Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary
Pictured above: Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary class of 2021
On May 21, 2021, 28 men graduated from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (WLS), Mequon, Wis., and began their pastoral ministries.
WLS prepares men for pastoral ministry by providing them with spiritual, theological, and professional training. Students attend classes for two years, serve as full-time vicars during their third year, and then attend classes and write a thesis in their fourth year. Throughout their time at the seminary, students receive opportunities to serve in a variety of ministries and to experience other cultures to help prepare them for their future calls.
The seminary also provides pastors with opportunities for continued growth in all their callings through the Grow in Grace Institute. Grow in Grace offers continuing education courses, a mentoring initiative for new graduates, a clearinghouse of resources for pastors, and an annual retreat for pastors who are celebrating milestones in their ministries.
The Pastoral Studies Institute, a partnership between WLS and WELS Missions, guides and assists non-traditional students through their pre-seminary and seminary training so they can become pastors. This includes second-career students as well as cross-cultural students.
For more information, visit wisluthsem.org.
To carry out its purpose, Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary has established the following objectives:
- to lead theological students and pastors in a reverent study of the inspired and inerrant Word of God so that they are able to understand and apply its Christ-centered message of law and gospel;
- to encourage theological students and pastors to grow in their personal faith through daily contact with the means of grace;
- to teach all the areas of the theological curriculum in a thorough and scholarly fashion, in full harmony with the Holy Scriptures and in conscious agreement with the Lutheran Confessions;
- to train theological students and pastors in the skills required for ministry in an ever-changing world;
- to instill in theological students and pastors the kinds of attitudes that will assist them as they carry out their ministry in the contemporary world, e.g., confessional in stance, evangelical in approach, mission-minded in spirit, culturally sensitive, appropriately flexible, and zealous both to nurture and to equip the saints.
Pictured: Prof. Robert Wendland teaches church history and homiletics.
International Experience
Each seminary student spends an internship year as a “vicar,” learning and serving under experienced pastors and mission-minded congregations. At the seminary’s vicar assignment service on May 19, 2021, Zach Satorius (left) was called to serve in Medellín, Colombia, under Rev. Henry Herrera (right) of the Colombian Lutheran Church. It has been 12 years since a Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary vicar was placed in Latin America. Satorius arrived in Medellín in August 2021 and will return to Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary for his final year of study in August 2022.
Pastoral Studies Institute
The Pastoral Studies Institute (PSI) guides and assists spiritual leaders around the world through preseminary and seminary training. Team members spend much of their time visiting and teaching PSI students. Occasionally, a PSI student visits the seminary campus. Pictured is Prof. Jonathan Bare, director of the Pastoral Studies Institute, with a student who visited the seminary in fall of 2021.
Did you know?
Since the school began in 1863, more than 3,500 men have graduated from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. Photos of the students from each graduating class as well as the faculty members from that school year line the hallways and hang in classrooms.
