Interesting Developments in Wittenberg

[Charles_Austin]

Someone writes (when I said I might be going to Wittenberg for a couple of weeks this summer):
Will you also go have a look-see at the SELK/LCMS Wittenberg Center?

I respond:
Sure, but I understand it is a "mission," intended to re-Lutheranize or re-Christianize Wittenberg, and it is LC-MS. But I shall look in.

[LutherMan]

An old thread with new info:

http://www.lcms.org/pages/rpage.asp?NavID=15513

Wittenberg project enters new phase

The joint project in Wittenberg, Germany, of the LCMS and its German sister church entered a new phase July 22 with the appointment of a new managing director and election of a new chairman for its supervisory board.

Meeting in Wittenberg, the supervisory board of the International Lutheran Society of Wittenberg (ILSW) named Rev. David Mahsman to succeed Dr. Wilhelm Torgerson as managing director. Torgerson, who is retiring, will serve in the post through August. Mahsman will take up his new duties Sept. 1.

The board also elected Dr. Samuel H. Nafzger to be its new chairman. He succeeds Bishop Hans-Joerg Voigt of Germany's Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (SELK).  The ILSW's Wittenberg project is jointly operated by the SELK and the Missouri Synod.

After serving four years as assistant to the executive director of LCMS World Mission, Mahsman began serving July 1 as director, special assignments, Eurasia, for LCMS World Mission. He will continue in that post as well. Nafzger is assistant to the LCMS president for church relations. He formerly was executive director of the Synod's Commission on Theology and Church Relations.

http://www.lcms.org/pages/rpage.asp?NavID=15513

[Charles_Austin]

An article mentioning the 10-year old ELCA Center in Wittenberg will appear in a future issue of The Lutheran.

[LutherMan]

An article mentioning the 10-year old ELCA Center in Wittenberg will appear in a future issue of The Lutheran.

Which future issue?

[Charles_Austin]

Buy a subscription.

[LutherMan]

I'd forgotten how irritated this thread made you and how you tried to turn it into a competition of sorts.

I just went back and re-read the whole thing.

[Charles_Austin]

No competition at all. Why should I help someone who comes at our work with such an attitude?

[LutherMan]

Someone writes (when I said I might be going to Wittenberg for a couple of weeks this summer):
Will you also go have a look-see at the SELK/LCMS Wittenberg Center?

I respond:
Sure, but I understand it is a "mission," intended to re-Lutheranize or re-Christianize Wittenberg, and it is LC-MS. But I shall look in.

Did you ever get the chance to go look at our mission?  If so, what were your impressions?

[RevKidd]

Great for the LCMS and ELCA! Its just sad when people use this to make potshots at each others church but thats part of that old Adam coming out. Notice I didn't say Old Eve because the few women on this board have been gracious.

[Charles_Austin]

Lutherman writes:
Did you ever get the chance to go look at our mission?  If so, what were your impressions?
I answer:
When I was there, your "mission" was only a sheet of paper posted on the door of a building. Nothing was operative yet. Something may be operative later this year, I believe.

[LutherMan]

Lutherman writes:
Did you ever get the chance to go look at our mission?  If so, what were your impressions?
I answer:
When I was there, your "mission" was only a sheet of paper posted on the door of a building. Nothing was operative yet. Something may be operative later this year, I believe.

Lutheranism started with "only a sheet of paper posted on the door of a building."

[Charles_Austin]

Not quite the same. The LC-MS and SELK bumbled the whole inauguration of the Wittenberg effort by using language saying there were no "true" Lutherans left in Wittenberg, and similar gaffes. It took, I suspect a year or more of negotiations and fence-mending with the EKD, the primary Lutheran/Reformed body there, to overcome the initial dust-up.

[Chad Thompson]

Not quite the same. The LC-MS and SELK bumbled the whole inauguration of the Wittenberg effort by using language saying there were no "true" Lutherans left in Wittenberg, and similar gaffes. It took, I suspect a year or more of negotiations and fence-mending with the EKD, the primary Lutheran/Reformed body there, to overcome the initial dust-up.

There's also the ELFK which is an active confessional body in the area - I don't know what their presence in Wittenberg has been.

In the meantime, has there been any real progress on the joint LC-MS/SELK project other than the personnel moves?  I was looking at travel information a few weeks ago and was interested in the project, but there seems to have been an initial announcement followed by silence.

[peter_speckhard]

Not quite the same. The LC-MS and SELK bumbled the whole inauguration of the Wittenberg effort by using language saying there were no "true" Lutherans left in Wittenberg, and similar gaffes. It took, I suspect a year or more of negotiations and fence-mending with the EKD, the primary Lutheran/Reformed body there, to overcome the initial dust-up.

If it was a Lutheran/Reformed body, then precisely what gaffe are we talking about? Are you saying that "true Lutherans" gather into Lutheran/Reformed churches? Man, if only we'd known that sooner the whole history of Europe might have been better. And I wouldn't have had to take those stupid classes on the Confessions in seminary...

I kid, Charles. I kid because I love. Of course I acknowledge that it was probably a somewhat hamfisted approach to the locals in Wittenberg to paint the new venture as a mission to the de-churched. Bad p.r. and all that.   

[Charles_Austin]

And, Peter, I really believe things will get better in Wittenberg when David Mahsman, whom I consider a friend, takes up residence there in the Fall. I think SELK ( the LC-MS partner church in the region) might learn something about inter-Lutheran cooperation.
If I were to come to St. Louis as a mission developer and say that mine was to be the "true" Lutheran mission because every Lutheran church already there was not "Lutheran," how would that work?