Students and their wives at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (WLS), Mequon, Wis., learned where they will be serving as vicars, teachers, and pastors in two special services held May 22 and May 23 in the auditorium on campus. The Conference of Presidents announced a total of 79 assignments in all 12 districts of WELS.

On the evening of May 22, 40 second-year pastoral ministry students received vicarage assignments, and seven of their wives received teaching assignments in WELS schools either connected to the congregations where their husbands were assigned or in the area. While most of these assignments are to WELS congregations, one man will vicar in Medellin, Colombia, through the WELS World Mission office. Through careful planning with the WELS Home Mission office, 29 of the men were assigned to serve as Vicars in a Mission Setting.

Pastoral formation, including the year of vicarship, is the heart of what WLS does. This formation happens because of self-supporting congregations and missions around the country that partner with WLS in this work. We thank God for the supervising pastors in the field who are willing to give so much time to each vicar, for the supportive people of WELS, and for these men who have offered themselves for service in Christ’s church.

On the morning of May 23, 26 men received their first calls into pastoral ministry, one man returned to the Assignment Committee to receive his first parish call, and five recent WLS graduates were reassigned to their present fields of labor. Six of the graduates were assigned to serve Home Mission congregations. Four of the candidates were assigned to congregations that had been vacant for more than two years.

There had been 97 requests for candidates. With the 27 candidates available, 70 of those requests went unfilled. After the Assignment Committee did its work, there are still 146 vacancies for pastor-trained parish men synodwide, an 11 percent vacancy rate. Although 45 men graduated in the preseminary program at Martin Luther College, New Ulm, Minn., this year with plans to enroll at WLS next year, they will not be available to serve as pastors for four more years.

Because of the high vacancy rate, two floor committees at the 2023 synod convention asked Pres. Schroeder to appoint a Ministry Recruitment Task Force. This task force is presenting its first report to the districts in convention this summer. That report predicts that the pastoral vacancy rate will return to five percent in ten years as larger WLS classes matriculate, WELS congregations close and merge, and current pastors retire at age 70.

The task force is also suggesting 20 more immediate remedies for the synod’s current pastor and teacher shortages. We ask the Lord’s blessing on the district conventions discussing the remedies. We pray that the Lord of the harvest will send more workers into his harvest field.

Read the Ministry Recruitment Task Force’s report in the Report to the Twelve Districts.

Rev. Paul Prange, administrator of WELS Board for Ministerial Education

WELS Congregational Services has recently revised Everyone Outreach, a popular program designed to help congregations discover their thought habits and develop new thinking and behaviors that build a culture of outreach. While maintaining its original elements, the revised program will now be a five-hour event instead of the original eight hours.

Rev. Eric Roecker, director of WELS Evangelism and co-developer of the program, says the goal of this revision is to encourage more participation. “Not only might this allow more congregations to participate, but we also hope a larger percentage of each congregation’s members will get involved,” he says. “This is important because the more people who participate, the better chance an outreach culture will be built in each congregation.”

More than 125 congregations have already hosted Everyone Outreach workshops since the program debuted in 2021.

Saving Grace, Mobile, Ala., was one of those congregations. “[Everyone Outreach] challenged deep-seated ideas about how we go about reaching those in our neighborhoods and looked at principles that held us back in our outreach and attacked those thoughts and changed those ideas,” says Rev. Thomas Spiegelberg, pastor at Saving Grace. “I do think it changed a lot of people and how they think about their church and their connection with how they share the gospel.”

Since the workshop, the congregation is focusing more on its children’s ministry and being more intentional with its community outreach events. It also is working on creating a welcoming environment at church for visitors and nonmembers, including extending its Sunday morning experience and encouraging its members to be friendly and open. “We have heavy food and snacks after church,” explains Don Baldwin, a member at Saving Grace and participant in the Everyone Outreach workshop. “When we have food, people stay and visit. And for the new folks, they really enjoy visiting and having conversations and fellowship. That fellowship is important for evangelism.”

He continues, “Everyone Outreach made us talk more about these and get organized.”

Saving Grace has had between 15–20 adult confirmations in the last year, and its new members are also sharing the message they discovered.

“You just want others to have what you have,” says Baldwin.

Learn more about Everyone Outreach and how your congregation can participate at everyoneoutreach.com. Read a story about how Don and Ammie Baldwin plant gospel seeds in their neighborhood in this month’s Forward in Christ magazine.