New Student Orientation Week

There's not much I can say about the experience of orientation week beyond simply to note its arrival and its passing.

My fellow "new students" and I spent much of Wednesday through Friday participating in "get to know your classmates" discussions centered on the unique challenges and opportunities associated with pastoral formation at the seminary. These discussion were facilitated by Dr. Hartung, the Dean of Ministerial Formation. Although I'm not ordinarily a fan of "group encounter" discussions, the topics were on every one's mind and the shared concerns expressed were, for the most part, valuable.

The highlight of Friday was registration for classes and the information fair in the adjoining rooms. Perhaps "registration" is not the right way to describe it. In the words of Dr. Gibbs, the first-year student advisor: "although we are a Lutheran seminary, the first-quarter registration process is very Calvinistic". In other words, they register your for your classes and sections and then hand you your your schedule. You are predestined for your assigned schedule!

One of the surprises for the day (there were several) was learning that I was assigned to the honors Hebrew Readings section taught by Dr. Saleska. Apparently I scored higher on my qualifier than was wise!

Another surprise from registration was receiving my "Institutional Module" assignment. As I've mentioned elsewhere, seminarians are assigned a field work congregation, which provides us an "internship" within the "standard" congregational context; these assignments have not been communicated to us. In addition to this, we also do two modules during our first year: one in institutional ministry, another in cross-cultural ministry. I'm happy to say that I've been assigned to work with Lutheran Senior Services. I will find out more about this at a special meeting scheduled for LSS field workers on Thursday of this week; look for another posting on this topic then.

At the information fair, we received a number of gifts from organizations and endowments that support the seminary: a gift certificate to purchase a clergy shirt at the bookstore; a copy of Pieper's Dogmatics, vol. I. and a gift certificate for the Kolb and Wingert edition of the Book of Concord. The first two were gifts from the Seminary Guild and the last from John E. Meyer Memorial Alumni Book Endowment Fund. As I've mentioned before, the constant flood of support and gifts for us and my fellow seminarians is humbling.