ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CH3-046 PROFESSOR LAWRENCE RAST PROFESSOR WILL SCHUMACHER Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 ***** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***** >> DAVID: Can you give me a specific example of how Lutheran ministry was conducted in those difficult frontier conditions? >> DR. LAWRENCE RAST: David, as I was just saying to Nick, there's one individual who is really remarkable and central in this respect for the history of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. And that man is F. C. D. Wyneken, Friedrich Conrad Dietrich Wyneken. And Wyneken is simply a striking example of what a Lutheran pastor should be, in my opinion. He's a model for us all, David. What happened with Wyneken was he trained for the ministry in Germany; obviously, he was German-born and intended to do work for the sake of the church and for the sake of the mission of Christ. It ended up that this work would entail coming to America. He arrived in America in 1838, the summer, and immediately came into contact with the Pennsylvania Ministerium who sponsored him as a missionary to the West. The West, of course, being far eastern Indiana. In that late summer, 1838, Wyneken made his way to northeastern Indiana, specifically to Allen and Adams County, today, Fort Wayne being the major city in the area. And upon his arrival, he found organized groups of Lutherans, both in Fort Wayne as well as in Adams County. Significant immigration had already occurred. In this respect, it was a fairly natural thing for Germans to settle in this area. The reason being that by this time, a canal had been cut in Toledo as far west as Fort Wayne, a portion of the Miami and Erie Canal which ran through Ohio, and then the Wabash and Erie Canal which was pushing to the West through Fort Wayne, and ultimately would make its way to Evansville, Indiana. So the Germans were there, and these Germans were being served by a pastor. Jesse Hoover was his name, and he had helped establish St. Paul congregation in Fort Wayne in 1837. However, the rigorous conditions of the frontier had proven to be too much for Hoover, and he had died shortly before Wyneken�s arrival. So Wyneken, upon his arrival, found the congregation in Fort Wayne and in northern Adams County now vacant because of Hoover�s death. These congregations pleaded with him to serve as their pastor. But Wyneken said, my responsibility is to be a missionary. Well, after some negotiation, it was agreed that Wyneken would serve these congregations as pastor while, at the same time, continuing his work as a missionary. Shortly after his installation, he left on his first missionary tour moving through northeastern Indiana, northwestern Ohio, and up to the area on the west end of Lake Erie, Monroe, Michigan. Then he cut across the state to the area around Niles, Michigan, just north of South Bend, Indiana today, and then moved south to Crawfordsville, Indiana before returning up the root of the Wabash River to Fort Wayne, an extensive trip that really focused Wyneken in his missionary activities because time and time again, over the course of this missionary trip, he was completely exposed to the devastated spiritual conditions of many of the Germans. Let me give you an example, David. As he moved through the woods, back at this time Indiana was largely woods, he would come across small groups, sometimes one settlement, one household, one hut of German immigrants who had carved out for themselves a small place to live. Upon finding these groups, he would ask, are you German. If you're German, what�s your background? Catholic? Lutheran? Reformed? Nothing? He would then begin to work with the groups seeking ways to serve them spiritually, preaching, baptizing, if appropriate, communion, and the like. And what changed his experience so profoundly is that he was repeatedly told by these folks that they hadn't heard a sermon in seven years, eight years, 10 years, that their children had not been baptized. And when he asked why, they simply answered with the same response over and over. We have no pastors. We have no congregations. Wyneken quickly realized that without the spiritual care the church offered, these people would die. Just as one who does not receive physical food, their body will ultimately die, so the same is true for the spirit. Without the spiritual food of the word of God, the spiritual life will pass away. And Wyneken worried that if this pattern continued, the children of these Germans who had been, in most cases baptized back in Germany, these children, without the benefits of the church, would simply fall away. And the ultimate result would be Germans who had no connection with the church whatsoever. He was already aware that this was happening to a certain extent in Germany because of the effects of rationalism. He feared it would be just as devastating an experience for Germans in America. This energized him and focused him in seeking out help in organizing a very intentional mission to the scattered Germans of the American frontier. To this end he began to write. Initially, short reports were sent back to Germany, first to the Pennsylvania Ministerium, I should say, and then forwarded on to Germany that gave an indication of what his work was in the American west. These reports, then, were increasingly printed in a series of journals and disseminated to the German populace. Wyneken�s theme repeatedly was: Please come over and help us. His pleas were heard, and a pastor in Neuendettelsau, Germany by the name of Wilhelm Lohe responded. He responded in many ways. He provided aid for the Lutheran Mission in North America. Beyond that, he began to work to provide men for the German mission in North America and began training men for the ministry, albeit for the first instance, for the teaching ministry providing them with a modicum of theological education so that they would be sufficiently trained to teach in the schools of the church. However, when these men began to arrive in America, they found that even though they had only the slightest theological education, in many cases, they were better trained than the indigenous American pastors. And congregations sought them out for ministry, and the men were called and ordained. So one result of Wyneken�s activities was simply that. Men were sent to America to help out with the mission. Beyond that, however, aid was needed both in terms of the prayers of the people as well as financial help. And to that end, Lohe invited Wyneken to come to Germany, 1841 to 1843, he did so and gave extensive speaking tours in which he described the mission and pleaded for the help of Germans in carrying out this mission in North America. One of his most effective ways of instilling motivation for these folks to support the mission was to describe what it was like on the American frontier. And he described it in serious and in striking language. He would talk about the cities where folks were simply becoming largely indifferent to the efforts of the church, part of the reason being that there were so few pastors to carry out that mission. In addition to instilling a sense of need in terms of sending pastors to the American scene, Wyneken also stressed the necessity of people giving their all financially to the mission as well. And he did this in a very unique way. What he did was simply to describe what people experienced in America as they were exposed to the variety of American preaching. Specifically here, he would enact revival preaching at the hands of German Methodists and say one of two things will happen: Lutherans will become indifferent to the church entirely through lack of pastoral care, or they will be pulled into the Methodist tradition. And then he would describe what Methodist preaching was like, it's stress on the human will, it's stress on the necessity of choice on the part of those who heard the message. And then he would literally enact revival preaching, grabbing some poor soul in the audience by their coat lapels, shaking them and she shouting in their face, don't you want to be converted? Don't you want to be converted? Well, the physical activity perhaps was enough to scare any German into supporting the activity saying, we'll give you all the money you want, just don't ever touch us again. In all seriousness, the people of Germany responded strongly and gave Wyneken support so that the mission could go forward. All of his stories were bound together ultimately into a book he called the Notruf, or The Emergency Call. We refer to it as the booklet titled, The Distress of the German Lutherans in North America, where he pleaded with all his might and in strong and pointed language for Germans to support the mission in which clear, biblical Lutheran teaching would be proclaimed in an area where the gospel, in its purity, had been obscured, and in some cases, even lost. For that activity, for that clear preaching and proclamation and for his vigorous activity, literally over the course of a lifetime, we have much to thank Wyneken for. He knew what the Gospel was, and he was determined to get that gospel out to folks as they made their way to the American frontier. He is certainly, David, an inspirational figure in the formation of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. ***** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *****