“Here am I! Send me.” is the theme for our new academic year, our 180^th. It’s obviously about recruitment, and we thank you for raising church work as a possible vocation for your young people.

Orientation for new students begins Aug. 20. Faculty and staff invest themselves in Orientation so that it will be a positive experience for incoming students. One highlight is boarding buses to go into St. Louis city to spruce up community gardens and the grounds of urban institutions. That day of Orientation sends an early and clear signal that we are sent not only to congregations but to communities. The Opening Service for the 180^th year will be Friday, Aug. 24, at 10 a.m. That afternoon will be the long-awaited dedication of the Kristine Kay Hasse Memorial Library in Fuerbringer Hall. The celebration begins with remarks at 3 p.m. in the chapel followed by the Rite of Blessing and ribbon-cutting at the library. The Opening Service will be live streamed for those who are unable to join us on campus here.

“Here am I! Send me.” is not only about the students who come to the Seminary from your congregations. It’s also personal. Years or decades away from the Seminary, do you and I still have the eagerness of saying every day, “Here am I! Send me.”?

Harold Senkbeil, one of our CSL regents, has written a new book to be released early next year. Titled Habitus, one of Rev. Senkbeil’s first points is that ministry flows out of identity, out of a personal feeling like that of Isaiah, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Is. 6:5). I hope we all have a sense of that despair, but immediately know the Messenger who comes with burning coal. The Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ “has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (6:7).

Sometimes in the day-to-day slog of life and work, we forget the vision that moved us years ago to go to the Seminary. May the echoes of “Holy, Holy, Holy” fill each of us with awe that His righteousness has touched us for life and ministry today and into eternity. “Here am I! Send me.”

Dale
Dr. Dale A. Meyer, President
Concordia Seminary, St. Louis