man, and suggested they find and call more preachers to the area, asking that he be dismissed from missionary service. Wyneken would spend that Advent and Christmas in the area, but only because his horse was lame.

It would be another 7-8 years before formal classes began for the Seminary in Fort Wayne, but you can see where Wyneken’s understanding of the deep need of the Lutherans in American started. In 1842 he would visit Germany and write the “Notruf” (“The Distress of the German Lutherans in North America”), which directly led to the formation of the LCMS and CTSFW as the practical seminary to help meet the desperate need of the German settlers. They were spiritually starving, and the laborers were too few.

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This information gathered from the following posts, written by one of our librarians, Rev. Robert Smith. To read more about Wyneken’s missionary work in detail, go to:

https://whatdoesthismean.blog/2018/10/02/2253

https://whatdoesthismean.blog/2018/10/19/wyneken-heads-south-to-the-wabash

https://whatdoesthismean.blog/2018/11/16/friedrich-wyneken-returns-to-fort-wayne

Professor Roethemeyer, Director of our library and Associate Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Missions, was invited to participate in a National Symposium on Design, Community, and Preservation in Columbus, Indiana, on September 27-28. A highlight for him was the opportunity to meet and interact with Eero Saarinen’s son and daughter, Eric and Susan. Professor Roethemeyer is pictured to the right of the Saarinen siblings at North Christian Church in Columbus, a church designed by their father.

Though most famous as the architect of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, we know Eero Saarinen more familiarly as the designer of our own award-winning Concordia campus. Dedicated sixty years ago on May 20, 1958, our chapel is one of five sacred buildings designed by the Saarinen family. Eliel Saarinen (Eero’s father) designed First Christian Church in Columbus, IN, dedicated in 1942, and Christ Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, MN in 1949. Eero also designed a church (North Christian Church in Columbus, IN in 1964, where this picture was taken) as well as two chapels: one at MIT in Cambridge, MA in 1955 and the other our own Kramer Chapel at Concordia Senior College (now CTSFW) in 1958.
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The two chapels by Eero are notable for their simplicity of design. The chapel at MIT is in the shape of a cylinder, giving us architecturally the circle and theologically eternity. The chapel at CTSFW is architecturally a triangle and theologically symbolizes the Trinity.
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Art, design, and creativity continues to run in the family. Eric Saarinen is a cinematographer and film director. He is the director of photography and co-producer of the award-winning documentary, “Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future.” Released this past December in the PBS American Masters series, the documentary explores the life and visionary work of Finnish-American modernist architectural giant Eero Saarinen. Now Eric is working on a documentary project that explores the work of his grandfather, Eliel Saarinen.
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Susan Saarinen is an artist, designer, and artisan comfortable working in many different media. She holds degrees in Fine Arts (weaving and ceramics) and Landscape Architecture. Her firm, Saarinen Landscape Architecture, concentrates on environmentally appropriate projects. She is presently writing her memoirs.‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍

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(With thanks to Professor Roethemeyer for writing today’s post.)

It’s another 180th year anniversary in the life of Friedrich Wyneken, the Seminary’s first president. On September 20, 1838, the then-missionary reached the settlement of Friedheim (near Decatur, IN). From the writings of our electronic resources librarian (and historian), Rev. Robert E. Smith:

“The first German he met in Indiana received the missionary with suspicion. ‘If you are an honest pastor, then go to that house over there. A very sick man lies in it,” the woodman challenged. ‘If you are something else, like most pastors coming from Germany, then go over there to the rich wagonmaker!’ ‘Nevertheless, I’d love to see the sick man first,’ Wyneken quipped and then carried through. At this sick man’s home, he learned of Karl Friedrich Buuck, the leader of Jesse Hoover’s Adams County congregation and the pastor’s future father-in-law.”

Today in institutional blasphemy: the presidents of the seminaries (President Rast on the left and President Meyer on the right) were spotted sporting each other’s school colors.

But seriously: thanks be to God for the men He has called to serve the Church and especially her future pastors and deaconesses.

On September 11, 2001, Rev. Radtke was on his way to the Seminary to preach the first sermon of the new term when he heard the news of the two planes hitting the twin towers on his radio. He rewrote his sermon in the car on the way in. We do not have video or audio of the sermon that day, but the text was published in the October 2001 volume of Concordia Theological Quarterly, which you can read at ww.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/radtkesermon9-11.pdf. He began, as the Church always has and always will, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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.
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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:
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“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”
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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.
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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).

The Wambsganss Gymnasium here on campus now has its own Facebook page at www.facebook.com/CTSFWGym. Our athletic director is working on increasing reach to the community by letting people know when the gym is open for personal use, as well as rental costs for local schools and other organisations who may be interested in using the gym, fields, or track for practice or games.

Which leads us to our afternoon trivia:

Did you know that the first and only unassisted triple play in World Series history was performed by a Missouri Synod Lutheran who had at one point studied to enter the ministry? His two brothers did become pastors, but Bill Wambsganss ended up in professional baseball as second baseman for the Cleveland Indians. In game five of the 1920 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers, “Wamby” (as he was called by headline writers) caught a line drive, stepped on second base to get his second player out, then tagged his third coming from first base.

Yesterday was the 500th anniversary of a date that is, in many ways, as much if not more significant than the posting of the 95 Theses:
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On August 7, 1518, Martin Luther received a summons from Rome to defend his 95 Theses. When he first posted the theses, Luther had no idea that anything significant had just taken place. Largely aimed against the abuses of indulgences (an indulgence was a way for Christians to purchase forgiveness for themselves or their loved ones, shortening their time in purgatory), Luther would have expected his theses to simply inspire debate among scholars.
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However, following the translation of the Theses into German and their wide distribution across Europe, the proposed scholarly discussion about indulgences turned into a charge of heresy about the supposed infallibility of the Pope. This summons changed the entire face of the debate. From our librarian, Rev. Bob Smith:
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“What did happen was a steep decline in the purchase of indulgence letters. John Tetzel, the Dominican monk that so annoyed Luther, responded by attacking the theses as heretical. The Archbishop of Mainz forwarded them to Rome, recommending a reprimand for the Wittenberg professor. John Eck of Ingolstadt, who was to become Luther’s chief academic opponent, wrote and circulated an extended handwritten review of the 95 Theses. To Luther’s great surprise, they accused Luther of limiting the Pope’s power and did not focus on his challenge to indulgences at all. In doing so, they turned Luther’s attention to the claims of the pope. He poured over the Scriptures on the subject. Luther composed an extended defense of his theses in February 1518.”

(CLICK HERE to read the full article.)
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God is able use all things and all people for his good purpose. These men, concerned with the sudden loss of income, tried to browbeat and kill the discussion by skipping over the talk of indulgences and pointing to the authority of the Pope instead, driving Luther to Scripture to weigh their words, and thereby changing the significance of his 95 Theses to something theologically and historically momentous. It’s only hindsight that allows us to see the divine hand working in the fools of history.