Today after chapel we recognized the two men who completed the Specific Ministry Program in the past year, as we do at the end of the Good Shepherd Institute Conference each year. In the words of Dr. Carl Fickenscher, Director of Pastoral Formation Programs:
“The Specific Ministry program was created by the Synod to provide pastors particularly to those settings which cannot afford or for other reasons provide a residentially-trained pastor. We have two men who have completed the program. Both of them are serving in their calls and are in absentia. We are delighted nevertheless to thank God for their service to us:
“Daniel L. Dockery, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Glen Arbor, MI, Michigan District
“Joshua J. Parsons, Saint John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Midland, MI, Michigan District
“We thank God for their preparation for the Office of the Holy Ministry through the Specific Ministry Pastor’s Program and we pray for their continued faithful ministry in their places. God be with you all.”
CTSFW and CSL students (plus a few family members) before the race, taking a picture with the cutout of Martin Luther (in the back middle). A handful of people still registering are missing from the photo.
On Saturday, October 20, Immanuel Lutheran Church in Terre Haute, IN, hosted a 5K Brat Trot as a way to kick off Reformation week. The marathon itself had very German attributes: it included beer and brats. Since Terre Haute is almost exactly halfway between the two seminaries, our own seminarian Daniel Fickenscher organized our students into a CTSFW team while seminarian Austin Wellhousen from St. Louis organized a team from CSL, to meet and compete against each other for the “Hans Wurst” trophy, a traveling trophy gallon growler put up by the church.
Lining up before the race. The CTSFW team wore King’s Men shirts to identify themselves, and this little lady went on the run with her mom, Madison Post, wife of one of our seminarians. Madison finished fourth out of all women, and first in her age bracket.
Immanuel (which, for note of interest, is where President Rast vicared back during his seminary days) graciously agreed to discount the entry fees for our two teams, and invited the students to spend the night in the parish center, feeding them a pasta meal on Friday. Though not everyone was able to make it the night before, by morning about 30 people from both seminaries came together for the 5K, most to run plus a couple to cheer. St. Louis seminarian Ahren Reiter came in first overall at 17:52 and our own Daniel Fickenscher placed third overall at 18:42.
Victory, however, was ultimately ours. Because our top eight runners had the best finishes overall, Fort Wayne took home the Hans Wurst trophy over our brothers in St. Louis. Here’s to holding onto it next year too. We look forward to seeing you there again, Concordia Seminary!
Ahren Reiter (L) and Daniel Fickenscher (R), holding their trophy beer mugs and the Hans Wurst Trophy between them. They didn’t know yet which Seminary would be taking it home.
If you watch our Monday and Tuesday lectionary podcasts, then you will recognize this bookshelf backdrop, though perhaps not the woman standing in front of it. A prospective student planning to begin the distance education program for the Master of Arts in Deaconess Studies, Patti Miller asked if she could see the recording studio during her campus tour. We were happy to oblige, especially when we found out why — she’s the artist who created the cross in the upper right-hand corner. A friend pointed it out to her.
Patti’s art career began fifteen years ago when she became church secretary and started designing the church bulletin covers. Now she creates these wooden crosses, cut by hand and painted and themed around a special (usually church) occasion.
This particular cross on display was created for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which is why it features Luther’s Rose and the means of grace (the dove for the Holy Spirit on top with the waters of Baptism on the arms, the Lord’s Supper on the bottom, above which is a ribbon for the Word). If you look very closely at the painting, you will notice that red can be seen underneath the entire design.
“I always begin with a base of red,” Patti explained. “Partly because it creates a rich color and interesting texture, but really–” here she smiled, pointing to the cross “–because it’s all on the blood of Jesus.”
Yesterday’s convocation hour featured students James Neuendorf and Joshua Schiff, who were involved this past summer in an archaeological dig funded by CTSFW’s Lois Ann Reed Endowment for Biblical Archaeology. They called their presentation “From Dan to Beersheeba” or “Why CTS Students Absolutely Need to Go to Israel.”
James Neuendorf, as you can tell, is an excellent photographer. This is just one of many pictures he took during their dig in Israel.
They began with Luke 2:15: “Let us go…and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” Like the shepherds running to see the Christ child (whose faith did not need to see to believe what the angels told them, but rather desired to see what they already believed), these students too wanted to see what they knew to be true. Though they couldn’t see the Biblical events themselves by going to Israel, they could, in the words of James Neuendorf, “see the context of these real historical events.”
The purpose of the dig itself was a last shot at testing Dr. Yonatan Adler’s thesis: that ritual cleansing continued despite the destruction of the temple. The ritual cleansing refers to Leviticus 11:33: “And if any of them [things that are unclean] falls into any earthenware vessel, all that is in it shall be unclean, and you shall break it.” It was very expensive to have to continually break your earthenware vessels, so the Israelites found a loophole by creating vessels out of stone, which would not have to be smashed to pieces whenever something unclean fell in them.
The students’ (made up of mostly Israelis, with a couple of international students like our own two seminarians thrown in) were organized into teams, and each team were put in charge of a small square area in an old chalkstone deposit in Cana, Galilee, where these stone vessels would have been produced on site (they lived offsite, in a little town you may recognized: Nazareth). A metal detector was used to look for dateable material, like coins, which would be able to prove that this practice took place after the temple’s destruction.
It took two weeks to work down to bedrock in a single square, even by digging more aggressively (using a type of hoe) than normal. They didn’t have to be as careful in a stone quarry as you would in a site that contains a lot of household items. However, they didn’t find much besides stone vessels, “which was fine with us because we don’t really agree with Dr. Adler,” Josh and James admitted with a grin.
They also had regular lectures in the afternoon and had the opportunity to visit digs not open to the public. To enrich the experience, they created study guides for each place they visited (“We went to every Biblical site not currently being hit with rockets”), filling their Bibles with notes.
One such place was Tabgha, the location of the feeding of the 5,000 (Matthew 14), which is also the location where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him (John 21). In doing so, the seminarians realized that in two different times at the same location, Jesus told His disciples to feed His people. They felt the impact of how that would have struck the disciples themselves.
Matthew 14:16: “But Jesus said, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’”
John 21:15: “When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’”
Tabgha, where Jesus preached to and fed the 5,000. And how does one person speak to 5,000? When James and Josh visited, they realized that it was a natural amphitheater. They took turns testing it out, listening to each speak across the space. “Now, I’m not into mysticism,” Josh said, “but it was an incredible feeling to stand where Christ preached and pray the Lord’s Prayer.”
James and Josh said that one of the most valuable experiences and greatest opportunities was walking with and working alongside Israelis. Since their coworkers were primarily Jews, they ate kosher food three times a day, saw how it was for these men and women to keep the Sabbath, and got to experience what these restrictive laws would have meant day-to-day in Jesus’ time, which is hard to capture simply by reading. Though some of the experience was modernized, it still provided context.
They were also, as they put it, “Stunned by how many questions they asked about Jesus.” Though sharing your faith in Israel is illegal, you are allowed to answer questions, and their coworkers had many. There are a lot of Christian sites in but not a lot of Christians, despite the country’s dependence on Christian tourism. Religious groups in Israel simply do not cross lines into each other’s neighborhoods, so their coworkers had either barely or even never interacted with Christians before.
In fact, Dr. Adler, who was in charge of the dig, was getting so many questions from the Jewish students that he finally sat them all down and asked the seminarians to explain Christianity. Josh, a second-year, said with a laugh that he insisted they not start the talk until they woke up James, the fourth-year, who then walked them through Jesus as prophet, priest, and king. Later, when trying to explain the idea of a one-sided covenant (that God comes to us in salvation), James pointed out that the Lord’s covenant to Abraham in Genesis 9 too was one-sided; that God – not Abram (as he was then known) – walked through the animals that had been cut in half. They rushed to their books. “There was an audible, ‘He’s right,’” James said.
That is itself typical. Jews in Israel do not actually know much about the Old Testament or even the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). “They don’t even know what the tabernacle is,” Josh explained. Their lack of understanding of Christianity does not stem from a misunderstanding of the Christological aspects of the Old Testament, but rather a lack of knowledge of the Old Testament itself. The Jewish sects in Israel – of which there are many – long ago set aside Scripture for legalistic code.
James and Josh also had the chance to meet a Messianic Jew when visiting a replica of the tabernacle. The woman asked if they were Christian and, upon their “yes,” spent the rest of the tour with a knowing look, winking at them as she pointed out aspects of the tabernacle that pointed to the Messiah. “If you can’t see Jesus in every strand of this place,” she said, “then you’re blind.”
On this evening they had kosher pizza on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and answered questions from their Israeli coworkers about Jesus. They shared the good news about Jesus where Jesus once called Simon and his brother Andrew to be fishers of men.
Three deaconess placements were announced at the end of chapel today. They are (pictured left to right):
Brittany Baumgartner to Chugiak, AK; Our Redeemer Lutheran Church (Northwest District)
Rachel Geraci to St. Louis, MO; Lutherans for Life, Nevada, IA (Iowa District West)
Christina Gillet to Wheeler, IL; Lutherans for Life, Nevada, IA (Central Illinois District)
“These days are a source of great joy for us,” Dr. Bushur, Director of Deaconess Formation, said, “as they represent the fruition of the most fundamental mission of this Seminary; namely, to send out servants of Jesus Christ who teach the faithful, reach the lost, and care for all.”
These deaconesses will be working with congregations to meet specific needs in their communities. Rachel Geraci (pictured here caring, as she put it, “for the least of these:” aka her daughter on the occasion of her Baptism), for example, has been called as the Mission and Ministry Director at Lutherans for Life. “I help to encourage Lutheran pastors and laypeople alike to start Life Teams and to be ‘Gospel-Motivated Voices For Life’ where God has planted them,” she explained. “By providing resources and tons of encouragement, I strive to equip Lutherans to speak about life issues in the same way God does so in His Word.”
Dr. Bushur concluded his announcement with a call to prayer. “Indeed, the announcement of these placements, as always, must be accompanied by our prayers that our Lord would bless our students, these congregations, institutions, and their pastors as they now together fulfill their service to Christ.”
Dr. Pless begins the announcement of field education assignments. Local pastors were in attendance to meet their new fieldworkers.
Dr. John Pless and Deaconess Amy Rast announced fieldwork assignments for the first-year pastoral and diaconal students this morning following chapel. Pastors and other representatives of these local churches were in attendance to meet their new fieldworkers, who will serve at these churches for the next two years, gaining practical experience in preparation for vicarage and deaconess internships.
Phyllis Thieme, President of the Seminary Guild, passes out a copy of the PCC to a first-year seminarian.
The Seminary Guild was on hand following the assignments to pass out copies of the “Pastoral Care Companion” (PCC), a book that contains prayers, readings, hymns, liturgy, and other guidance in every situation from birth to death. Originally designed for pastors, the book is also adaptable to diaconal service and acts of mercy as these women will be faced with many situations that require the comfort and encouragement of Scripture. “It’s not just another textbook,” Dr. Pless, Director of Field Education, explained, “but a resource that will follow them through the days of Seminary and into congregations.”
To learn more about the Legacy Project (as this ongoing Seminary Guild project to provide every diaconal and pastoral student with a copy of the PCC is called), contact SemGuild@ctsfw.edu. You can also learn more about the work of the Seminary Guild at www.ctsfw.edu/SemGuild.
The first-year class of diaconal students with their copies of the PCC, following fieldwork assignments. Deaconess Amy Rast, Associate Director of Deaconess Formation, stands on the far right.
“The Lord’s Supper” with Dr. Masaki (SMP Class of 2015 and 2016); “Lutheran Confessions: Intro and Overview” with Dr. Mayes (Class of 2018); and “Heaven on Earth” with Dr. Grime (SMP Class of 2017).
SMP Intensives ended at noon today, which is a week-long, intense course of on-campus classes for students in the Specific Ministry Pastor program. Due to the uniqueness of the course and its long-distance nature (the SMP program is designed to train and mentor a leader within a congregation that could not otherwise call a pastor – often a vacancy that has no funds or a non-English-speaking ministry that would be damaged by the prolonged absence of the student – and is not meant for, let alone open to, most men who desire to become a pastor), we rarely get to see these men, though they are a part of our student body.
Gemütlichkeit (and a couple of Theology Nerds, if their shirts are to be believed).
Most of the hours in each day are packed with classes, though time for worship in Kramer Chapel was built into their schedules, which is why the pews looked more full than usual this week during daily chapel services. On Thursday evening, the students of the SMP program also took the time to host gemütlichkeit for the whole Seminary community. Gemütlichkeit is a German word that is in some ways untranslatable – it describes a feeling rather than a specific term, one of warmth, friendliness, contentedness, and good cheer – but here at CTSFW it means the weekly Friday evening get-together for faculty, students, and their families to gather at the Student Commons to drink beer and talk.
It can be hard to convey how much of the formation process of Seminary occurs between classes. There’s a lot of laughter at these get-togethers, but if you eavesdrop on the conversations, 90% of it is about theology. They argue, agree, run their questions and opinions past the professors (one of the things we are quietly proud of here is the fact that CTSFW has no faculty lounge; the professors eat lunch and drink coffee – and beer – with their students), and through it all learn. In the words of Proverbs 27:17: “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” And so it is a joy to have these men here with us. God’s blessings to our SMP students as they travel home to their families and their ministries!
Top: Gemütlichkeit inside. Director of Admission, Rev. Matt Wietfeldt sits on the far right with students. Bottom: Gemütlichkeit spreads out into the portico while the weather remains good.
From August 23-26, Dr. Pless gave three lectures at Lutheran Study Days in Bergen, Norway. There were a couple of familiar faces among the students: CTSFW student Philip Bartelt (Sem II, as of this fall) and former student Eirik-Kornelius Garnes-Lunde (standing on the right).
Also included is this picture taken during “Workshop on the Land,” a pastor’s conference in South Africa from the week before, showing Dr. Pless with all the former CTSFW students in attendance at the conference.
From Thursday’s Chapel, here is the prayer for and a closeup of the two deaconesses who received their placement announcements at the end of the service:
Carol BrownThe Evangelical Church of St. John
Sycamore, Illinois
Carole Terkula St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Columbia City, Indiana
Gracious God, through your Son Jesus Christ you have shown mercy to our fallen world. Continue to bless the women of the Concordia Deaconess Conference that as they serve your people they may model the love of Christ to all who are in need. Grant your blessings especially to our candidates who now take up their own service in the church, giving them joy and faithfulness in all that they do. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our Summer Greek students started their first class as seminarians this morning at 7:30 a.m. with Dr. Nordling. Yesterday, however, was the official “Meet the Greeks” Ice Cream Social, an annual event held to welcome the new Summer Greek students and their families.
Dr. Nordling (pictured above) addressed the entire crowd, though he had to throw in a reminder for the Greek students to remember to come to class at 7:30 the next day. Dr. Nordling joined the CTSFW faculty in 2006 but since he’s taught in Universities since 1994, this year is his 24th year teaching Greek.
Yesterday’s rain forced us inside, where we had ice cream, face painting for the kids, and you could overhear current students (and their wives) sharing stories with the newcomers. We had leopards, butterflies, and at least one snake running around the Student Commons by the end of the social.
The Seminary Women’s Assembly (more commonly referred to as SWA; so much more commonly, in fact, that I just had a long discussion with one of the officers because neither of us could remember if the “A” stood for “Association” or “Assembly”) hosted the event, who recruited a handful of MDiv students to scoop the ice cream. The W. Paul Wolf Family sponsored the social.
On the left (l-r): SWA Secretary Mary Durham and President Karlie Heimer, whose husbands are both 2nd years. On the right are three of the 2nd-year MDiv students, recruited for the cause: (L-R) Jess Heimer, Cory Kroonblawd, and Adam Sternquist.
You may recognize the W. Paul Wolf Family name from the 172nd Annual Commencement folder, as they also sponsored the CTSFW Community Reception that took place just before Graduation Exercises last month. This is one of the ways this family likes to serve the Seminary community, by donating funds for the food-and-fellowship events that strengthen the bonds between the students, faculty, staff, and all our families. Thank you! And God’s richest blessings to our Summer Greek students as they recover from their first day of class. Only four more years to go.
From August 23-26, Dr. Pless gave three lectures at Lutheran Study Days in Bergen, Norway. There were a couple of familiar faces among the students: CTSFW student Philip Bartelt (Sem II, as of this fall) and former student Eirik-Kornelius Garnes-Lunde (standing on the right).
Also included is this picture taken during “Workshop on the Land,” a pastor’s conference in South Africa from the week before, showing Dr. Pless with all the former CTSFW students in attendance at the conference.
The Evangelical Church of St. John
St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
