LIFE WORLD of the For the July 2004. Volume Eight, Number Three The Beauty of Holiness - p.4 The Beauty of the Church - p.7 The Beauty of Freedom - p.10 Called to Serve - p.16 F E A T U R E S page 16 For theLIFE WORLDofthe PRESIDENT Rev. Dr. Dean O. Wenthe PUBLISHER Rev. Scott Klemsz EDITOR Rev. John T. Pless ASSISTANT EDITOR COPY EDITOR ART DIRECTOR Jayne Sheafer Trudy E. Behning Steve Blakey For the Life of theWorld is published quarterly by Concordia Theological Seminary Press, 6600 North Clinton Street, Fort Wayne, Indiana 46825. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher of For the Life of the World. Copyright 2004. Printed in the United States. Postage paid at Huntington, Indiana. To be added to our mailing list please call 260-452-2150 or e-mail Rev. Scott Klemsz at klemszsc@mail.ctsfw.edu. For the Life of theWorld is mailed to all pastors and congregations of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in the United States and Canada and to anyone interested in the work of Concordia The- ological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana. 4 The Beauty of Holiness By the Rev. Dr. Peter J. Scaer, Assistant Professor of Exegetical Theology, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana Our world, it seems, is obsessed with outward physical beauty. Television shows feature the supposedly life-changing results of plastic surgery and air endless “makeovers.” Magazines put out their annual list of “beautiful people.” In such a vain, super- ficial world, it’s refreshing to reflect on the true beauty, which is the life of Christ lived out still among His people. We should therefore encourage one another in doing good, knowing that our lives are witnesses to the love of Christ. 7 The Beauty of the Church By the Rev. Scott C. Klemsz, Director of Admission, Public Relations, and Publications, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana The church building becomes a sacred place where your Sav- ior comes to meet you, comfort you, and restore you. You hear a welcome in the Scriptures proclaimed from the pulpit. The font washes your dirty life clean. The altar feeds your hungry soul. The church’s windows, art, sculpture, and light all bid you a warm hello. The church becomes your sanctu- ary from the world, a place of refuge. 10 The Beauty of Freedom By Elizabeth A. Fluegel, Teacher, Immanuel Lutheran School, Alexandria, Virginia SinceAmerica’s beginning, religious freedom has been essen- tial to our country and necessary to the liberty of mankind.We can agree that religious freedom has been a blessing to us. As recently as the 1998 LCMS Synodical Convention, a resolu- tion was adopted which encourages “the Synod and its mem- bers to promote and protect freedom of religion and religious expression both at home and abroad (Res. 2-05A).” 13 What Does This Mean? Prepared to Serve p. 16 Seminary Announces Calls and Vicarages p. 20 Seminary Guild Devoted to Serving God p. 25 CTS “Treasures” Gather on Campus p. 28 CONTENTS JULY 2004 3 page 7 page 24 page 10 Called to SERVE page 4 7JULY 2004 After I finished college I did something that I had alwayswanted to do. I took a backpack, guidebook, rail pass,and traveled through Europe. Reading the various journals of European travel, I was ready to see something different, something unique, and maybe discover something new about my vocational journey and myself. Art and architecture play neither a sacral nor a functional role, but rather a sacramental role in the Christian life; the place of worship is neither temple nor “meeting house,” but a sacramen- tal building. Art and architecture participate in the sacramental order of the church, translating into action the liturgy of Word and Sacrament, becoming witness to the Christian and the world. TheBeauty of theChurch By the Rev. Scott C. Klemsz Beyond the beer gardens of Germany and the rural splendor of Austria, I found myself in Vienna. It was Sunday after- noon and the various shops and urban hangouts were closed, so I discovered the joy of the fine art museum. The Kunsthis- torisches Museum in Vienna contains art and sculptures from many different peri- ods of history. Speaking no German and having very little direct knowledge of fine art, I signed up for an afternoon tour. Greeted by an eccentric Englishman who relished an opportunity to unlock the beauty of art, the group’s tour began. In the center of a room full of ancient clocks, pipes, and items of Vienna culture sat a beautiful sculpture. The tour guide took us in front of the marble statue. We gathered and waited for him to begin his description of the face, hands, and feet. But instead the guide told us to take a quick look at the front of the sculpture and then he moved us to the backside. There he described in intricate detail the artist’s mastery in the flow of the back of the robe, detail of the head, and curve of the spine. Why would anyone look at the back of what was clearly a beautiful sculpture that had once sat in a great cathedral of Austria? “This sacred sculpture is one of many priceless works of art you will find in the room, but the reason you need to see the back is this isn’t something for an individual or the state, this statue was carved for God.” “Carved for God,” I thought, why would a sculptor spend as much time on the back of the sculpture as the front? “It was carved for God.” The guide continued our journey through a gallery of sacred items and described the various works. The conversation expanded to include icons, paintings, altars, pulpits, fonts, and the stained-glass windows. Our tour guide encouraged us to continue the journey into the churches and buildings of Vienna. “Take your binoculars and look at the windows in the top of the chancel, and you will see eyelashes and details unimagined. Again, these items are for God, therefore they were to be made with the finest materials and the utmost detail.” Throughout the Christian centuries, the church building has been understood as the domas Dei (house of God) and the porta coeli (gate of Heaven), the dwelling places where you go to find God and more importantly the place where God comes to find you—the sacred places on earth where you seek the treasures of the heavenly kingdom promised by God. The question for artist and architect is how to create something from the earth that is worthy and reflects the Creator of everything. God is the architect of the universe, giving you a world that excites all your senses. When reading the account of creation in Genesis all the believer’s senses are involved, enlightened by God: light, darkness, evening, morning, earth and sea, grasses, fruits, and all that is needed to sustain the life of the creation in the garden. King David proclaims the glory of God in the creation in Psalm 102:25, “Of oldYou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.” As Christians you were recreated through the Water and the Word in Holy Baptism, reentering the presence of God. Once banished from the garden, you now are able to enter the heav- enly garden on earth, the church. Artist and architect join in the task of creating this sacred place. Given the church’s reliance upon sense experience in the worship lives of her people, you can see why historically she has employed the fine arts found in music, art, stone, and architecture. In the fine arts, the believer seeks to give form to the formless. In the artist’s hands and with the architect’s vision, raw materials become something more then themselves. The church building becomes a sacred place where your Sav- ior comes to meet you, comfort you, and restore you. You hear a welcome in the Scriptures proclaimed from the pulpit. The font washes your dirty life clean. The altar feeds your hungry soul. The church’s windows, art, sculpture, and light all bid you a warm hello. The church becomes your sanctuary from the world, For the Life of the World The church building becomes a sacred place where your Savior comes to meet you, comfort you, and restore you. You hear a welcome in the Scrip- tures proclaimed from the pulpit. The font washes your dirty life clean. The altar feeds your hungry soul. The church’s windows, art, sculpture, and light all bid you a warm hello. The church becomes your sanctuary from the world, a place of refuge. 8 a place of refuge. Ever since the days when King Solomon received the com- mission directly from God to fashion the holy temple, men of every age have toiled and labored with hands and heart, sparing no resources, to build splendid places of worship for the Creator of the Universe. When you turn to the church’s great architectural heritage, you discover that from the early Christian basilicas to the Gothic Revival churches of early twentieth-centuryAmerica, the faith of the believer is present in the design of churches—church build- ings that serve both God and man as transcendent structures, transmitting reality for generations to come. Church architecture is manifested in individual styles, prod- ucts of a particular time and place, each of which the church admits into the history of sacred spaces. Churches serve in the present time and instruct the future generations of the faith from past generations. Churches provide a sacred place for private devotion and the liturgy of the church; they make Christ’s pres- ence in Word and Sacrament firmly known in its surrounding. Throughout the centuries churches contained three important elements. These include verticality, permanence, and art. These three elements have been on the decline in recent years as the church stresses the relationship of individuals within the church over and above the relationship of God to His creation. Churches are vertical spaces, soaring heights reaching toward Heaven, of transcendence, bringing the heavenly Jerusalem down to the people on earth. The church came to represent the presence of Christ in a particular place. The church is a permanent struc- ture in a community, grounding the people from one generation to another. Not only does the church structure become a mark of the church to a dying world, the art within the wall serves with the church to educate and inform the believer. Children to adults are educated by what they see, hear, and experience. Art and architecture not only teach the believer, they evange- lize the world.As the believer is recreated through the church, the church strives to bring this recreated life into a physical reality as a witness to the surrounding world of darkness. The font in its prominence points the world to the cleansing waters where we are given faith through the washing and regen- eration. The altar rests as the place for the sinner to hunger no more, dining on Christ’s Body and Blood. The pulpit gives the deaf ears of a sinful world the precious message of redemption by Christ alone. Art and architecture play neither a sacral nor a functional role, but rather a sacramental role in the Christian life; the place of worship is neither temple nor “meeting house,” but a sacramen- tal building. Art and architecture participate in the sacramental order of the church, translating into action the liturgy ofWord and Sacrament, becoming witness to the Christian and the world. The Rev. Scott C. Klemsz is the Director of Admission, Public Relations, and Publications at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana. 9JULY 2004 St. Paul’s Fort Wayne, Indiana The photos on these pages were taken at St. Paul’s Evangel-ical Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana. The history ofSt. Paul’s and that of Concordia Theological Seminary has been intertwined since F. C. D. Wyneken served as one of her pastors and a co-founder of the seminary. St. Paul’s website (www.stpaulsfw.org) best describes her beginnings, “Where Barr andMadison Street meet in the city of FortWayne, Indiana, there is a spot of ground which can truly be called historic, both as far as Fort Wayne as well as the Lutheran Church in America are concerned. It is the property of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, the second oldest Lutheran Church in Indiana and one of the oldest in the western part of our country. It has belonged to this congregation since 1839, at which time the first, single-frame church was erected by the little flock of Lutherans which had been organized as a congregation two years previous. ... Ever since this first simple edifice was built, the congregation has maintained a house of worship on this spot, evermore enlarging its facilities to meet the demands of the growing membership.” Some 165 years later St. Paul’s still stands as a beacon to the FortWayne community and the Luther- an church-at-large.