Northwoods Seelsorger

  The following was published recently in the ALPB Forum Letter , an edited and expanded version of what I originally wrote as a simple post on a discussion board.  I used it for my online preaching course this summer , and I'm putting it here to archive it for future use, and in the event anyone discovers it and finds it useful for their own purpose.  “Pastor, can we talk abou t your sermon?” by Don Engebretson Pastors differ on the proper and most effective way to evaluate their sermons. They begin by receiving grades on their homiletical efforts by seminar y professors, and they receive further feedback from supervisors in the field. These critiques judge the content and delivery according to academic standard s of biblical content, balance of Law and Gospel, organization by proper outlines, and the technical aspects of public speaking techniques. So pastors-to-be write for their teachers with an imagined congregation in their mind, but they are primarily writi...

 I posted this in a thread on the ALPB site.  In order to file it for my own use, here is what I wrote: In any election the tendency is to cast the future in apocalyptic terms. Life as we know it will end if ____________is elected. Our most cherished rights will be taken away if _____________ is elected. Such and such president is the absolute worse man ever elected. And so forth. I'm trying to ignore this. I've lived through the terms of 12 presidents, five who were Democrats, seven who were Republican. Four of them managed to get reelected and serve 8 years: two Republicans (Reagan, Bush 41), and two Democrats (Clinton, Obama).  The economy has risen and fallen during those six decades.  Wars were fought and peacetime enjoyed.  Voting and civil rights laws were passed into law for minorities.  We lived through the resignation of one president brought on by criminal acts of men close to his presidency (and some believe by the president himself)...

Decades, like years, are arbitrary markers of time.  That said, they do offer opportunities to look back and review from whence we came, and possibly reflect on lessons learned.  2010 will remain for me, personally, a more decisive marker than 2020 may possibly be.  It became a turning point in my ministry and my life.  In the decade prior I dealt with on again, off again, conflict at my church, especially with just a few. I had also been under the cloud of a lawsuit since the spring of 2008. By 2010 the stress had reached what began to feel like a breaking point. In 2010 those opposing my ministry left the church and by the end of fall my lawsuit was settled.  I also applied and was accepted at Nashotah House Theological Seminary and began my first classes that summer.  It had been 23 years since my graduation from the seminary in Ft. Wayne and I was ready to begin a new chapter.  My hope was to possibly teach at a collegiate or post-graduate lev...

For the last three summers I have taught an online course for a seminary as an "adjunct professor."  This winter I will have the honor of teaching again, but this time as an adjunct for a university.  They call their adjuncts "contracted faculty" (as opposed to tenured faculty).  When I teach in the summer I identify myself by my ecclesiastical title "Pastor," in part, because I am teaching pastors-to-be, and partly because I have a hard time thinking of myself as a professor in the full sense of that word.  This winter, however, since I am teaching university students online I am unsure of what to be called. One site says that adjuncts may use the title "professor" as a courtesy, but properly speaking they are not actually part of the faculty.  Since I do not have an earned doctorate I obviously cannot use that title.  Calling myself "Pastor," while accurate, may not be quite what I need at the university level since I am not opera...