Loehe and his coworkers in the Iowa Synod.

If the heartbeat of Loehe's theology is like that of the human heart, the diastolic moment is worship and the systolic moment is mission. In worship the people of God encounter Jesus Christ in Word and Sacrament, confessing their faith, and are taken up into the missio Dei as they are propelled into the world as agents of the gospel's mission. The life of Loehe testifies how from his earliest engagement in public ministry to the very end of his life his pulse beat with a passion both for liturgical renewal and for spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. Already during his time of university study and in his first parishes, Loehe became notorious for organizing missionary circles and missionary societies.

Between the years 1826 (when during his studies he became captivated by the pietistic theology of Professor Johann Christian Krafft) and 1837 (when he arrived as pastor of the village church at Neuendettelsau), Loehe's missionary theology acquired new accents, i.e., that mission requires praxis, mission necessitates the church, mission entails confessional loyalty, and mission involves pastoral care. (1)

All of his early involvements made Loehe ripe to respond when in 1840 he read an appeal by Pastor Friedrich Wyneken for help with the mission in North America. Almost immediately Loehe responded to this plea for financial support and volunteers in mission for the German immigrants in North America by writing an article, "Die lutherische Auswanderer in Nordamerika: Eine Ansprache an die Leser des Sonntagsblattes [The Lutheran Emigrants in North America: An Appeal to the Readers of the Sonntagsblatt]." (2) Along with his partners, Loehe was faced with the task of organizing a strategy for disbursing the funds and preparing the volunteers who soon were made available for this missionary work in North America.

After an initial period of offering support for the work of the Ohio Synod and its seminary in Columbus, Ohio, Loehe turned to the Missouri Synod as a mission partner more in line with his own confessional commitments. The missionaries sent by Loehe were instrumental in the formation of the Missouri Synod in 1847 and through his initiative and financial support a seminary was founded at Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 1849 Loehe founded the Gesellschaft fuer innere Mission im Sinne der Lutherischen Kirche to sustain this work among the German immigrants.

Of particular interest for the history of Wartburg Seminary, Loehe also helped to organize colonies in the vicinity of Saginaw, Michigan, sending colonists from Germany to populate them and religious leaders for their spiritual care. Loehe envisioned not only that these colonies would provide ministry to the German immigrants but also that they would develop missionary work among the Chippewa people who lived in the surrounding area. Among the religious leaders, Johannes Deindoerfer was sent as pastor to the colony at Frankenhilf in 1851 and Georg Grossmann as director of a teachers' seminary at Saginaw in 1852.

As conflict emerged over the nature of ordained ministry between the Missouri Synod and the founder of the Buffalo Synod, Johannes Grabau, those who defended the mediating position of Loehe, chiefly Deindoerfer and Grossmann, found themselves accused of doctrinal error by the leaders of the Missouri Synod. This conflict eventually prompted those loyal to Loehe to leave behind the work begun in Michigan and seek out a territory not yet under development by the Missouri Synod. That destination was Iowa.

This brief sketch of Loehe's early outreach to North America leaves unmentioned the other missionary impulses of his work in Neuendettelsau and other parts of the world. In the same year that Loehe's emissaries moved on from Michigan to a new mission field in Iowa, he founded the Lutherischer Verein fuer weibliche Diakonie in 1853. The organizing of an association of Lutheran deaconesses with their charitable work for the weakest members of society required an increasing amount of Loehe's attention in the subsequent years. Nevertheless, Loehe continued to support the work of mission in North America, especially through the efforts of the Iowa Synod, until the end of his life in 1872.

It is totally consistent with the pulse of Loehe's theology that two of the most impressive recent studies of his work have emphasized the missionary character of his thought. Christian Weber's comprehensive study is titled Missionstheologie bei Wilhelm Loehe: Aufbruch zur Kirche der Zukunft, and David Ratke's insightful study bears the title Confession and Mission, Word and Sacrament: The Ecclesial Theology of Wilhelm Loehe. (3) Speaking at Wartburg Seminary in October 2001 at the event celebrating the founding of the Center for Global Theologies, Weber quoted Loehe in describing the church's call to mission:

It is very urgent for the church to start moving. The church must get
away from self-centered thinking and protecting its ownership. It needs
to find a global and missionary perspective.... In Loehe's words: "For
mission is nothing but the one church of God in its movement, the
actualization of the one universal, catholic church."
  This is the vision of Loehe. He drew a picture with words. The church
is like a huge pilgrimage ascending a mountain. The first pilgrims have
already reached the top. But the top is covered with clouds and cannot
be seen from afar. At the end of the pilgrimage, people of all nations
and colors join in. The pilgrims are a unity because they share the way.
(4)

This momentum for mission found new expressions in the ministry of the Iowa Synod.

Missionary Synod with a mission

The last coin that belonged to the estimated 22 persons who came to Iowa under the leadership of Grossmann and Deindoerfer was spent fording the Mississippi River. As they struggled to overcome a desperate financial situation, immediately the impulse toward missionary work took root in Iowa soil. While Deindoerfer and the lay leader G. Amman went to Clayton County, near Strawberry Point, to break ground for a settlement, Grossmann immediately went into action in Dubuque with the task of reestablishing the teachers' seminary. The missionary vision was to establish schools in cities and towns with significant populations of German immigrants. This would naturally lead to a second missionary goal: the formation of Lutheran congregations in those localities.

This course of events rapidly unfolded, and almost immediately the teachers' seminary became also a theological seminary. Wartburg Seminary, which formally received its name in 1857, traces its origin to the expansion of the teachers' seminary to incorporate theological studies for the preparation of pastors in 1854. This was the same year that Sigmund Fritschel arrived to assist Director Grossmann in the instruction at the seminary.

The Iowa Synod was itself founded at St. Sebald in Clayton County on August 24, 1854, with four charter members: Deindoerfer, Grossmann, Fritschel, and a theological candidate, M. Schueller. The first missionary endeavor of the synod was in the area of "inner" mission, through the organization of preaching points that would be developed into congregations. While at its founding the synod consisted of only two congregations, at St. Sebald and Dubuque, one year later there were sixteen locations where the gospel was being preached. Friendly relations soon commenced with the Buffalo Synod, and the Iowa Synod began to provide pastors for vacant Buffalo congregations. In 1857 the Iowa Synod thereby extended its work to Michigan and Ohio. Fritschel himself went for two years to Detroit to serve as pastor, taking along the senior seminary class to complete their education there.

Pastors who had finished at the seminary went out to form and serve congregations at places as distant as Des Moines, Jonesboro (Illinois), and Pocahontas (Missouri). Meanwhile mission fields were extended to the areas surrounding both St. Sebald and Dubuque. By 1858 there were 17 pastors, 19 congregations, and 12 preaching points. In 1864 these numbers had increased to 41 pastors, 50 congregations in 7 states, and many more preaching points. Loehe continued to encourage and send candidates for ordained ministry for preparation at Wartburg Seminary throughout this and subsequent periods.

While the greatest gains of the Iowa Synod's early missionary efforts were among the steady stream of immigrants from Germany, the vision for "outer mission" in the form of outreach to Native American people continued to inspire its founders. Already in 1856 efforts were underway to organize missionary work among Indians in Canada through the leadership of Pastor John Jakob Schmidt. While these initiatives met insurmountable obstacles, Schmidt learned of an alternate possibility from a government agent named Redfield among the Crow tribe in Montana. Redfield led Schmidt to Montana in the spring of 1858, accompanied by Moritz Braeuninger from Wartburg Seminary. The two missionaries came to live for several months among the Crow, building relationships and learning the language. When they departed in November of the same year to return to Iowa to report on their findings, the Crow pleaded with them to stay.

The encouraging report given that winter generated contributions from supporters not only from the Iowa and Buffalo synods but especially from mission societies in Germany. In July 1859 Schmidt, Braeuninger, two other missionaries, and two colonists set out for Montana. The goal was to establish a colony as the base of operations for the missionary work. After suffering a difficult winter throughout which there was no contact with the Crow, Schmidt returned with one of the other missionaries to Iowa for additional provisions, while Braeuninger and the others erected a mission station on the banks of the Powder River. Here tragedy struck. Thinking they had built their log house in Crow territory, they instead were located in the border area between hostile tribes. According to the most likely reconstruction of events, Braeuninger was killed by representatives of another tribe that resisted the settlement of whites in the region. His death was a deep blow to the missionary efforts among the Native Americans.

Additional missionary work nevertheless did follow among the Cheyenne at a mission station constructed at Deer Creek, Wyoming. Between 1861 and 1863 various missionary ventures were explored, including preaching services for Native Americans near the Deer Creek station. Three orphaned Cheyenne boys were entrusted to the missionaries in 1863 and baptized shortly thereafter. Whatever encouragement this might have generated was soon dissipated during a new wave of Indian insurrections. By January 1865 the entire missionary team had withdrawn. One further attempt to resume the Native American mission work was attempted in 1866, but this was short-lived. In 1885 the Iowa Synod transferred all remaining funds from Native American missions to the Neuendettelsau Mission Society for its work in Papua New Guinea. In this indirect way the Iowa Synod and Wartburg Seminary have participated since the late nineteenth century in the missionary work in Papua New Guinea.

Many reasons can be cited for the failure of the Iowa Synod's mission to the Native American people. Gerhard Schmutterer and Charles Lutz name the following:

... the involved chain of command from Bavaria via Iowa to the frontier;
the haphazard planning, lack of funds, and inexperience of the synod's
mission board; the faulty logistics and exhausting travel routes to the
frontier; the intertribal conflicts among the Indians; the dishonesty of
many whites with whom the Indians dealt; the routine violation of
treaties by whites in general; the untimely outbreak of the Civil War
and the concomitant withdrawals of military forces in the West; and
finally the inexperience, isolation, and naivete of the German-speaking
missionaries operating in a twice-foreign environment. (5)

Perhaps the most promising moment in this entire enterprise occurred in the summer of 1858 when the two missionaries, Schmidt and Braeuninger, asked the Crow chieftain if they could travel along with the tribe and live as they lived. (6) The next six weeks were spent traveling among the Crow in the Powder River valley, learning the language, becoming familiar with Crow culture, and engaging in theological conversation with Indian leaders. As a result of this period of "accompaniment," the Crow were reluctant to let them depart, and, as Schmidt reported, "A thousand times they asked us if we would really return when the winter had passed...." (7) How might the history of Native American missionary endeavor by the Iowa Synod been different had the missionaries chosen to persist in this approach rather than returning the next year to build the ill-fated mission station?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the latter portion of the nineteenth century, the Iowa Synod continued its trajectory of steady growth in the number of pastors and congregations among its ranks. In 1896 the synod roster listed 334 pastors, 40 parochial school teachers, 534 congregations, and 149 preaching points. After its merger with the Texas Synod in 1896, the number of pastors swelled to 400 and congregations to 600, with a confirmed membership of nearly 65,000. Although its doctrine came under repeated challenge from representatives of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod involving issues as divergent as chiliasm, the anti-Christ, and predestination, the synod never wavered from its central purpose of extending the ministry of the gospel to the large number of German immigrants continuing to flow into the Midwest.

Wartburg Seminary was instrumental in serving the needs of the synod for pastors and teachers during this period. Twice the seminary was compelled to move because it outgrew its facilities, in 1874 to Mendota, Illinois, and in 1889 back to Dubuque. Whatever the seminary's location, it continued to initiate mission in the surrounding area and to graduate candidates prepared for ordained service in the Iowa Synod's congregations. During their years of service as the faculty of Wartburg Seminary, brothers Sigmund Fritschel (1854-1900) and Gottfried Fritschel (1857-1889), prepared hundreds of students for pastoral ministry, nearly all the pastors who belonged to the Iowa Synod. Their influence as teachers of the church was extended through their publications, including two books and the editing of the Kirchen-Blatt from 1858 to 1871 (by Gottfried) and many articles in various periodicals, especially the Kirchliche Zeitschrift. Besides their endeavors as educators, both brothers served the mission of the church as synod leaders, preachers, and "ecumenical" representatives to the General Council in the pursuit of confessional faithfulness and unity among Lutherans.

Throughout the next period of Wartburg's history, the strong relationship with the mission of the Iowa Synod continued under a new generation of faculty, including Max Fritschel (son of Sigmund), George Fritschel (son of Gottfried), and especially through the influence of Professor J. Michael Reu. Max Fritschel served on the faculty a total of 48 years and George Fritschel for 30 years. The preparation of pastors for service in the synod remained central to Wartburg's mission under their leadership. It was during their tenure that the construction of the present Wartburg Seminary building was undertaken, with the setting of the cornerstone in 1914.

Another significant venture during this period was the organization of a synod committee for foreign missions in 1917. This became a vehicle for supporting the work of the Neuendettelsau Mission in New Guinea (at a time during World War I when German missionary work was being curtailed), as well as other missions in East Africa. By 1930 the Iowa Synod had sent 23 persons to Papua New Guinea as missionaries, seven of these ordained ministers prepared at Wartburg Seminary. In addition five other ordained pastors had spent at least a portion of their studies at Wartburg prior to their setting out as missionaries to Papua New Guinea. This significant missionary connection has continued through subsequent years up to the present day through Wartburg's theological preparation of students from Papua New Guinea.

The teaching ministry of J. Michael Reu deserves its own chapter in this account of missionary theology and Wartburg Seminary. Reu was a teacher, scholar, and prolific writer who between 1899 and 1943 shaped not only the ministry of the students who sat in his classroom but countless others through his vast array of publications. Reu was deeply committed to preservation of the Lutheran tradition, as can be seen through his choice of topics for publication: the life of Luther, Luther's German Bible, Luther's Small Catechism, and the Augsburg Confession. He edited the journal Kirchliche Zeitschrift for nearly 40 years and was its primary author, including 3,631 book reviews. His commitment to the publication of this journal and his role in founding the Luther Academy in 1936 underscore his concern for the continuing education of those serving as pastors. This is the very same Luther Academy that has evolved today into the Luther Academy of the Rockies.

Perhaps the greatest missionary contribution of Reu was his role as a Christian educator, not only for pastors but especially for the congregational members who employed the curricular materials he prepared on the Bible and catechism. Reu was dedicated to the biblical and catechetical literacy of the members of Lutheran congregations. To this end he stressed the retelling of the biblical story through a method of questions and answers that probed the meaning of those stories for the Christian life. In this way Reu not only fostered the mission of the church through his seminary lectures on dogmatics, homiletics, catechetics, ethics, and virtually every other discipline in the curriculum but also by his considerable influence over Christian education in the parishes of the Iowa Synod and beyond.

At the time of the merger with the Ohio and Buffalo Synods in 1930 at the formation of the "old" American Lutheran Church, the Iowa Synod had grown to consist of 9 districts including 915 congregations, 638 pastors, and approximately 212,000 baptized members. Wartburg Seminary had been a key partner in this development that began with two congregations at Dubuque and St. Sebald in 1854. While in retrospect it is possible to criticize the limited focus on mission to German-speaking immigrants during this period, impulses toward foreign missions and outreach to Native Americans have been noted. When the history of the Iowa Synod was written in 1929 just prior to the merger forming the old ALC, it was particularly fitting that the author, Professor G. J. Zeilinger of Wartburg Seminary, selected this title for the book: A Missionary Synod with a Mission. (8)

The early missionary impulses of Loehe and his coworkers (Mitarbeiter) in the Iowa Synod persist in the commitments of Wartburg Theological Seminary to this day. The motto by which Wartburg has become known is this: "The place where learning leads to mission and mission informs learning." Through the formation of candidates for ministry in the church today through its degree programs, renewed cooperation with its historic partners at Wartburg College, global accompaniment with many international churches, and the work of the three centers (Theology and Land, Youth Ministries, and Global Theologies), Wartburg Seminary claims the Loehe tradition by remaining centered in the worship of the Triune God who continues to be alive in the world in mission.

May this initiative of the founding of an International Loehe Society contribute in ways we cannot yet imagine to a new chapter in the missionary theology that began in Neuendettelsau more than 150 years ago!

Craig L. Nessan

Wartburg Theological Seminary

1. See Christian Weber, Missionstheologie bei Wilhelm Loehe: Aufbruch zur Kirche der Zukunft (Guetersloh: Guetersloher Verlagshaus, 1996), 44-161.

2. Wilhelm Loehe, "Die lutherische Auswanderer in Nordamerika: Eine Ansprache an die Leser des Sonntagsblattes," in Wilhelm Loehe, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Klaus Ganzert. 7 vols. (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 1951-1986), 4:16-19. Cf. also Loehe's sermon comments in Gesammelte Werke 6.2:640-41.

3. David C. Ratke, Confession and Mission, Word and Sacrament: The Ecclesial Theology of Wilhelm Loehe (St. Louis: Concordia, 2001).

4. Christian Weber, "The Future of Loehe's Legacy," Currents in Theology and Mission 31 (April 2004): 100.

5. Gerhard M. Schmutterer and Charles P. Lutz, "Mission Martyr on the Western Frontier: Can Cross-cultural Mission Be Achieved?" in Church Roots: Stories of Nine Immigrant Groups That Became The American Lutheran Church, ed. Charles P. Lutz (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), 140.

6. See ibid., 132f.

7. Ibid., 133.

8. G. J. Zeilinger, A Missionary Synod With a Mission: A Memoir for the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa and Other States (Chicago: Wartburg Publishing House, 1929). The membership statistics given in the preceding section are chiefly taken from this book.