Life in Neuendettelsau

Tap, tap, tap.  Tap.  Tap.  6:30 this morning, I opened my eyes to see a chickadee sitting on my windowsill.  What a fun wake-up call!

This first week in Neuendettelsau has been full. Not necessarily full of doing things, but full of adjusting and figuring things out.  This has been the most difficult transition since leaving the USA, but perhaps the best one.  I know where the food is.  I located the churches, the yarn store, and several grocery stores.  The walking/running/biking paths are becoming more familiar.  There are other things that will take some adjustment.  I've almost started to think about being comfortable in co-ed bathrooms/showers.

Monday I spent 7 hours doing paperwork and orientation, Visa application, bank account, insurance, seminary registration...oh what fun!  However, the important things I've done here include finding and purchasing the cross I've been waiting for since I first saw it (here in Neuendettelsau) in 2007.  I lost my discipline somewhere on the walk and the cross came with a bunny, also hand-made at Diakonie Neuendettelsau.  Diakonie Neuendettelsau is what originally drew me back to Neuendettelsau.  It is an institution committed to serving the needs of all people:  the elderly, the sick, the young, those with disabilities, in the mission “To testify the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in word and deed by living a Christian life, working professionally, and making responsible use of economic resources.” [1]  

Diakonie Neuendettelsau was founded by Wilhelm Löhe in 1864. Löhe, at the age of 29 and newly married, was placed as pastor in Neuendettelsau. He had not impressed the church government and so this was a tiny town meant to take away any influence he might have on the church. He despised the town saying, "I would not even want my dog to be buried here."[2]  However, he was very influential (to the church's dismay!) and remained in Neuendettelsau until he died in 1872 at the age of 64.

Pastor Wilhelm Löhe and Fall Colors

Löhe's theology had 5 main foci: pietism (which focused a person on serving others), confessionalism (holding to Lutheran confessions as the true Christian teachings), liturgy (where people encounter God as God works through the liturgy), diaconia (the living out of the Christian life), and mission.[3]    Löhe writes, “Mission is the life of the catholic church.  Where it stops, blood and breath stop; where it dies, the love which unites heaven and earth also dies.” [4]

 

 

Löhe also had great influence on Lutheranism in the United States.  He found himself responsible for sending missionaries to the States to fill the great need for pastors among the German immigrants.  He assisted in the founding of the LCMS, but after a theological disagreement moved his focus to beginning the Iowa Synod where there was little connection to the LCMS.  Here, he helped establish a "teacher's school" which for financial reasons was eventually split into two locations which are now known as Wartburg College in Waverly, IA and Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, IA.[5] Small world, huh?

Two days of class have provided plenty of opportunities to laugh. I missed my first class all together yesterday, being mixed up as to what day it was. Not Monday, apparently. By the time I got to my remaining class yesterday, my brain was so fried (freid?) I couldn't even tell the professors what my name is. These are the moments I need to keep learning to laugh instead of panic. I'm getting better, but still have a way to go! Today went much better and I was in the right places at the right times. People keep telling me I need to have patience and that the language will come along. "Ich habe keine Geduld." means "I have no patience." and I know how to say that!

Courses I'm looking at "taking" are:

"Feminism in Film"

"Letter to the Galatians"
"Ecumenism and Mission"
"Jesus of Nazareth"
"Introduction to Islam"
"Laity as Protagonists of the Reformation"

I don't have to decide for a couple weeks which ones I want to be official, as long as it adds up to 8 semester hours.

Pax.

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[1] Hermann Schoenauer, “Diakonie Neuendettelsau” in Shaping Lives
[2]Larry Trachte “Wilhelm Loehe, Disciple,” Currents in Theology and Mission 33, no. 2 (April 2006): 158.

[3]Craig Nessan, Loehe in America.

[4] Wilhelm Loehe, Three Books about the Church, ed., trans. and intro. James L. Schaaf (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 59. 

[5]Nessan, Loehe and the Iowa Synod.