Fall Seminars

  The past months have been filled with new opportunities for the “Equipping for Service” educational program for which I am responsible. The core idea of the “Equipping...” project remains the same – “to maximize accessibility to quality educational opportunities in the Evangelical Lutheran Church through a program that is collaboratively planned, flexible, and decentralized,” but in marked contrast to the events of the first part of the year, recently I've been engaged not only in teaching, but also in organizing events.

  The first of these came together at the last minute – “Two Issues in Christian Ethics,” held

in the congregation in Krasnoyarsk. This is an active congregation that values educational opportunities, so I knew that it was possible to try an experiment there - we would talk about Christian ethics. In a society that leans towards either a legalistic or a nihilistic approach to ethical questions, Lutherans sometimes would prefer to avoid the question altogether. But given the conflict between Russia and its neighbors and the influx of refugees from Donbas that have come even to Siberia, it seemed important to me to help our congregational members use their faith to engage these questions. While I hoped to look at the question of "Peace and War," in our two evenings together we only had time to look at the more general question of whom we help and why, which lead us in to the underlying question of how we go about moral decision making in as Christians. The two evenings brought together a total of 24 participants, which I consider to be quite successful given that people needed to take public transport to the church after work in order to attend. I was also very pleased to see congregational members interested in applying their faith to concrete ethical and social questions that surround them. I plan on doing more work in this sphere.

  The second event was south of Krasnoyarsk, in the region of Khakasia.  The region has 10 congregations spread over a 150 mile radius; most of them get only monthly visits from their pastor, Dmitry Schweitz, who was instrumental in helping organize this retreat, which we called "I am a Servant." The

main idea was to support the team of people leading congregations on a week to week basis. We hoped to reach this goal both through fellowship and through thinking about the following questions together - “What does it mean to serve? When do I feel like a servant? How can one serve effectively?” In the process we talked about the way service is understood in society and in the Bible, Jesus as a model of service, love at the center of Christian service, the Lutheran understanding of internal and external call, and our communal call as the church in this place. A number of concrete ideas were raised that the leaders intend to bring to realization – e.g., fund-raisers to help those in acute need, printing fliers about Lutheranism for distribution, and a cooperative attempt to form a new youth group in one of the congregations.  

  And this last month I was very pleased to welcome Pastor Chris Repp back to Russia.Chris had been my mentor when I came to Russia at as a seminary intern in 2001. About 2 years later, he passed on to me the position of teacher of Church History, Systematics and Ethics at the Novosaratovka Theological Seminary. When the opportunity arose to invite him for participation in an academic conference co-organized by the church, we decided that it would be great if he could also have contact with others through the “Equipping...” program. Chris and I chose to lead two 3-day seminars, one in Omsk (Siberia) and one in Ulyanovsk (in European Russia on the Volga). We thought that the title, “Law, Gospel and the Lutheran Confessions Today,” would attract mostly pastors and students. We did have participants from these groups, but it turns out that the topic had wider appeal than we might have expected. In Omsk there were 9 full participants (along with 7 others who were in and out) and in Ulyanovsk a week later we had a very large number – always more than 20, and most of the time around 30. Although the theme of the seminar was the same, Chris and I had to seriously adapt our material to the different audiences we saw, but in both cases I believe that the time we spent together was meaningful. 

  In Omsk the main thrust of my teaching was to help participants see that we do have official confessional documents, though we are far from familiar with their contents and that we need to familiarize ourselves with them in order to decide for ourselves what role(s) they are to play in the life of our church. Chris Repp focused on the issue of Law and Gospel as address in the Augsburg Confession and the Apology, demonstrating why this was important and how it applies to the interpretation of Biblical texts. (In this he has been influenced by the theological approach of the Crossings Community). In Omsk Seminary President Anton Tikhomirov was also with us and he first spoke about the confessions as a textual expression of Luther's Reformation break-through and then traced the development of Western (especially Protestant) theology from that time forward. In Ulyanovsk we kept things simpler, giving the most attention to the uses of the law and Biblical interpretation. In both places local leaders (a special thanks to Tatyana Muramtseva in Omsk and Vladimir Provorov in Ulyanovsk) did an excellent job of solving logistical issues.

Seminary participants in Omsk. Seminary President Anton Tikhomirov is 2nd from left; Chris Repp far right.

Seminary participants in Ulyanovsk. Pastor Vladimir Provorov (red, center) was our host. 

  Many thanks to you for your prayers and support (through the Hermannsburg Mission and the ELCA.) If any of you or your congregations are interested in making a special gift to help cover the expenses related to the “Equipping...” project, you can learn more about that through the ELCA's “Always Being Made New” initiative.