Wartburg Theological Seminary : 2005 Seminar
Address:
333 Wartburg Place
P.O. Box 5004
Dubuque, IA 52004-5004
Phone: 563-589-0200
Fax: 563-589-0333
Key Contacts:
Duane H. Larson, President
e-mail: dlarson@wartburgseminary.edu
Craig Nessan, Academic Dean
e-mail: cnessan@wartburgseminary.edu
Elizabeth Leeper
Ann Fritschel
Susan Ebertz
Paul Chung
Nathan Frambach
Wartburg Theological Seminary serves the mission of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America by being a worship-centered community of critical theological reflection where learning leads to mission and mission informs learning. Within this community, Wartburg educates women and men to serve the church’s mission as ordained and lay leaders. This mission is to proclaim and interpret the gospel of Jesus Christ to a world created for communion with God and in need of personal and social healing.
In light of this mission Wartburg endeavors to form students who
- claim a clear sense of their confessional identity as Lutheran Christians and a commitment to explore its meaning for our multicultural, religiously plural context,
- understand that justification and justice stand together at the heart of the gospel as the church bears witness to God’s justifying love for sinners in Jesus Christ and expresses that love by working for freedom and justice in society, and
- envision the church as a global community manifested in local congregations assembled around word and sacrament.
Wartburg seeks to prepare leaders with the knowledge and passionate commitment necessary to serve the two-fold mission of the church: 1) to proclaim the good news of God’s justifying love toward sinners in Jesus Christ, calling people to faith in a world where many “gods” claim loyalty and promise life, and 2) to minister faithfully to our broken world, serving those in need and calling the world to repentance and renewed obedience to God.
Wartburg Seminary strives to form students theologically by faithful interpretation of Scripture as God’s word, critical study of Christian and Lutheran tradition and careful attention to contemporary contexts. That formation should be both authentically Lutheran and appropriately ecumenical. It takes place through disciplined academic study in a community of learning and action where theology is always being formulated afresh as God’s people live out their response to Jesus Christ in new and different circumstances.
As an integral element of its mission, Wartburg Theological Seminary seeks to be a community where the church and world intersect in thought and worship and where learning leads to and is informed by mission. Coming from both the United States and other countries, faculty, students, and staff, together with their families, bring to the seminary their diverse cultures, gifts of learning and experience, as well as the questions, agonies, and insights of our age. Wartburg encourages people to think globally and act locally as they struggle to interpret and live out their faith in Christ amid the religious, social, economic, multicultural and political realities of the world. Through its institutional commitments, interdisciplinary teaching and varied pedagogical styles, Wartburg exercises its own discipleship as it seeks to prepare leaders for discipleship of decision and action grounded in our baptismal identity and lived out in increasingly diverse forms and institutions. As a resource for critical theological reflection, Wartburg is called to contribute to the theology of the ELCA and to engage the religious, societal and missional issues that confront the church.
CHARACTER AND ETHOS
Located at Dubuque, Iowa, Wartburg Theological Seminary is one of the eight seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). It was founded in 1854 through the missional efforts of Wilhelm Loehe, pastor of the village church at Neuendettelsau, Germany. The central concerns of Loehe’s theology—worship, community, mission, and diakonia—continue to shape Wartburg today. Wartburg graduates serve throughout the United States and the world, with a majority concentrated in the upper Midwest.
Wartburg has 16 fulltime professors and a student body of about 200. Apart from an important contingent of international students, the student body is almost entirely ELCA Lutheran. While the M.Div degree program has the majority of students, the seminary also confers an M.A. (including a possible concentration in Youth, Culture, and Mission); M.A. in Diaconal Ministry; M.A. in Theology, Development, and Evangelism; and Master of Sacred Theology. As part of the M.Div degree, Wartburg requires a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education and, as an ELCA seminary, a year of supervised internship.
The seminary has three centers: Center for Youth Ministries, Center for Theology and Land (rural ministry focus), and Center for Global Theologies. Wartburg has historic connections to the church in Germany, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, and Namibia with more recent connections to Norway, Guyana, Brazil, and India. These relationships reinforce Wartburg’s commitments to globalization and contextualization. The seminaries of the ELCA work in close collaboration with one another and Wartburg belongs to the Covenant Cluster of ELCA schools, cooperating with the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC) and Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Columbus, Ohio.
One of the distinguishing marks of Wartburg is its highly residential character, where faculty, staff, students, and families participate in a close community. Wartburg has maintained its character as a residential campus by constructing many units of student housing. Because of the value placed upon the communal formation process, faculty come to know students very well. During the academic year, daily chapel is at the center of campus life with a large percentage of students and faculty in regular attendance. Architecturally, the chapel and refectory are located next to one another, so that there is a natural flow from worship into community and vice versa. At Wartburg the “curriculum” includes not only required coursework but also worship and life in community.
There are several distinctive qualities that characterize the Wartburg faculty ethos. Like other ELCA seminaries, Wartburg’s faculty is very engaged in the candidacy process of the church, recommending students for approval at various milestones in their preparation for ordination and other forms of ministry. During the academic year, the faculty meets weekly for “faculty enrichment,” intentional discussion of theological topics, common readings, and the business of teaching and learning. Each May the faculty goes on a two-day retreat that is a time for enhancing common work on the seminary curriculum and building faculty relations. The curriculum itself is committed to faculty team-teaching across disciplinary lines and by the frequent use of small group pedagogy. The Wartburg faculty has a reputation for strong collaboration and collegiality in teaching and learning.