The time has come for me to say amen to The Shepherd’s Study. On 23 January 2008, I began this blog hoping to provide a little support and encouragement for busy Lutheran shepherds like myself. I hoped to share resources and thoughts and insights I found from my own personal reading of God’s Word and other theological reading to provide some renewal amidst the busyness of ministry.

As I look back on the past three and a half years, it’s amazing to see how the Lord in his grace did more than I imagined. It’s been humbling to see how many people have actually visited this blog (over 108,000 as of this writing!) and how many have actually taken the time to read what I’ve written. It’s been fun getting to know fellow and future shepherds of God’s people and faithful laypeople who care very deeply about the true teaching of God’s Word. What I’ve loved the most, though, has been the opportunities I’ve had to encourage and support my fellow shepherds (or those who will soon be shepherds!) and provide them a little renewal amidst the busyness of ministry. If this blog has provided some of that for you, thank you for the opportunity to serve you!

Over the past three and a half years, life has also changed considerably for me and for those I serve. The time that I need for this blog just isn’t there anymore. Personally, the Lord has grown our family from three to five. Professionally, the congregation I serve is, with God’s help, about to take on one of the biggest projects in our history. After six years of mission re-start, we are now preparing for the real possibility of expanding our small 30-year-old facility. Amidst all of this, through the deliberation of three Divine calls in the past year and a half, the Lord has also made it clear that more time spent training, equipping, and mentoring God’s people and those who serve God’s people has become all the more necessary for me.

In the meantime, I am 1/3 of the way towards completing a STM (Master of Sacred Theology) in historical theology at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. Besides the classes each year, I’m hoping to write my thesis on the life and work of Prof. John Schaller (1859-1920). That research and translation work has just begun and will take considerable time as I seek to bring his works from German into English and put together the largely untold story of a great Lutheran theologian, who truly embodied the meaning of “Pastor”.

So the time has come to say amen. I’ll still be making use of social media like Twitter and Facebook, but work on The Shepherd’s Study will come to an end for the foreseeable future. Dear Reader, thank you for taking the time to follow this blog and for giving me the opportunity to encourage you as you serve the Lord wherever and however that might be. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

May Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep, richly bless you and be with you always as you serve him! Amen.

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Jeremiah J. Gumm

[11/5/11 Update: I am slowly dismantling this blog as a new opportunity to resurrect a new version of The Shepherd's Study with all new contributors, but the same goals of the original Shepherd's Study, has arisen over at http://www.wlsce.net - Grow in Grace: The Institute for Continuing Education @ Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. It hasn't launched yet, but keep an eye out for it when it does. God bless and be with you, dear Reader!]

Yesterday my wife and I watched a 2009 movie called “Taking Chance”.  It’s based on the real-life events of  Marine Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, when he volunteered to serve as a military escort officer to accompany the body of 19-year-old Marine PFC Chance Phelps from the Port Mortuary at Dover Air Force Base to Phelps’ hometown of Dubois, Wyoming. I had received a couple recommendations to see the movie and got it through Netflix on DVD. We weren’t disappointed.

“Taking Chance” was, for lack of a better word, outstanding. We were impressed by the dignity and respect of the whole movie – from the treatment of the death of the fallen Marine to the scenes depicting the precise care for his body and effects to Strobl’s journey from Dover to Dubois to the funeral of the fallen soldier. Respect and honor were shown throughout not only to the fallen soldier, but also to those who serve in our nation’s military. It makes one thankful for those who daily put themselves in danger’s way in service to our nation and especially for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our nation and the freedom we enjoy. It was truly a tribute to those servicemen and women who have given their lives and showed a side of America not often seen these days. I personally enjoyed the interviews behind the scenes with the Marines who served with PFC Phelps, his family, and Lt. Col. (Ret.) Strobl.

I found this movie particularly moving for a couple reasons. I come from a family who went through a similar tragedy near the end of the Second World War, a tragedy that has had a deep impact on our family even to my own generation. Movies like “Taking Chance” and “Saving Private Ryan” always seem to have that effect on me.

“Taking Chance” hit me in a different way though because besides being called to serve Cross of Christ here in Liverpool, I also serve as WELS Civilian Chaplain/Military Contact Pastor to WELS personnel of the 10th Moutain Division (U.S. Army) and their families serving at Fort Drum, NY. For those who don’t know, the 10th Mountain Division is the most deployed unit in the U.S. Army and when you’re at Fort Drum, you’re in the deployment cycle. In the brief four years I’ve been in the pastoral ministry, I’ve had the bittersweet privilege of entrusting quite a few soldiers to the protection of their Lord as they deploy to dangerous places like Iraq and Afghanistan. This is also the first war where I actually have friends and former classmates who have been deployed. So you can understand why this movie was so poignant.

By God’s grace, I haven’t had to make the long trip up a driveway with a military escort to inform a parent or a spouse that their loved one was killed in action. The Lord has brought them all home safely, but with fighting continuing in the Middle East, that time may come when I have to minister to the  grieving family of a fallen soldier. “Taking Chance” was a good reminder of the dignity and respect and honor due to our military servicemen and women and their families.

Whether or not you actually serve military personnel and their families as part of your call, I encourage you to take the time to see “Taking Chance”. The fact is, even if you’re in a civilian congregation in a civilian setting, there are still members out there serving in the National Guard or the Reserves and families with loved ones who deploy, maybe even young men and women you yourself have confirmed. Even if that’s not the case where you live and serve, please keep those servicemen and women in your prayers as they put themselves into harm’s way for all of us and pray for those who minister to them with the Word and Sacraments.

In addition to this review, I’d like to share with you a brief article with the permission of its author. The article is entitled “Only God Will See This”. It was written by Pr. Paul Ziemer – WELS National Civilian Chaplain to the Military and Armed Forces Liaison. He serves on the WELS Military Services Committee and as our synod’s point man with the Department of Defense, while also serving Beautiful Savior Ev. Lutheran Church in Fayetteville, NC, home of the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg and Pope AFB. Pr. Ziemer wrote the article around Memorial Day 2008 shortly after he had visited Port Mortuary at Dover AFB. He talks about similar subjects to what I wrote above and his article provided the title for this post. (If you see the movie, you’ll know why I chose it for this review!) The link above goes to the PDF file. Take some to read it and share what you think.

May God protect those who serve our country in harm’s way and may God bless those who serve them with the Means of Grace!

Posted in Culture and Ministry, Lutheran Resources, Ministry to the Military, Pastoral Resources, Practical Theology Tagged: Ministry to the Military, movie review, only god will see this, pastor paul ziemer, patriotism, serving military personnel and their families, taking chance, war in iraq, wels military services, wels ministry to the military ]]> http://shepherdstudy.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/only-god-will-see-this/feed/ 0 Jeremiah Gumm Taking Chance http://shepherdstudy.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/remembering-who-we-are-and-what-were-about/ http://shepherdstudy.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/remembering-who-we-are-and-what-were-about/#comments Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:31:28 +0000 Rev. Jeremiah Gumm http://shepherdstudy.wordpress.com/?p=1334 ]]> I recently came across a new blog called Pastoral Meanderings by Pastor Larry Peters. Here are a couple interesting posts reminding the Christian church who we are and what we’re about. What do you think?

• God is NOT Tolerant… Grace is NOT Tolerant
• Values

“Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door,
And heard the anvil sing the vesper chime;
Then looking in I saw upon the floor,
Old hammers, worn with blasting years of time.

‘How many anvils have you had,’ I said,
‘To wear and batter all these hammers so?’
‘Just one,’ said he; and then, with twinkling eye,
‘The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.’

And so I thought, the anvil of God’s Word,
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon.
Yet tho’ the noise of falling blows was heard,
The anvil is unharmed – the hammers gone.”

Attributed to John Clifford

All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the Word of the Lord stands forever.

1 Peter 1:24-25a, Isaiah 40:6-8

[HT: No Church Home]
[Graphic: Wikimedia Commons - Anvil - Lutherbibel]

I have some friends who take great pride in being Luddites when it comes to social media. I always cringe when I hear people gassing on about how blissfully unaware and uninvolved they are in using Twitter or Facebook. Well, sorry folks, but it is a bad attitude, and doubly so, particularly among church workers. Why? The Church must be where people are gathering to talk. St. Paul searched out people gathering at the river for prayer perhaps one of the oldest forms of “social networking.” (Acts 16:13) We need to be aware of where people are talking and what they are saying. Whether we like it or not, or whether or not we yet fully understand the transformation that is taking place in global communication technologies, the fact  is that social media and social networking is becoming the communication tools of choice for vast numbers of people. Do you have teenagers in the home? Know any? Ask them what the use most to communicate. E-mail? Nah. That’s old school. It is all about texting and about Facebook. Older folks? Facebook fanatics, much to our kids chagrin…

A recent post from Church Marketing Sucks came across my newsreader this morning and the statistics are hard to deny. Here are a few…

• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The Internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.
• Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs.
• More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day and more than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day. Combined, more than 5 billion minutes are spent on the site on a daily basis
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.

Still don’t think social media matters?

From personal experience, I can verify some of these statistics at least on a local level. Most of our registrations for Vacation Bible School, Christmas for Kids, etc. are done online rather than by phone or mail. Just recently, for the first time, I actually had people tell me they would prefer receiving weekly E-Updates by e-mail or by Facebook than the snail mailings we send out each month. A growing number of members have also indicated similar preferences. For me personally, besides this blog, I’ve also taken an active role not only in our congregation’s website (which, God-willing, will soon be revamped!), but also in the creation of our congregation’s Facebook page, which has actually helped us to reach some interested people we would otherwise not reach with regularly updated announcements and invitations. I haven’t dipped my toe into the Twitter waters yet, but it’s very possible that time may come too.

Now, of course, nothing can replace the one-on-one personal interaction between a shepherd and his people, which is all the more necessary as people get more wired and don’t take as much time to build real relationships with others as they once did. It’s also important that the faithful shepherd doesn’t get too wired himself, but at the same time, the truth is, social media is here to stay and shepherds of God’s flock need to know how to communicate with the people of their congregation and community in this wired age. God-willing,  the proper balance between social media and personal social interaction can be struck as we minister to God’s people.