Educating Pastors at the Time of the Lutheran Reformation
(Sunday, February 11, 2018, 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. by Dr. John Brenner)
The focus of this lecture will be the concrete ways the Lutheran Reformation impacted the training of Lutheran clergy. In his “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation” in 1520, Luther had laid out proposals for educational reform at the university level. This was followed by very specific suggestions in “Instructions for the Visitors of Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony” in 1528. The goal of this lecture is to explore in a concrete way what exactly this meant for the university courses and the university course of study that prepared the next generation of Lutheran pastors in lands that adopted the Lutheran Reformation. How was training for the pastoral ministry different for a student after the Lutheran Reformation? How have these changes been a blessing to pastoral training in our college and seminary down to this very day?
