Past, Present and Future

This month I've come face to face with questions of the past, present and future of our church.

Pastor Gernot Friedrich on one
of his trips to the USSR.
Picture from a recent feature
 in the German magazine Spiegel. 

Pastor Friedrich, holding his book,
during his visit to Novosibirsk.

The past came alive to me when our congregation in Novosibirsk had the privilege of welcoming back an old friend, Pastor Gernot Friedrich. Pastor Friedrich is a man with a very adventurous spirit. He has visited dozens of countries and learned a number of languages...but not just for the sake of his own entertainment. In fact, Pastor Friedich was one of the rare people from the West (if one can consider East Germany to be the West!) who had the gall to travel illegally in the former Soviet Union, making friends and visiting Christian congregations along the way. He wrote a book about his adventures called “Through the Soviet Union with a Bible and a Camera;” I had enjoyed reading this book a few years ago...but I was very surprised when he showed up once again in Novosibirsk! It was from him that I learned that he continues to make trips here every other year; he no longer has to sneak Bibles in through customs, but he still brings spiritual (sermons, postcards, home visits, his wonderful singing voice) and material (his offerings helped the congregation install energy-efficient windows a few years ago) support from Germany. Pastor Friedrich knows about the “good old days” of the congregation, when the prayer house would be overflowing with brothers and sisters in Christ, united around their German identity and their Lutheran faith. His faithfulness even in times of drought, like now, is an important sign for the congregation not to lose hope, and not to find value only in being successful in the ways they imagine that from the past. Gernot also by his example continues to live in the present – he went with the new pastor in Novosibirsk to the banya, for example, and after Russia he be traveling on to other new adventures.

The students picked questions at random from each of
the 5 major disciplines taught at the Seminary. They then
had 40 minutes to prepare their answers, which they
presented to us orally.

I was touched to receive a "teacher trophy" from the
students, who also sang a song. 

Then, just last week, I had the opportunity to think about the past, present and future all in a very short time and in one place – Novosaratovka, the Theological Seminary where I worked for most of 8 years. I was invited by the ELCUSFE to go there to take part in the graduation exams of the full-time students. I knew these students well, and had maintained contact with a number of them. The students and staff at the seminary had a very hard year – it was the first year of an experiment with one-course-at-a-time curriculum, developed both with the hope of expanding the potential for participation in the seminary's educational program as well as being the result of simply having too few full-time teachers. Together with the on-going financial and leadership challenges the church faces, it is not quite certain what lies ahead for the seminary – more of this experiment? A different experiment? A pause in educational plans? But for the students (all of whom passed their exams, by the way), there is the burning question of the present – the beginning of their internships. When they finish, they will continue to carry the church towards its future by taking on important leadership positions, as have seminary graduates in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Odessa and Astana, Tblisi and Baku, and to serve as faithful pastors to their flocks throughout the former Soviet Union. Knowing what these graduates have done and will continue to do, I will certainly be an advocate for theological education in this church. How or whether this will be related to Novosaratovka I do not know, but I am convinced that Lutherans in this part of the world will continue to need educated lay and ordained ministers, and I hope that solutions can be found for the financial and leadership problems currently being faced.