Lehmann, Helmut T.

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 5 | Issue 4 Article 310-1-1979The History and Tradition of the Lutheran MinistryHelmut T. LehmannFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Articles is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationLehmann, Helmut T. (1979) "The History and Tradition of the Lutheran Ministry," Consensus: Vol. 5 : Iss. 4 , Article 3.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol5/iss4/3THE HISTORY AND TRADITION OFTHE LUTHERAN MINISTRYHelmut T. LehmannThe inclusion of the term “Lutheran” in the formulation of our subject suggests arestriction of ministry to one part of the Christian Church. This suggestion is notunambiguously done. On the one hand, the term “Lutheran” restricts our under-standing of the ministry to those branches of Christendom which acknowledge theAugsburg Confession as their foundation of the Christian faith. On the other hand,by virtue of their very acknowledgement of the Augsburg Confession, these branch-es of Christendom understand their ministry as being an integral part of the messageof the Christian church of all times and places. That is to say, “Lutheran” is under-stood as referring to a specific Christian Communion among and within thechurches in the world today. Within our churches of the world today the Lutheranministry has characteristics and dimensions which are especially, though not exclu-sively, evident in the history and tradition of that ministry.I should like to focus on two of the dimensions apparent in the history and tradi-tion of the Lutheran ministry. One of these dimensions, perhaps more apparentthan the other, is that of the ethnicity of the Lutheran ministry. There are goodreasons for associating a strong ethnic emphasis with the history and tradition of theLutheran ministry. Either by inference or explicitly these reasons will become evidentwhen we turn to the subject of ethnicity in the Lutheran ministry.The other dimension of the Lutheran ministry which is perhaps less apparent and,according to some, actually present only in a fractured form is what I want to describeas catholic, i.e., universal in the sense of agreeing with the doctrine of the Gospel ofJesus Christ as witnessed to in the New and Old Testaments and as this Gospel is con-fessed in creeds and writings from time to time down through the centuries.ETHNICITY IN THE LUTHERAN MINISTRYThe very dimension of ethnicity seems to and sometimes does contradict the dim-ension of catholicity. However, at times ethnicity gjyes expression to the very2324 Consensuscatholicity which this ethnicity may at other times deny. A reason for this self-contra-dictory nature of ethnicity is to be found in the manner in which the Reformers(particularly Luther and Melanchthon) reinterpreted the Pentecost event.While there may not be unanimity among biblical scholars concerning the inter-pretation of the Pentecost event as reported in Acts 2, the Reformers did not inter-pret glossalalia — the speaking in tongues — as a charismatic utterance requiringthe Holy Spirit’s gift of interpretation, as I Corinthians 12 and 14 suggest. Instead,they viewed the gift of speaking with tongues as a language miracle. The miracle ofPentecost thus did not consist in an esoteric understanding of glossalalia by the fewbut by the many people who understood what was being said in their particularlanguage. By extension, the miracle of Pentecost was understood as the Holy Spirit’spower to convey the message of the crucified and risen Christ in the language and cul-ture of representatives of ethnic groups from all parts of the then-known world. In thiscontext, ethnicity became on that first Pentecost the effulgence of the catholicity of theministry of Peter in his sermon.In part, it is in consequence of the understanding of Pentecost as a language eventthat the sixteenth century Lutheran reformation movement clothed its rediscoveredGospel of righteousness through faith alone in the language of the people wherever thereformation gained a foothold. This observation is true to such an extent that it is acommonplace to point to the Lutheran Reformation as giving birth to modem German.It is a commonplace to record the fact that in part the Lutheran Reformation gatheredmomentum in central and northern Europe because its tenets and goals were set forthin the language of the people (vernacular).The language of the people was so important because in and through it ethnicgroups gave expression to their culture and to their aspirations. In this ethnic context theReformation message, stressing the dialectical relationship of law and Gospel, was pro-claimed. It is important to be aware of this stress on the dialectical relationship of lawand Gospel in the ethnic cultural context. For the tension between law and Gospel doesnot baptize a language or a culture of a people as an unambiguous good. The lawcondemns peoples who confuse the beauty of their language with the beauty of holi-ness. The law condemns ethnic groups who abuse the Christian faith so as to make theChristian faith the means of preserving ethnic language and custom, instead of usinglanguage and custom to preserve and extend the Christian faith.Case Study 1 — The Volga GermansIt is difficult to arrive at a clear-cut judgment about the legitimate role for lang-uage and custom to play in the minister’s proclamation of the Gospel and admin-istration of the sacraments. How difficult such a judgment is can be illustrated byreference to Paul Hansen’s discovery in 1976 of Volga German Lutherans inRussia, 2000 miles east of Moscow in Tselinograd, a city of about 130,000 peoplein Kazakhstan. Their forbears had imigrated to Russia on invitation of the RussianEmpress, Catherine II.This ethnic group of German Lutherans has a number of noteworthy features.Until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, German Lutherans in Russia made up aHistory; and Tradition 25flourishing Lutheran Church. They consisted of some 800 congregations and a mill-ion baptized members. Since 1917 their decimation has continued. Interestinglyenough, this group of Lutherans apparently did not think of theological educationfor future ministers until it was cut off from its ministerial supply in Germany and theBaltic countries. The seminary the German Lutherans, established in 1925, wasclosed down in the 1930’s. From the point of view of our immediate interests theseVolga German Lutherans exhibit a feature particularly significant for our considera-tion. Throughout more than two hundred years of history in Russia, these Luther-ans retained their German language and customs in their religious life and in theircongregations. By and large most of us would be inclined to criticize these VolgaLutherans for not employing the language of their adopted country in their religiouslife. Most of us do not favor employing one language at work, and another at wor-ship. That kind of split-level existence does not accord with our stress on the Christ-ian faith as something dynamic for all of life on every level. We may be inclined tolook upon a bilingual ministry as a betrayal rather than a confession of the Christianfaith. Yet after having visited, counselled and worshipped with these diaspora Lu-therans, Hansen concluded, “It’s really another world. These people have lived forso many generations without anything. They have no denominational organization,no trained clergy, no dogmatics. I felt as if I were looking at the first century churchwhere they had only the words of the Lord.”Hansen’s comment raises myriads of questions. Was the first century church with-out “denominational organization”? The New Testament, particularly the corpus ofPauline letters, bears ample testimony to a confessional cleavage between Jewishand Gentile Christian congregations. If Paul, Barnabas and Apollo were not trainedclergy (perhaps not in the modern sense),then the Christian Church has never had“trained clergy.” Definitions of dogmatics vary; but if by dogmatics we refer to de-veloped creedal statements of the Christian faith, then the New Testament providesample evidence of these, too (e.g. Phil. 2; the Nunc Dimittis in Luke 2; the Mag-nificat in Luke 1; the Prooimion in Eph. 1, etc.). On the face of it, Hansen’s evalua-tion sounds more like that of a romanticizing liberal than of a realistic biblicalscholar.Though these ethnic German Lutherans were without a pastor at the time ofHansen’s visit, they did presumably enjoy the leadership of a bilingual ministry untilthe Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. From 1955 - 1972 they had the services of anearly blind pastor, Eugene Bachmann who remembered the names of 78 otherpastors who had died without being replaced.Today’s Volga German Lutherans represent a martyr church whose continuedexistence seems to rest on two pillars which mutually support each other: a Germanethnic character and the Christian creeds. At least until very recent times these twopillars of a diaspora church were maintained by a German ethnic clergy in thelargest Slavic country in the modern world.Case Study 2 — Western CanadaA less spectacular but equally important contribution to our awareness of the roleethnicity plays in the history and tradition of the Lutheran ministry has been a small26 Consensusbooklet which outlines the place two seminaries in northern Germany played insupplying German-speaking Lutheran congregations in North America with pastors.'Both of these seminaries were established for the specific purpose of educating andpreparing men for the ministry in North America. Though European countries withsignificant Lutheran constituencies supplied those who emigrated with pastors fromtime to time, I am not aware of any country in which institutions were specificallyestablished to prepare pastors who would or could minister to the waves of immi-grants which came to North America in such large numbers in the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries. Pastors who served the Scandinavian churches in theirearly days were either educated in their native country, tutored by a pastor or groupof pastors in this country, or sent to a seminary of another Lutheran body. Anexample of the latter is the Norwegian Synod which, prior to 1876, educated itstheological students at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.*While the uniqueness of the educational institutions at Breklum and Kropp bene-fited Lutheran churches in all of North America with its many organizational divis-ions, these German institutions are of special significance for the beginnings of Lu-theranism in Western Canada. The Rev. Heinrich Schnieder, the first pastor ofTrinity Lutheran Church, Winnipeg, who subsequently moved to Edenwold, Sask-atchewan, graduated from the seminary in Kropp, arrived in the U.S.A. in 1886and in Winnipeg in 1889. The first president of the Lutheran College and Seminaryin Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the Rev. Dr. Juergen Goos, was also a graduate ofKropp Seminary.While not a graduate of either Kropp or Breklum Seminary, a founding fatherand first president of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Manitoba and other Provin-ces, the Rev. Dr. Martin Ruccius, was encouraged and assisted to go to NorthAmerica by “The Lutheran Pastoral Aid Society for the Lutheran Church inAmerica.”*In retrospect, it is apparent that furnishing pastors who could minister to membersof congregations in the language of the homeland sometimes proved to be a mixedblessing. In some instances, preservation of native custom overshadowed proclama-tion of the Christian creed; promotion of the native language became more im-portant than the propagation of the Christian faith; ethnicity of a people outrankedin significance the catholicity of their faith. Yet failure to provide pastors who couldminister to people in their own language often not only resulted in a loss ofmembers to Lutheran congregations but in their falling away from the Christian faithaltogether. Consequently, the solution posed by the problem of ethnicity is by nomeans a simple one. The history of Lutheran churches on this continent is in manyways a story of frustration, anxiety and conflict in coming to terms with the ethos ofcongregations which is rooted more in ethnicity than in Christian ethics.1 . Otto W. Heick, Go Into AH the World, 1978,2. E. Clifford Nelson and Eugene L. Fevold, The Lutheran Church among Norwegian-Americans(Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1960), p. 186.3. V.j. Eylands, Lutherans in Canada (Winnipeg, 1945), p. 247.Historic and Tradition 27Case Study 3 — The SevenThe direction which a Christian ministry, including a Lutheran one, must move indealing with the presence of different races, customs, cultures and languages in themissionary outreach of the Christian Church is clear. The clarity of this directionderives from the New Testament, more particularly from what is in a pre-eminentsense a missionary book in the New Testament canon, the Acts of the Apostles.I have already referred to the Pentecost event in Acts 2 in which ethnicity be-comes, not a barrier to but a channel of the universal outreach of the ascendedLord by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. As a matter of fact, the theme of the Actsof the Apostles is this: the conquest of national, racial, social linguistic barriersthrough the proclamation of the Gospel by the witnesses of the primitive ChristianChurch accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit. While this theme is devel-oped in a variety of reports and situations, the appointment of the so-called sevendeacons in Acts 6 and the activity of two of the seven in Acts 7 and 8 offers one ofthe more striking and interesting examples of the transcendence of ethnic barriersand thus of the progress of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In evaluating the example ofthe seven in terms of this transcendence, it is only possible to sketch some of themore important elements in the narrative we have before us in Acts 6 and the twosubsequent chapters.You will recall that it was the bickering of the Hellenistic Christians against theHebrew Christians which led to the appointment of the seven “to wait on tables”.The difference between Hellenistic Christians and Hebrew Christians was not amatter of race. Hellenistic Christians were diaspora Jews who had grown up in andadopted the Hellenistic culture and language. Hebrew Christians were native, Pal-estinian Jews who had maintained Jewish customs, grown up in Jewish culture andspoke the Hebrew language. The difference between Hellenistic and Hebrew Christ-ians was one of language, custom and culture — a difference in ethnicity and ethos.This ethnic difference erupted into conflict when the Hellenists complained of theneglect of their widows in the daily distribution of food. The author of Acts tries topaper over this serious conflict by making it appear that the apostles smoothedthings out through creation of a division of labor. The apostles would attend to thepreaching of the Word of God. The primitive congregation in Jerusalem would electseven men from its midst to wait on tables. The strange thing is that the seven menelected for this task were all from the Hellenistic party, as their names clearly show.The apostles, who were to attend to the Word of God, belonged to the Hebrewparty.Stranger still is the fact that this division of labor in the early church remained atheory. In practice things looked quite different. No sooner has the report of theelection of the seven been brought to a close when we are told the most prominentman among the seven, Stephen, did great signs and wonders among the people.More than that; we find him in a local synagogue pointing out to the local Jews andthose from the diaspora how Jesus of Nazareth supersedes the laws and customshanded down by Moses. As we read on, we discover Stephen doing the work notof a deacon but of an evangelist. He was doing what the apostles said they weregoing to do — preach the Word of God. Moreover, his preaching of the Word of28 ConsensusGod stressed the transcendence of the law of Moses together with its accompanyingceremonial and social customs through the life, death and resurrection of JesusChrist. Ethnicity could no longer be divisive.Another deacon who rose into prominence along with Stephen was Philip. He,too, was active as an evangelist instead of serving as a deacon — a welfare officerin the Jerusalem congregation. In Acts 8 we find Philip has left the Jewish commun-ities in Judaea and has crossed the boundary into Samaria, a region with whoseinhabitants the Jews would have no dealings. When the inhabitants heard howPhilip preached the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ they were bap-tized, “both men and women” (Acts 8:13). When the Hebrew Christians in Jerusa-lem heard about what was going on in Samaria they quickly dispatched theapostles, Peter and John, to investigate the unauthorized missionary activity ofdeacon-evangelist, Philip. When they got there, they found the rumours they hadheard were true. Those who had been baptized had indeed received the Holy Spirit.Thus the election and activity of two of the seven deacons shows us how the out-reach of the Gospel of Jesus Christ transcends geographical borders, languagebarriers and social customs. In brief, by the power of the Holy Spirit ethnicity be-comes a channel of, instead of a barrier to the spread of Christianity.In the history and tradition of the Lutheran ministry we have sometimes actedlike the conservative apostles in Jerusalem and allowed ourselves to be fenced in byethnicity. Sometimes we have followed the example of the deacon-evangelists andallowed ethnicity to become a channel for the catholicity of the Gospel. In thisinstance, it is the deacon-evangelists who are the models of a truly apostolic ministry.

The History and Tradition of the Lutheran Ministry

Scholars Commons

Consensus
Volume 5 | Issue 4 Article 3
10-1-1979
The History and Tradition of the Lutheran Ministry
Helmut T. Lehmann
Follow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus
This Articles is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by an
authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation
Lehmann, Helmut T. (1979) "The History and Tradition of the Lutheran Ministry," Consensus: Vol. 5 : Iss. 4 , Article 3.
Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol5/iss4/3
THE HISTORY AND TRADITION OF
THE LUTHERAN MINISTRY
Helmut T. Lehmann
The inclusion of the term “Lutheran” in the formulation of our subject suggests a
restriction of ministry to one part of the Christian Church. This suggestion is not
unambiguously done. On the one hand, the term “Lutheran” restricts our under-
standing of the ministry to those branches of Christendom which acknowledge the
Augsburg Confession as their foundation of the Christian faith. On the other hand,
by virtue of their very acknowledgement of the Augsburg Confession, these branch-
es of Christendom understand their ministry as being an integral part of the message
of the Christian church of all times and places. That is to say, “Lutheran” is under-
stood as referring to a specific Christian Communion among and within the
churches in the world today. Within our churches of the world today the Lutheran
ministry has characteristics and dimensions which are especially, though not exclu-
sively, evident in the history and tradition of that ministry.
I should like to focus on two of the dimensions apparent in the history and tradi-
tion of the Lutheran ministry. One of these dimensions, perhaps more apparent
than the other, is that of the ethnicity of the Lutheran ministry. There are good
reasons for associating a strong ethnic emphasis with the history and tradition of the
Lutheran ministry. Either by inference or explicitly these reasons will become evident
when we turn to the subject of ethnicity in the Lutheran ministry.
The other dimension of the Lutheran ministry which is perhaps less apparent and,
according to some, actually present only in a fractured form is what I want to describe
as catholic, i.e., universal in the sense of agreeing with the doctrine of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ as witnessed to in the New and Old Testaments and as this Gospel is con-
fessed in creeds and writings from time to time down through the centuries.
ETHNICITY IN THE LUTHERAN MINISTRY
The very dimension of ethnicity seems to and sometimes does contradict the dim-
ension of catholicity. However, at times ethnicity gjyes expression to the very
23
24 Consensus
catholicity which this ethnicity may at other times deny. A reason for this self-contra-
dictory nature of ethnicity is to be found in the manner in which the Reformers
(particularly Luther and Melanchthon) reinterpreted the Pentecost event.
While there may not be unanimity among biblical scholars concerning the inter-
pretation of the Pentecost event as reported in Acts 2, the Reformers did not inter-
pret glossalalia — the speaking in tongues — as a charismatic utterance requiring
the Holy Spirit’s gift of interpretation, as I Corinthians 12 and 14 suggest. Instead,
they viewed the gift of speaking with tongues as a language miracle. The miracle of
Pentecost thus did not consist in an esoteric understanding of glossalalia by the few
but by the many people who understood what was being said in their particular
language. By extension, the miracle of Pentecost was understood as the Holy Spirit’s
power to convey the message of the crucified and risen Christ in the language and cul-
ture of representatives of ethnic groups from all parts of the then-known world. In this
context, ethnicity became on that first Pentecost the effulgence of the catholicity of the
ministry of Peter in his sermon.
In part, it is in consequence of the understanding of Pentecost as a language event
that the sixteenth century Lutheran reformation movement clothed its rediscovered
Gospel of righteousness through faith alone in the language of the people wherever the
reformation gained a foothold. This observation is true to such an extent that it is a
commonplace to point to the Lutheran Reformation as giving birth to modem German.
It is a commonplace to record the fact that in part the Lutheran Reformation gathered
momentum in central and northern Europe because its tenets and goals were set forth
in the language of the people (vernacular)
.
The language of the people was so important because in and through it ethnic
groups gave expression to their culture and to their aspirations. In this ethnic context the
Reformation message, stressing the dialectical relationship of law and Gospel, was pro-
claimed. It is important to be aware of this stress on the dialectical relationship of law
and Gospel in the ethnic cultural context. For the tension between law and Gospel does
not baptize a language or a culture of a people as an unambiguous good. The law
condemns peoples who confuse the beauty of their language with the beauty of holi-
ness. The law condemns ethnic groups who abuse the Christian faith so as to make the
Christian faith the means of preserving ethnic language and custom, instead of using
language and custom to preserve and extend the Christian faith.
Case Study 1 — The Volga Germans
It is difficult to arrive at a clear-cut judgment about the legitimate role for lang-
uage and custom to play in the minister’s proclamation of the Gospel and admin-
istration of the sacraments. How difficult such a judgment is can be illustrated by
reference to Paul Hansen’s discovery in 1976 of Volga German Lutherans in
Russia, 2000 miles east of Moscow in Tselinograd, a city of about 130,000 people
in Kazakhstan. Their forbears had imigrated to Russia on invitation of the Russian
Empress, Catherine II.
This ethnic group of German Lutherans has a number of noteworthy features.
Until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, German Lutherans in Russia made up a
History; and Tradition 25
flourishing Lutheran Church. They consisted of some 800 congregations and a mill-
ion baptized members. Since 1917 their decimation has continued. Interestingly
enough, this group of Lutherans apparently did not think of theological education
for future ministers until it was cut off from its ministerial supply in Germany and the
Baltic countries. The seminary the German Lutherans, established in 1925, was
closed down in the 1930’s. From the point of view of our immediate interests these
Volga German Lutherans exhibit a feature particularly significant for our considera-
tion. Throughout more than two hundred years of history in Russia, these Luther-
ans retained their German language and customs in their religious life and in their
congregations. By and large most of us would be inclined to criticize these Volga
Lutherans for not employing the language of their adopted country in their religious
life. Most of us do not favor employing one language at work, and another at wor-
ship. That kind of split-level existence does not accord with our stress on the Christ-
ian faith as something dynamic for all of life on every level. We may be inclined to
look upon a bilingual ministry as a betrayal rather than a confession of the Christian
faith. Yet after having visited, counselled and worshipped with these diaspora Lu-
therans, Hansen concluded, “It’s really another world. These people have lived for
so many generations without anything. They have no denominational organization,
no trained clergy, no dogmatics. I felt as if I were looking at the first century church
where they had only the words of the Lord.”
Hansen’s comment raises myriads of questions. Was the first century church with-
out “denominational organization”? The New Testament, particularly the corpus of
Pauline letters, bears ample testimony to a confessional cleavage between Jewish
and Gentile Christian congregations. If Paul, Barnabas and Apollo were not trained
clergy (perhaps not in the modern sense)
,
then the Christian Church has never had
“trained clergy.” Definitions of dogmatics vary; but if by dogmatics we refer to de-
veloped creedal statements of the Christian faith, then the New Testament provides
ample evidence of these, too (e.g. Phil. 2; the Nunc Dimittis in Luke 2; the Mag-
nificat in Luke 1; the Prooimion in Eph. 1, etc.). On the face of it, Hansen’s evalua-
tion sounds more like that of a romanticizing liberal than of a realistic biblical
scholar.
Though these ethnic German Lutherans were without a pastor at the time of
Hansen’s visit, they did presumably enjoy the leadership of a bilingual ministry until
the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. From 1955 - 1972 they had the services of a
nearly blind pastor, Eugene Bachmann who remembered the names of 78 other
pastors who had died without being replaced.
Today’s Volga German Lutherans represent a martyr church whose continued
existence seems to rest on two pillars which mutually support each other: a German
ethnic character and the Christian creeds. At least until very recent times these two
pillars of a diaspora church were maintained by a German ethnic clergy in the
largest Slavic country in the modern world.
Case Study 2 — Western Canada
A less spectacular but equally important contribution to our awareness of the role
ethnicity plays in the history and tradition of the Lutheran ministry has been a small
26 Consensus
booklet which outlines the place two seminaries in northern Germany played in
supplying German-speaking Lutheran congregations in North America with pastors.'
Both of these seminaries were established for the specific purpose of educating and
preparing men for the ministry in North America. Though European countries with
significant Lutheran constituencies supplied those who emigrated with pastors from
time to time, I am not aware of any country in which institutions were specifically
established to prepare pastors who would or could minister to the waves of immi-
grants which came to North America in such large numbers in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Pastors who served the Scandinavian churches in their
early days were either educated in their native country, tutored by a pastor or group
of pastors in this country, or sent to a seminary of another Lutheran body. An
example of the latter is the Norwegian Synod which, prior to 1876, educated its
theological students at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.*
While the uniqueness of the educational institutions at Breklum and Kropp bene-
fited Lutheran churches in all of North America with its many organizational divis-
ions, these German institutions are of special significance for the beginnings of Lu-
theranism in Western Canada. The Rev. Heinrich Schnieder, the first pastor of
Trinity Lutheran Church, Winnipeg, who subsequently moved to Edenwold, Sask-
atchewan, graduated from the seminary in Kropp, arrived in the U.S.A. in 1886
and in Winnipeg in 1889. The first president of the Lutheran College and Seminary
in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the Rev. Dr. Juergen Goos, was also a graduate of
Kropp Seminary.
While not a graduate of either Kropp or Breklum Seminary, a founding father
and first president of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Manitoba and other Provin-
ces, the Rev. Dr. Martin Ruccius, was encouraged and assisted to go to North
America by “The Lutheran Pastoral Aid Society for the Lutheran Church in
America.”*
In retrospect, it is apparent that furnishing pastors who could minister to members
of congregations in the language of the homeland sometimes proved to be a mixed
blessing. In some instances, preservation of native custom overshadowed proclama-
tion of the Christian creed; promotion of the native language became more im-
portant than the propagation of the Christian faith; ethnicity of a people outranked
in significance the catholicity of their faith. Yet failure to provide pastors who could
minister to people in their own language often not only resulted in a loss of
members to Lutheran congregations but in their falling away from the Christian faith
altogether. Consequently, the solution posed by the problem of ethnicity is by no
means a simple one. The history of Lutheran churches on this continent is in many
ways a story of frustration, anxiety and conflict in coming to terms with the ethos of
congregations which is rooted more in ethnicity than in Christian ethics.
1 . Otto W. Heick, Go Into AH the World, 1978,
2. E. Clifford Nelson and Eugene L. Fevold, The Lutheran Church among Norwegian-Americans
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1960), p. 186.
3. V.j. Eylands, Lutherans in Canada (Winnipeg, 1945), p. 247.
Historic and Tradition 27
Case Study 3 — The Seven
The direction which a Christian ministry, including a Lutheran one, must move in
dealing with the presence of different races, customs, cultures and languages in the
missionary outreach of the Christian Church is clear. The clarity of this direction
derives from the New Testament, more particularly from what is in a pre-eminent
sense a missionary book in the New Testament canon, the Acts of the Apostles.
I have already referred to the Pentecost event in Acts 2 in which ethnicity be-
comes, not a barrier to but a channel of the universal outreach of the ascended
Lord by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. As a matter of fact, the theme of the Acts
of the Apostles is this: the conquest of national, racial, social linguistic barriers
through the proclamation of the Gospel by the witnesses of the primitive Christian
Church accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit. While this theme is devel-
oped in a variety of reports and situations, the appointment of the so-called seven
deacons in Acts 6 and the activity of two of the seven in Acts 7 and 8 offers one of
the more striking and interesting examples of the transcendence of ethnic barriers
and thus of the progress of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In evaluating the example of
the seven in terms of this transcendence, it is only possible to sketch some of the
more important elements in the narrative we have before us in Acts 6 and the two
subsequent chapters.
You will recall that it was the bickering of the Hellenistic Christians against the
Hebrew Christians which led to the appointment of the seven “to wait on tables”.
The difference between Hellenistic Christians and Hebrew Christians was not a
matter of race. Hellenistic Christians were diaspora Jews who had grown up in and
adopted the Hellenistic culture and language. Hebrew Christians were native, Pal-
estinian Jews who had maintained Jewish customs, grown up in Jewish culture and
spoke the Hebrew language. The difference between Hellenistic and Hebrew Christ-
ians was one of language, custom and culture — a difference in ethnicity and ethos.
This ethnic difference erupted into conflict when the Hellenists complained of the
neglect of their widows in the daily distribution of food. The author of Acts tries to
paper over this serious conflict by making it appear that the apostles smoothed
things out through creation of a division of labor. The apostles would attend to the
preaching of the Word of God. The primitive congregation in Jerusalem would elect
seven men from its midst to wait on tables. The strange thing is that the seven men
elected for this task were all from the Hellenistic party, as their names clearly show.
The apostles, who were to attend to the Word of God, belonged to the Hebrew
party.
Stranger still is the fact that this division of labor in the early church remained a
theory. In practice things looked quite different. No sooner has the report of the
election of the seven been brought to a close when we are told the most prominent
man among the seven, Stephen, did great signs and wonders among the people.
More than that; we find him in a local synagogue pointing out to the local Jews and
those from the diaspora how Jesus of Nazareth supersedes the laws and customs
handed down by Moses. As we read on, we discover Stephen doing the work not
of a deacon but of an evangelist. He was doing what the apostles said they were
going to do — preach the Word of God. Moreover, his preaching of the Word of
28 Consensus
God stressed the transcendence of the law of Moses together with its accompanying
ceremonial and social customs through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Ethnicity could no longer be divisive.
Another deacon who rose into prominence along with Stephen was Philip. He,
too, was active as an evangelist instead of serving as a deacon — a welfare officer
in the Jerusalem congregation. In Acts 8 we find Philip has left the Jewish commun-
ities in Judaea and has crossed the boundary into Samaria, a region with whose
inhabitants the Jews would have no dealings. When the inhabitants heard how
Philip preached the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ they were bap-
tized, “both men and women” (Acts 8:13). When the Hebrew Christians in Jerusa-
lem heard about what was going on in Samaria they quickly dispatched the
apostles, Peter and John, to investigate the unauthorized missionary activity of
deacon-evangelist, Philip. When they got there, they found the rumours they had
heard were true. Those who had been baptized had indeed received the Holy Spirit.
Thus the election and activity of two of the seven deacons shows us how the out-
reach of the Gospel of Jesus Christ transcends geographical borders, language
barriers and social customs. In brief, by the power of the Holy Spirit ethnicity be-
comes a channel of, instead of a barrier to the spread of Christianity.
In the history and tradition of the Lutheran ministry we have sometimes acted
like the conservative apostles in Jerusalem and allowed ourselves to be fenced in by
ethnicity. Sometimes we have followed the example of the deacon-evangelists and
allowed ethnicity to become a channel for the catholicity of the Gospel. In this
instance, it is the deacon-evangelists who are the models of a truly apostolic ministry.


https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2240&amp;context=consensus

The History and Tradition of the Lutheran Ministry

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