PLTS First Chapter Memories

Last year, over IHOP French toast, I was pleased to reconnect with a long-time treasured acquaintance, Brian Stein-Webber.  I mentioned that wife Shirley and I had in September 2017 visited the shiny PLTS home base in Berkeley.  Brian and I reflected on the ways our Seminary had begun a new chapter: strategically positioned in the city center, subsumed as an integral part of California Lutheran University (where my son, Pastor Mark, is a convocator and his daughter is finishing work on her doctorate in psychology), in better proximity to sister seminaries and glowing with a fresh sense of mission.  While painting the outlines on the canvas of a new chapter, I began to draw sketches of the first chapter of Pacific Lutheran Seminary…
 
I first drove up the steep incline of Marin Avenue in my 1939 Dodge during the fall of 1954. Mine was the fourth class, so I knew all of the original faculty and roster of seminarians. I graduated and was ordained in 1958, earned a Doctor of Ministry in 1983 and received a Distinguished Alumni award in 1989. Son Mark is also a graduate of PLTS and currently serves as an internship supervisor. So my roots are deep, loyalty is strong, and recollections are vivid.

Context. In 1958, the West was booming and populated by Boomers. Regional cities and suburbs were springing up like midwestern corn that still crackles at night as it grows. Congregations and synods were in the process of “bornation.” Parents still wanted a home church and a place to spiritually nurture their children. Social issues were making society tremble like a near-surface magnitude 8 earthquake. The Black Panthers were organizing in Oakland.

Origins.  PLTS had womb origins in Oregon years before, but in the context of California growth, a handful of sharp, young, mission-minded pastors and laypeople like Ross Hidy, Bob Romeis, and Quentin Garman hatched a big idea; a seminary on a Berkeley ridge to “train men (sic) in the West for the West.” The PR reached my eyes all the way up north in my home town of Sedro-Woolley, Washington. In my youth, I belonged to a small Augustana Lutheran parish and attended Augustana College in Rock Island for two years (graduating from Pacific Lutheran College). I expected to attend Augustana Seminary. However, my experience in the Midwest convinced me that I am an incorrigible westerner and wanted to serve in the West. So I decided to attend the new United Lutheran Church in America seminary in the Bay area.
 
Campus Climate.  When I arrived, the mood of students and faculty had rainbow colors, from bright optimism and high expectations to darker concerns and anxieties. This was a new venture for all of us. The cement of financial foundations had not yet cured. Emerging congregations were willing to give, but they were also struggling to stand on their own two feet. Support structures like the synod had few cathedrals with records of historic, ample donations.
 
Yet our excitement was there, because we could see throughout the region the burgeoning suburbs. When we knocked on doors (and we did as students) there were prospects to be found. Curiously, the ULCA Board of Home Missions would only start a Mission if there were a certain number of Lutherans identified! We were also encouraged by the success of other start-up institutions like Lutheran Social Services in the Bay Area, Camp Yolijwa near Redlands, and California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks. Besides, this pioneering adventure was kind of heady, lots of fun and there were no creaking traditions to slow us down or rein us in.
 
Facilities.  The two campus mansions were elegant, still in good shape, and the grounds and gardens well maintained. These former homes of the affluent provided classrooms, space for a chapel and for dining. The remodeled garages served as faculty offices. We all pitched in to care for things: clearing the gutters, waxing the wooden floors (I spent hours kneeling) and cleaning the buildings. Beasom Hall [the new dormitory] was barely completed, still to be dedicated. It was a dorm for men, with communal showers and rooms for two. Married students lived in apartments down the hill. We all had cars of various vintages (except for Andy Gresko and his parent-bestowed new Oldsmobile). Bicycles were not practical for pedaling up Marin or its tributaries.

Status. PLTS was not the same as the other ULCA seminaries. We were sharply aware of our lower class status (literally) and how we looked beneath the noses of the other schools. They didn’t really think the “far west” would amount to anything like the “American heartland” or the “Eastern Seaboard.”
 
Enrollment.  What were we like? The first word: male. There were maybe three women attending who were preparing to be parish workers. Another word: veterans. We were close enough to the Korean War so that we had a sprinkling of war veterans. Harry Durkee had a sizable metal plate in his skull as a result of battle. A veteran of Hitler’s army had been enabled to attend.
 
But we were not to be thought of as academic dropouts. Having been around a lot of students at two colleges, it seemed to me that there was a little bit more initiative and determination in the eyes of my classmates. Wally Stuhr (a Yale grad) became Professor of Ethics and President during a respected career at PLTS. Connie Simonson earned his doctorate in Chicago and was appointed head of the religion department at Luther College. Bill Klover was granted a post-graduate scholarship to attend UC Berkeley. Jack Stegeman, class president, was one of the brightest persons I’ve known.
 
Of course, there were idiosyncratic personalities. Andy Gresko and Bliss Bellinger could be seen wandering the garden walkways in the hilltop early morning fog, wearing their black cassocks and reading their brevaries. Bill Crouser, affable and fun, sped around the local highways in his cap and bright red MG convertible. One student, having weak brakes on his car, stopped a suddenly brakeless ride down Marin by running into available shrubs.
 
Faculty.  President Charles Foelsch had been a highly respected southern pastor. An eloquent preacher, he manifested all the pleasant southern graces, and was attentive to each of us.

Pastor George Muedeking was a full-time pastor in El Cerrito. He taught Ethics and Systematic Theology, old school but interesting.
 
Paul Morentz, a practicing psychiatrist, arrived on campus in his Rolls Royce.  He was responsible for Clinical Training and Pastoral Care. Paul screened each entering student with a battery of three psychological tests. He found that I had an inordinate need to please everybody and warned that there were too many inevitable clashes in parish life for that style to work.
 
Pastor Toivo Harjunpaa had been chaplain to the King of Finland and was rescued from Russian invasion by the United Lutheran Church. Besides starting a mission parish near the seminary, he taught liturgics (with a thick Finnish accent). Very high church, he urged us to use traditional worship forms, preferring that we chant both the liturgy and the scripture lessons. He made it clear that the ancient prayers were superior to our impromptu efforts. But he was tolerant of students with low church preferences and was aware of the emerging Liturgical Renewal Movement.

Pastor Gerhard Lenski, retired, had served his last parish in Washington DC. He trained us in homiletics, and modeled his instructions well during Chapel. And he taught Old Testament, using approaches he had accumulated as a pastor.

Dr. Ted Bachmann was our professor or church history and was the most widely known scholar on the faculty. He was recovering from a severe auto accident when he arrived.

Financial Survival.  In contrast to today, we typically did not arrive with accumulated student loan debt. I attended church colleges with scholarships and summer earnings, having received union wages at our town’s industry, Skagit Steel and Iron Works, laboring at the drill press and engine lathe. While at college, I acted as a janitor and in my senior year, with a classmate, I conducted worship services in a country church. In seminary, I delivered doorknob advertisements in the Oakland foothills, helped Connie with Fuller Brush sales, and worked full-time at a gas station as attendant and night supervisor. One solution was to do as I did: marry a public school teacher and postpone having children.

Calls.  Receiving a call upon graduation was, of course, a major concern. But calls were readily available to my class for a curious reason.  Carl Tambert, bishop of our regional synod, had developed a questionable policy regarding PLTS candidates. His solution was to have them assigned as mission developers. This meant that most of my classmates, with only the limited experience of internship, received boot camp training from the Board of Home Missions and were then sent to emerging suburbs to knock on doors and start new congregations. The Board had purchased sites for facilities and provided a parsonage. Bishop Tambert’s explanation: Seminarians are not conditioned by negative parish experiences. They are willing to try anything.

Personal.  Last year marked my 60th anniversary of ordination. During twenty-five of those years, I served five congregations in California and Arizona. The first was St. John in east Oakland, populated largely by young black families. The second was Ascension in Baldwin Park, California, a city east of Los Angeles of white, blue-collar residents. These were the days when racial justice issues erupted, including urban riots and fires. The third was in Merced, California, near Castle Air Force Base, a training center for B-52 bomber and C-135 tanker crews. A third of the members were related to the Air Force, all during the tensions over the Vietnam War. The fourth was Shepherd of the Valley in Phoenix, Arizona, which was one of the Lutheran mega-churches of the day.

My subsequent calls were to the LCA Board of Congregational Ministries based in the Pacific Southwest Synod, and as bishop assistant to four different bishops in California and Arizona. The PLTS faculty was interested in defining the results it was seeking in training seminarians. I remember Dr. Gary Pence’s input; I think a primary goal is to teach students how to learn.

Now I have come full circle. PLTS was not only where, in its first chapter, I began to learn about serving in the Body of Christ, it has further taught me how to continue to learn…even at 86…in my last chapter