Excitement for ministry
Dear friends in Christ,
This month, I want to share with you just one of the great joys I have most recently experienced as a Theological Educator for Luther Academy. As part of our program, the students are required to do an independent written assignment each semester to prepare them for writing their Bachelor’s Thesis. This was something new to me as in the US, we don’t require a thesis paper for the Bachelor of Arts degree, but that is apparently the tradition in Europe.
This semester, the teachers all submitted essay topics based on what we covered in the Fall semester. The students were then given the choice to select a topic for further independent study and to write an essay on that topic. The teachers were also asked to mentor the students who selected their topic as they went through the process. So, since I taught the class on homiletics (sermon writing) last semester, I worked with two students to write essays regarding the distinction between Law and Gospel.
We often take for granted a certain level of previous education, which was a learning experience for me, as one of the students hadn’t really done much research-based work before. I was able to point him in the right direction and taught him how to use subject indexes and the like in his research. After giving some materials and pointing him in the right direction, off he went to do his research.
Undoubtedly, the most rewarding discussion I had with him was after he had spent some time doing research. He was really wrestling with the nature of the Law and the Gospel. He didn’t grow up in the Lutheran tradition, and so much of this was a challenge. He could see that both Law and Gospel are necessary and that they need to be together. But there were still more questions in his mind. We talked about where the Gospel is found in the Old Testament and the nature of faith that binds modern believers to the Israelites of old. We talked about how the Law accuses us and makes it impossible to find comfort in our works. Most importantly, we talked about the sweetness of the Gospel and the peace that is ours in Christ. And not only did he get to the point where he could rightly explain both the Law and the Gospel, but he also excitedly expressed that he was ready to tell this to other people! It was one of those “light-bulb” moments that teachers love to see. He was so happy to have it all fall into place, and I look forward to seeing what he writes in his paper.
This is the kind of rewarding work we are doing at Luther Academy. We are training men to go and serve as pastors, but not just in established churches. We are training them to be church planters. They will be working to establish new congregations that, by God's grace, will outlive us all. And they will be taking this faith that we know so well to people who have never heard it and who will have similar questions, which is why it is so crucial for these students to be inquisitive, ask questions, and seek answers. Please continue to pray for the courage of our students that they would be able to put their hands to this work with vigor and joy!
In Christ's service,
Pastor Cundiff
|
