New at MLC: Early Ministry Experience 1
Each first-year preseminary student is required to spend several days immersed in a WELS congregation. The student will participate in various church activities, discuss ministry with the pastor, keep a reflection journal, and then debrief with the MLC Early Ministry Experience coordinator upon return to campus.
Goals
- Motivational: To encourage MLC students in their pastoral training, maintaining and strengthening their desire for public ministry through interaction with experienced and joyful pastors. This is especially important because their early preparation is mostly academic and unconnected to actual ministry.
- Cultural: To expose students to ministry settings different from those they know. These might be new home missions, in support of our current WELS initiative, “100 Missions in 10 Years.”
- Instructional: To help equip our students with the skills and attitudes needed for pastoral ministry.
Additional field experience requirements
- Early Ministry Experience 2: Complete a congregational assistance experience under the auspices of MLC’s Daylight program.
- Evening Chapel: Prepare and preach an evening chapel devotion at MLC.
- Sunday Morning Ride-Along (optional): Accompany an MLC professor who fills a pulpit vacancy at a local congregation. Talk one-on-one with the professor about ministry, interact with members, and possibly read the lessons and assist at Bible class.
NEW Early Ministry Experiences for Preseminary Men
It’s an eight-year journey. When preseminary students step on campus the first day of their first year, they know it’s an eight-year journey to the pulpit—four years of Greek, Hebrew, theology, and liberal arts at Martin Luther College; another three years of theological and ministerial training at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary; and a vicar year, where they’ll serve a congregation under the supervision of an experienced pastor.
To some of these young men, fresh out of high school, that pulpit is distant and that journey daunting. The MLC preseminary faculty wanted to help. So they designed a new field experience, Early Ministry Experience 1, to provide early encouragement to the young men on this journey. EME1 takes the young men directly into the life of a congregation for several days, allowing them to see how things work, assist where they can, and ask a lot of questions.
We talked to seven preseminary students who piloted EME1 this spring. Their activities varied: They may have set up a gym for a mission congregation’s worship service, read a sermon in church, played organ, gone to Bible classes, visited the homebound, prepped an important mailing, attended a congregational meeting, or even read books to preschoolers. But one activity was shared by all—and made a huge impact—the opportunity to ask hard questions and get honest answers about real ministry with real pastors. Let’s see what some of them learned.
Matt Koelpin (Calvary-Dallas), Zach Maedke (Trinity-Coleman WI), and Ben Schoch (Zion-Chesaning MI) completed their early ministry experience at Our Savior-San Antonio West, where they worked with Pastor Micah Koelpin MLC ’16, WLS ’20 (pictured second from left). This is a daughter congregation of Our Savior-San Antonio East, which is led by Pastor Nathan Sutton MLC ’99, WLS ’04 and Staff Minister David Kasischke MLC ’16.
On the agenda: Zach played organ for the Good Friday service, and Ben did tech for the Sunday service. We attended a staff meeting; helped to set up the “church on wheels” for the Easter service in an area grade school; helped with the Easter egg hunt; learned how to write and format a proper devotion; talked a lot to Pastor Micah about ministry and about the logistics of mission congregations; and visited members every day, listening to their life stories and their views on mission ministry. They’ll remember Pastor Micah Koelpin’s words of wisdom: “If you have the chance to meet with someone face to face, always take it. If you have the chance to visit someone, always visit them. If someone invites you to hang out, say yes!”
Eye-opening for Zach: For my entire life in Coleman, Wisconsin, I’ve grown up with WELS people, so going out and meeting people that are different from me was really good. I’m glad I’m just a first-year, and I have seven years left, because I have a lot more to learn. Matt’s newfound passion: Being a pastor doesn’t just revolve around what you do on Sunday and how you get people to church. It is much more than that. It’s also just being a friend to your neighbors, helping out in every and any way you can. This trip gave me a new perspective, especially on mission ministry. It made me more excited about being in the mission field. I have a newfound passion for going out and talking to people, initially about their lives, and then, more importantly, about his Word.
Ben wants every first-year to have this: The trip made me excited to be studying for the pastoral ministry. It was a very good experience and will be a blessing to the first-years. It adds excitement for the ministry and lets us learn real ministry outside of the classroom as we look forward to being called workers at a congregation soon.
EME1 is a great addition to our program plan for preseminary students. Although almost all of them were already getting early ministry experiences, this new requirement does two things: it guarantees that every preseminary
student will have a chance to experience these things, and it intentionalizes it. Students will think more deeply about and reflect on the things they did and share their thoughts with fellow students in their debriefing sessions. It’s also
something that preseminary students have been asking for. We pray it will help us retain more preseminary students, especially during or after their first year, which is when the biggest losses occur. May God bless this effort!
Professor James Danell NWC ’86, WLS ’90
Dean of Preseminary Studies
