The church in motion: Wilhelm Loehe, mission, and the church today.

In recent years there has been much scholarship into those historical figures who have largely disappeared and been forgotten but who are now being retrieved so that their wisdom might be shared with the church. Wilhelm Loehe is one of those figures. Although there has been a resurgence of interest in Loehe, he still remains an obscure, shadowy figure in Lutheran history.

I want to explore some themes in his theology of mission. Although it is not my main purpose, I hope to lay to rest some misconceptions about Loehe's theology. Nearly everybody who has heard of him and has a passing familiarity with him assumes that his theology is largely either that of the nineteenth century Erlangen School (Neo-Lutheranism) or a repristinated version of Lutheran Orthodoxy. (1) Both of these interpretations are true only in so far as they mislead. At important points in his theology Loehe departs from Lutheran Orthodoxy and from the Erlangen school. Furthermore, both of these movements are about doctrine, and, as Christian Weber rightly points out, "the church had not only a teaching obligation, but also a 'gathering' obligation." (2) His theology is creative and innovative. Finally, I intend to consider possibilities for retrieving Loehe's theology of mission for the beginning of the third millennium.

Loehe always had a strong evangelical sense of mission. As a student at the university he organized a mission society and distributed religious tracts. (3) On the day of his ordination he prayed that he would receive a sign, a word, from the mouth of God. He opened his Bible and three times was confronted with the commissioning text in Isa 6:8-10 which speaks of going out to the people with a message that they will not hear. Loehe responded, "Here I am, Lord, send me." (4) This pietistic sense of service in the work of mission and proclamation was a predominant motif in Loehe's own discipleship and in what he asked of others.

In 1840, he read an appeal for help in North America. The Lutheran church in North America was in desperate need of pastors and others willing to serve the German emigrants there. Almost immediately Loehe wrote an article, which generated a missionary enthusiasm that he had not foreseen. Loehe was flooded with donations. This was the beginning of Loehe's missionary activity in the U.S. At first Loehe and his colleague Johann Wucherer did not know what to do with the money that they received for the "German mission in North America." The problem was soon solved by the appearance of a volunteer, Adam Ernst. Loehe decided to train Ernst in the basics of theology and provide him with a general education so that Ernst could serve as a school teacher. Soon after, Ernst was joined in his instruction by another volunteer, Georg Burger. These two men were instructed and in 1842 commissioned for missionary service in North America.

In the final decade of his life, Loehe turned his attention to a quiet reformation and renewal of the church by establishing diaconal orders or associations. Already in 1849 he was instrumental in the founding of a missionary society, the Society for Inner and Outer Mission in the Sense of the Lutheran Church, and, four years later, the founding of a female diaconate, the Lutheran Association for Women's Diaconal Service, which consecrated its motherhouse a year later in 1854 in Neuendettelsau. These two societies aimed to quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) reform and renew the Lutheran church in Bavaria. (5)

The women's diaconate had a twofold aim. Its more specific aim was for the awakening and formation of a sense of service to those who were suffering among the Lutheran population in Bavaria, particularly among women. Its second and broader--and one might say more subversive--aim was the continuing formation of the "apostolic-episcopal church." Its life was organized around service and worship, specifically Lutheran worship.

Despite his earnest efforts to develop "apostolic" communities (notably the communities in Michigan), Loehe did not succeed. He died in 1872 a disappointed man whose goals, he felt, for the Bavarian church had not been adequately realized.

Themes in Loehe's theology of mission and ministry

There are many themes or motifs that could be discussed. However I want to focus on a few that I think are particularly significant for his understanding of ministry and mission: (1) community and fellowship, (2) catholicity and unity, (3) apostolicity, (4) confession, (5) Word and sacrament, and (6) context.

1. Community and fellowship

Loehe wrote:

A landscape painted with the most bewitching brush of a master artist
leaves us unsatisfied, no matter how beautiful it is, if there is no
human form in it. There is a strange melancholy and anxiety which seizes
a person when they see that they are forsaken by their fellow human
beings, even if only in a painting. Naturally a person feels this
anxious melancholy even more when he views an actual spot in nature
which is devoid of humans. Yes, the more beautiful the spot in which we
find no one like ourselves, the more bitter is our loneliness. Such a
spot is more like a wilderness than a paradise. For those who are lonely
all the treasures of the world are no substitute for companionship.
Narrower than a prison is the wide earth to those who are abandoned and
lonely. From the very beginning humans were so created that they cannot
be happy alone.
  I shall say more. As long as a person is along they cannot even be
blessed. (6)

It was this understanding of the utter human need for companionship, community, and fellowship that impelled Loehe in his ministry in Neuendettelsau and his support of mission endeavors in North America. The church ministers to people because of their fundamental need for community and fellowship. The church reaches out to people because of the fundamental need for community and fellowship. The church witnesses to and proclaims the gospel because of the fundamental human need for community and fellowship.

All of this speaks to those to whom the church ministers and evangelizes mostly outside the church. But in a very important sense Loehe's deep conviction that humans need community and fellowship shaped his understanding of the church in its self-organization, self-understanding, and self-identity. The church must be a place where community and fellowship are central. Community and fellowship shaped his understanding of the nature of the church. Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 12 were important to Loehe for how they suggested a church ought to understand itself. Each member has gifts--prophesying, evangelism, pastoring, teaching, equipping, etc.--that form a community, that are necessary for building bonds of fellowship. As Weber says, "every congregation needs multiple ministries." (7) Moreover, these individual gifts are not hoarded; they are shared. The value of each member is lifted up and celebrated not just because they are given to us from God but also because they are necessary for the community. Thus a community built around and upon fellowship reaches out to others who are lonely and abandoned so that they too might experience the community and fellowship that surpasses all understanding.

Loehe developed--or, perhaps better stated, retrieved--two offices of ministry in order to better utilize the fullness of the community's gifts. The first of these "offices" was that of the deaconesses whose field of mission was primarily that of inner mission. During his ministry at Neuendettelsau he became acutely conscious of a number of things. First, he was persuaded that women had a ministry that extended beyond the household. Second, while certainly some women had a vocation or ministry to be wives and mothers, not all did. Some women, Loehe was convinced, had ministries in the world that did not include marriage. This was contrary to societal expectations and norms of the period. At that time, women did not have the option of not marrying and living an independent life and having an independent career; women's identities (and vocations) were linked to the men in their lives. Their identities were first linked to their fathers and brothers, then to their husbands and sons when they married. If their husband died, their identity was linked to their sons or other family members. The idea that women could have an identity separate from that of the men in their lives was foreign. Loehe suggested that they could have a ministry, and thereby an identity, apart from men. Thus the office of deaconess was born. Third, Loehe was aware of the need for a special type of ministry in his society. The social conditions were appalling in the midst of the industrial revolution in Germany. People were moving from rural areas to urban areas only to discover famine, disease, and unemployment there. In this setting there was an immense need for missionaries to serve in hospitals, soup kitchens, orphanages and other social ministries. Deaconesses, as he saw it, were well suited for this.

A second type of missionary or minister is that of the "helper in need" (Nothelfer). This ministry, unlike that of the deaconess, does not have a parallel to the apostolic structure described in the New Testament. This ministry developed out of the context in which Loehe lived. I already have given a brief account of Adam Ernst's and Georg Burger's response to Loehe's plea for help. At first Ernst and Burger were trained with the idea that they would respond to the need for teachers in America who could also provide lay ministry leadership there. That is, they would teach by day, and in the evenings and on weekends they would lead worship and hold Bible studies. When they arrived in America, however, they were soon ordained, as they already were adequately prepared for the needs of new immigrants in America. There are two senses in which these helpers in need were a response to the context: (1) they had gifts that were not being used for the good of the whole community, and (2) the community had needs that were not being met.

Another element of community and fellowship that ought not to be overlooked was that of social justice. Without going into the whole story of the Michigan colonies and for that matter the ministry to Iowa, it is enough to say that Loehe was moved by the plight of impoverished farmers in Bavaria to make arrangements for them to emigrate to America and farm land there. The establishing of the deaconess society and the deaconess houses throughout Bavaria has to do with not just the unused gifts of women but also the social needs of Bavarians. (8) One must feed the bellies as well as the souls. One can hardly feast at the table of the Lord when the belly of the person next to you is rumbling with hunger. Hungry, thirsty, and impoverished people are a sign of the brokenness of the community to which Christians are called. This brokenness is a call for Christians to participate in the evangelization of the world.

2. Catholicity

Loehe's understanding of catholicity goes hand in hand with the centrality of community and fellowship in his theology. People of very diverse backgrounds share one thing in common: the need for community and fellowship. When people of diverse backgrounds recognize this, they can gather together as a community. It is this sense of loneliness or abandonment that binds them together. Not only this, Christians, who are already in this community gathered together in order to proclaim the gospel of the One who overcomes abandonment and actively, seek to connect with other communities all over the world who are gathered to celebrate unity and fellowship. A church in Minnesota is in community with churches in North Carolina, Neuendettelsau, Germany, Tanzania, Brazil, and throughout the world. (9) Just as an individual is not isolated, neither is a church isolated. The point is that the church should look less like a factory-made blanket and more like a patchwork quilt: different colors, patterns, and textures.

The community that is the church is not limited to those who live in the same neighborhood and belong to the same congregation. Community does not refer to people of the same nation or the same ethnic or cultural background. Community, for Loehe, extends to all of humankind. Like the Samaritan in Luke's account, we are to love all humans regardless of gender, race, culture, or language. In fact, Loehe went further than Luke and pointed to the example of Christ. Christ loved our bodies and our souls. He redeemed our bodies and our souls. He loves them still and sanctifies them. In like manner, Christians care and love for the bodies and souls of others. (10) Christians do good works and care for one another as Christ did as a sign of and participation in the mission and ministry of Christ.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Clearly there is an eschatological dimension to the catholicity of the church. The Eastern Orthodox like to say that catholicity is not just a matter of geography but of history as well. By that they mean that the church is in union with the church of the apostles that convened at the ecumenical councils of the first millennium. Loehe seemed to be aware of this. His well-known statement, alluded to in the title of this essay, that "mission is nothing but the one church of God in motion," is closely related to an eschatological view that takes seriously the notion that the fullness of the kingdom of God is realized in the present, albeit incompletely. The Word, he said, gathers all people into "the universal--the truly catholic--church which flows through all time and into which all people pour." (11)

I suggest that the catholicity of the church also refers to the church in its fullness that will be revealed at the end of time when Christ returns in glory. This church is Pentecostal. It will include people of all races and tongues (see Acts 2 but also Rev 21:24, 26). This church will be a community where there will be no more suffering, a place where God "will wipe every tear from [people's] eyes.... Mourning and crying and pain will be no more" (Rev 21: 3-4). This church will be a place where the thirsty will be welcomed and nourished (Rev 22:17). Of course, already there is a proleptic experience of this community. This catholicity is broken but yet whole.

3. Apostolicity

In a time and place marked by the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, Loehe sought constancy, stability, and permanence. People in rural areas often moved to cities only to be trapped in unemployment or underemployment. Germany was painfully moving toward unification both politically and ecclesially. Often people look toward the past or the "good old days." Loehe and his contemporaries were not any different; they yearned for a better and simpler time. So he looked back--way back. The instinct of many of his churchly contemporaries was to look toward Luther and the Reformation. Poets and writers and artists often pined for the age of chivalry. Loehe looked back even further. He looked to the apostles. He was especially attracted to the vision and experience of the church as described in the Acts of the Apostles, passages like Acts 2:44-47 (NRSV):

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would
sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as
any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the
temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and
generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being
saved.

Or Acts 4:32-34 (NRSV):

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul,
and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything
they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their
testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was
upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as
owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was
sold.

How could anybody not be moved by the vision of the church in these two passages? The people freely shared all that they owned. They spent time together. They celebrated together. And the Lord blessed them with more. Many of us in mainline Protestant circles have a tendency to look down at numbers. We hear "Saddleback Church is growing at the rate of 8 percent every year." And we scoff, "Yes, but are they growing in faith?" Nonetheless, that people want to join you and spend time with you and dedicate themselves to doing what you are doing is an affirmation that what you are doing is important and valuable to somebody. The church in those early years, Luke tells us, grew. Apparently there were people who valued what the apostles were doing and what they had to say. But it is not just that they spent time together and shared their possessions and that they grew in numbers and in friendship. After all, any fraternity on any college campus aspires to this same kind of community--and sometimes even attains it! But there were no needy people among them, and the Lord blessed them and bestowed grace upon them.

Who would not be bewitched by this vision? Certainly not Loehe, who encountered everything but community, care, and compassion. There were needy and poor people. The Lord's Supper was celebrated perhaps quarterly, not daily. Most people were not glad. And there seemed to be a dearth of powerful preaching. He yearned for the good old days of the apostles.

Loehe was attracted to "the communitarian elements in the apostolic understanding of the church." (12) He was impressed by how the New Testament church cared for the poor. Poverty and a loss of community (sound familiar?) were things he understood and saw around him everywhere.

4. Confession

One could hardly talk about Loehe, his ministry, and his theology without mentioning the role of confessional theology. By confessional theology I mean theology that is located within a particular community and its faith. Most of you probably already know about Loehe's relationship with confessional Lutheranism, especially in its neo-Lutheran expression in the nineteenth century. His understanding of church and the church as a community is closely connected to his confessionalism. The church is a community with a common faith and therefore a common confession. To be confessional is to have something concrete to say. To be a confessional Lutheran or a confessional Christian is to have a particular message to proclaim. This message is obviously the saving gospel revealed, embodied, and proclaimed in Jesus of Nazareth who died on a cross on Golgotha and was raised into life three days later.

5. Worship--Word and Sacrament

Craig Nessan says that "the heartbeat of Wilhelm Loehe's theology is like that of the human heart. The diastolic moment is worship, and the systolic moment is mission." (13) Nessan is right. Worship and mission are clearly at the center of Loehe's theology. Community and fellowship are clearly seen in his writings on both of these. One cannot read more than a few pages of his writings on worship without noticing the centrality of community and fellowship in his theology of worship. In his Agende he touches on this theme of community over and over again. He says that each component of the liturgy expresses either the need for community (as is the case, for example, in the order for confession and forgiveness) or the experience of community in Christ (as, for example, in the sacrament of the table). (14) Worship is also the hour of the week in which the church is nourished and replenished for the task of mission.

The concern for justice among all peoples is seen in worship. For example, Loehe writes about the litany that it includes prayers for the peace of the world. (15) The Lord's Supper is perhaps the clearest, most emphatic, call to care for those in need.

The obligation remains for us to care for our poor brothers, and if we
do not hold an agape feast like the ancient Christians, we are not
released from mercy. Undoubtedly we go in an unworthy manner to God's
table if we do not care for our brothers at the altar, if they do not
have, in addition to the heavenly riches of the Sacrament, their
allotted share of earthly food also. (16)

Loehe's understanding of the Lord's Supper and the community was that it placed demands upon us.

6. Context

Loehe was aware of his context. Indeed, I think it is nearly impossible to make sense of Loehe's motivations without understanding something of his context. His confessionalism and nationalism within Germany had to do with his membership in a minority church in Bavaria. His commitment to mission in America was motivated by his awareness of the plight of Germans who had emigrated to America. His commitment to inner mission within Germany was motivated by his awareness of the plight of people in Germany. He noticed those who had no job, no money, and no possibility of getting married (because of their impoverishment). He noticed that men and women often were forced to live together unmarried and unchaste, thus falling into sin. Understandably they had children who faced the same bleak prospects and were therefore driven to stealing and other sins. (17) Loehe established the mission colonies in Michigan because he was very aware of the world around him. The colonies provided an opportunity for Bavarians without prospects to make a life for themselves. The Michigan colonies were a way to respond to the perceived mission needs of the Native Americans living in the area. The colonies did not fulfill Loehe's expectations, but that is not my point here. My point is that they were a creative solution to a problem that Loehe noticed as a consequence of his attention to his own context.

As Weber notes, Loehe was well read. He subscribed to and read newspapers from all over Germany. "He tried to understand the complex developments in society." (18) While some theologians and church leaders of his generation either uncritically accepted social developments or immediately rejected them, Loehe tried to think through and understand the developments. It is because of his attempts to understand the world around him that Loehe was involved in both foreign mission and inner mission and developed such creative ministries.

Implications

What follows are some short theses on mission and ministry.

1. The church and those who minister and evangelize--all of us who are baptized--must actively seek partnerships with churches around the globe. This thesis arises out of at least two points in Loehe's theology. The first has to do with the confessional and apostolic characteristics. Loehe adhered to the confession of the apostles. Central to the content of the apostolic Christian faith is the doctrine of the Trinity.

In recent years many theologians--Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jurgen Moltmann, Robert Jenson, Ted Peters, and Catherine M. LaCugna, to name a few--have noted the relational dimension of the doctrine of the Trinity. Following Rahner's rule--the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity--these theologians have noted that the Trinity is a way of talking about God's relationality, a way of saying that God is fundamentally and intrinsically relational in character. God desires relationships with people, indeed with all of creation. To be a confessional and apostolic Christian is be in relationship with God and with the body of Christ and indeed all those with whom God is in relationship.

The second characteristic of Loehe's theology has to do with the centrality of community in his theology. The church-- and churches--can no longer think of itself as being constituted of people who look and act and think like one another. The church is the African-Americans who attend the Pentecostal church a block from my house as well as those who attend the white Lutheran church across the street from my campus. It is the suburban German church I worshiped at when I lived in Germany as well as the rickety buildings and storefronts where Christians across the nation and around the world worship.

Loehe was convinced that Christians are to go "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Nobody should be excluded from the blessings of the gospel. He spoke of humanity as "one family of God." (19) Elsewhere he speaks of proclaiming the gospel "to all creatures." (20) This partnership with others unlike ourselves is a way of identifying with them. This identification with all humans, all creatures, necessarily leads to my next thesis.

2. The church and those who minister and evangelize--all of us who are baptized--are called to reach out to others in their loneliness and abandonment even while we too are lonely and abandoned. Our loneliness and abandonment take many forms: estrangement from spouse or children or parents; lack of meaningful employment; lack of fulfilling friendships; lack of food and sufficient nourishment for the day; threats to body and spirit, to name but a few.

One of Loehe's motivations for mission had to do with his sense of justice for those in need. He developed mission colonies in Michigan for Germans who were too poor to buy land or otherwise get meaningful employment. The idea was that land in America would be bought and sold to German emigrants who would repay the mission society, which would then use the proceeds to buy more land for more German emigrants. (21) One problem confronting Loehe was that some young people were consigned to a life of poverty and either unemployment or underemployment. This was unacceptable as well as unjust. The scriptures were unequivocal in commanding us to care for our neighbor.

A second problem for Loehe had to do with the situation of the Native Americans in North America. They had been driven out from the land of their birth, and all manner of horrific atrocities had been committed against them. Even though German Lutherans had not necessarily been directly responsible for these sins, they shared in the guilt of the mistreatment. As such, they should correct and pay for those sins. Sin, in Loehe's view, was social and communal. This sense of a human predicament that is shared and communal corresponds, of course, to his sense that salvation, at least as it is in an anticipatory way experienced in the Lord's Supper, is shared and communal. All humans are broken, alienated from others, and lonely. All Christians are called to reach out to others who are likewise broken by sin. In this reaching out and in the proclaiming of a healing gospel, humans experience the wholeness of God's reign. This experience of the wholeness of God's reign--what God wills for us--is found in worship.

3. The church and those who minister and evangelize--all of us who are baptized--need to be more intentional and thoughtful about worship. Individual believers need deeper devotional or worship lives in order to resist the demons of our society: unemployment and underemployment (lack of meaningful, fulfilling, satisfying work), racism, sexism, domestic violence and neglect, consumerism and materialism, and uncritical nationalism and patriotism, to name but a few. The community of faith needs to provide worship that both satisfies and creates thirst. Too many people leave worship having merely "put in time." Too rarely have they said to each other at Sunday brunch, "Were our hearts not burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" (Lk 24:32)

Loehe was adamant that people ought to experience community in worship. They ought to experience oneness and wholeness with both God and with one another:

... the worshipping people ... know themselves as the Bride of the Lord,
their hearts' longings are satisfied in him and through him; but not
only through him, also through fellowship with one another; they are the
people of God--a unit in their inner life and experience. In the
fullness of divine grace they bear in mind the needs of one another, as
well as those of the whole world. (22)

Of course, this satisfaction or quenching is temporary and momentary in many respects. We experience the fullness of community, and by the time we leave the sanctuary the experience is but a memory. We can only look forward to the next worship service when once again we will experience fleetingly this community. Only in the heavenly realm with the cloud of witnesses will we experience community fully and lastingly.

Worship ought to inspire us in another sense, however. Worship ought to educate. It ought to teach us something not only about the community to come but also of the things of Christ, faith, and the church. The knowledge of the community of Christ and of the saints as well as of the teachings of the Christian faith enables individual believers to resist the demons in their lives.

4. The church and those who minister and evangelize--all of us who are baptized--need to return to our roots and our heritage. I mean not in the sense of repristinating a "golden age" of the church but in the sense of returning to the values of the early church: care and concern for the powerless (widows, orphans, the poor); regular and frequent worship that is joyous and generous; regular and frequent worship that is characterized by passionate and powerful preaching; reaching out actively and intentionally to those on the other side of our doors and our walls (all are in need, all need to be welcomed); intentionally and intensively building community and connections where all too often isolation and separation prevail.

Loehe consistently returned to the sources and traditions of the Christian faith for guidance. There were times that he attempted to repristinate and replicate the experience of a "golden age" in the church. However, at his best, he returned to the sources and traditions of the church so that they could serve as a guide and companion in the difficult task of ministry and mission in a tumultuous and uncertain era. When he wrestled with the nature and order of the church's ministry, he embarked on two detailed studies of the New Testament: Aphorisms about the New Testament Offices of Ministry (1848-49) and Church and Ministry: New Aphorisms (1851). (23) It is reported that by the time he published his Agenda he had researched approximately 200 worship books and services. He focused his energy on the first Lutheran liturgies developed during and immediately following the Reformation as well as older Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox liturgies. (24) All of this is to say that the past is not a burden but a gift. The past, the traditions and theology of the church, is a gift that can enrich and enhance our mission and our ministry if we mine its depths.

5. The church and those who minister and evangelize--all of us who are baptized--need to reclaim the biblical tradition of hospitality. Loehe's ministry, while he probably did not think of it this way, was one of hospitality. He reached out to others and ministered to them. He was their servant. He cared for them and learned from them. When Ernst and Burger appeared at his doorstep, he welcomed them in and cared for them as his own family. It is reported that he visited Roman Catholic churches and befriended neighboring priests. He established deaconess houses to care and provide for disadvantaged women. He established houses and schools to care and provide for mentally and physically handicapped people. In short, he was hospitable.

It is not easy to be hospitable. Loehe was no exemplary saint in this respect. He expected German Lutherans to retain the German language in the New World and to teach the German language to the Native Americans in Michigan. In a time when the world was changing rapidly, Loehe sometimes sought to hang on to what was familiar, to circle the wagons, so to speak, whether it was behind rigid doctrine or the German language. It is no easier in our day and age. As Herbert Anderson notes, "hospitality is likely to be increasingly important and difficult as societies become more pluralistic." (25) Difficult as it may be, however, there is no escaping this obligation, in my view. The biblical witness is extensive: Abraham's reception of the three guests (Genesis 18); Lot's reception of the same guests (Genesis 19); the commands to the Israelites to welcome the stranger because "you too were once aliens in a strange land" (e.g. Exod 22:21-27; Deut 10:17-20); the meals Jesus shares with outcasts; the welcome that the prodigal son receives from his father (Luke 15); the judgment of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25). Racial and political and economic and social homogeneity is an indictment on the inhospitality of our churches. There are very few churches where the stranger who is other is welcomed among us.

Moreover, too often our churches are closed to the stranger in our midst. By this I mean that rarely do we take pains to open our "private world to the stranger." (26) Admittedly this is difficult. One need only read Chris Rice's compelling account of life in the interracial Antioch Community, Grace Matters, to see how difficult. (27) Paul's letters and the Acts of the Apostles show the difficulty of this kind of hospitality. Yet I see no way of escaping this obligation.

These theses for mission and ministry are some ways in which Loehe's theology might be fruitfully appropriated and serve as resources for the challenges before us. May God bless our efforts and our endeavors as abundantly as Loehe's were blessed and rewarded!

David C. Ratke

Lenoir-Rhyne College

1. Consider for instance, Eric W. Gritsch, A History of Lutheranism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 180, who writes that "a model parish for Neo-Lutheranism was organized by Pastor Wilhelm Loehe in 1837 in Neuendettelsau, a small Bavarian town." This statement is misleading in at least one respect: there are important differences between Loehe and Neo-Lutheranism as represented by the Erlangen school. Gerhard Muller demonstrates that the relationship is not so clean-cut in "Die Erlanger Theologische Fakultat und Wilhelm Lohe im Jahr 1849," in Dem Wort Gehorsam: Landesbischof D. Hermann Dietzfelbinger DD. Zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Wilhelm Andersen et al. (Munich: Claudius Verlag, 1973), 593-601.

2. Christian Weber, Missionstheologie bei Wilhelm Lohe: Aufbruch zur Kirche der Zukunft (Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1996), 262.

3. James L. Schaaf, Introduction to Wilhelm Loehe, Three Books about the Church, trans. James L. Schaaf (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 5, n. 13.

4. Johannes Deinzer, Wilhelm Loehes Leben: Aus seinem schriftlichen Nachlass zusammengestellt (Nuremberg: Gottfried Loehe, 1874), 1:109.

5. Anne Stempel-de Fallois argues persuasively that the impulses for Loehe's interest in diaconal ministry stem from his early association with the Awakening movement (above all through Christian Krafft) and Pietism. Regarding the impact of the Awakening movement and its theology, see Anne Stempel-de Fallois, "Die Anfange von Wilhelm Lohes missionarisch-diakonischem Wirken im Bannkreis von Erweckungsbewegung und Konfessionalisierung (1826-1837)," Pietismus und Neuzeit 23 (1997), 40-45; regarding the impact of Pietism through his reading Spener's Pia desideria see Stempel-de Fallois, 47-48.

6. Wilhelm Loehe, Drei Bucher von der Kirche, in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Klaus Ganzert (Neuendettelsau: Freimund, 1951-1986), 1:88; trans. adapted from James Schaaf.

7. Christian Weber, "The Future of Loehe's Legacy," Currents in Theology and Mission 31 (2004): 100. Weber here says that the church is a "living community with a biblical structure." I would suggest that Loehe might say that the church has an apostolic structure. "Apostolic" and "biblical" (or New Testament) mean practically the same thing for Loehe.

8. In at least two places in his writings Loehe mentions that the mission of the deaconesses is to minister to and serve those who are suffering in Bavaria. See "Statuten: Lutherischer Verein fur weibliche Diakonie," Correspondenzblatt 5 (1854): 15; Etwas aus der Geschichte des Diakonissenhauses Neuendettelsau, GW IV:262; "Die bisherigen Satzungen der Diakonissenanstalt Neuendettelsau," GW IV:342; and "An die ausgesegneten Diakonissen," GW IV:443.

9. Wilhelm Loehe, "Warum bekenne ich mich zur lutherischen Kirche?" GW IV:221-26, esp. 225. The relationship of catholicity to community is apparent also in Three Books about the Church.

10. Loehe, Vorschlag zu einem Lutherischen Verien fur apostolisches Leben samt Entwurf eines Katechismus des apostolischen Lebens, GW V/1:245.

11. Loehe, Three Books about the Church, 59.

12. David C. Ratke, Confession and Mission, Word and Sacrament: The Ecclesial Theology of Wilhelm Lohe (St. Louis: Concordia, 2001), 67.

13. Craig L. Nessan, "Missionary Theology and Wartburg Theological Seminary," Currents in Theology and Mission 31 (2004): 85.

14. Wilhelm Loehe, Agende fur christliche Gemeinden des lutherischen Bekenntnisses, GW VII/1:90; see also Ratke, Confession and Mission, 112-13.

15. Loehe, Agende, GW VII/1:168-69.

16. Loehe, Prufungstafel und Gebete fur Beicht- und Abendmahlstage: Beicht- und Kommunionbuchlein fur evangelische Christen (Zum Gebrauch sowohl im als ausserhalb des Gotteshauses), GW VII/2:287.

17. Loehe, Etwas uber die deutschlutherischen Neiderlassungen in der Grafschaft Saginaw, Staat Michigan, GW IV:176.

18. Weber, "The Future of Loehe's Legacy," 101.

19. Loehe, "Die Mission unter den Heiden," GW IV:41; see also GW IV:39, where he says that Blacks are children of the Spirit just as Whites are.

20. Loehe, "Predigt am 2. Pfingstfeiertag 1843," GW IV:64.

21. For more on this and the mission to the Indians discussed in the following paragraph, see Ratke, Confession and Mission, Word and Sacrament, 148-49.

22. Loehe, Liturgy for Christian Congregations of the Lutheran Faith, ed. J. Deinzer, trans. F. C. Longaker (Fort Wayne: Repristination Press, [1902] 1995), xiv-xv (= Agende fur christliche Gemeinden des lutherischen Bekenntnisses, GW VII/1:14-15).

23. Loehe, "Aphorismen uber die neutestamentlichen Amter," GW V/1:253-330; and "Kirche und Amt," GW V/1:523-88.

24. Deinzer, Wilhelm Lohes Leben, 2:132, 138-39.

25. Herbert Anderson and Susan B. Johnson, Regarding Children: A New Respect for Childhood and Families (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 74. See also John D. Lottes, "Toward a Christian Theology of Hospitality to Other Religions on Campus," Currents in Theology and Mission 32 (2005): 26-27.

26. Patrick Keifert, Welcoming the Stranger: A Public Theology of Worship and Evangelism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 9.

27. Chris Rice, Grace Matters: A True Story of Race, Friendship, Faith in the Heart of the South (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002).