From the Pastor

September 2009

As many of you know, I was not admitted to Waterloo Lutheran Seminary via the hallowed halls of acade-mia. Rather, it was my years of life experience on the roads and in the warehouses, factories, bakeries, and butcher shops of Southern Ontario that qualified me for admission to seminary. To this day, I'm proud that our Church recognizes the value of such experience when admitting students for pastoral training, but that doesn't mean that students such as me are let off the hook as far as academic expectations are concerned. And so, perhaps you can imagine my fear when I was given the reading list for my first semester of classes at seminary – I was facing a very steep learning curve!
Now, like you, I had seen the bookshelves lining pastor's studies – the bible commentaries, the books on liturgy, spirituality, theology, church history and so on. They seemed to me like the specialized tools of mechanics, jewellers or even surgeons –tools that required special knowledge and training to wield effec-tively. To me, they were the same as the bookshelves of lawyers and medical doctors, shelves no average person had any business seriously perusing.

And so, at first I opened my seminary texts with some trepidation, afraid that I was about to get in way over my head. And yes, there were some words and some jargon that I had to learn to interpret, but that was easily handled with the purchase of a simple theological dictionary. It wasn't long before I was enrap-tured by the ideas about God, the visions of the church and the biblical scholarship that I was encountering in these books. And it wasn't long, too, before I was saying to myself and anyone else who would listen, “these books should not be relegated to the pastor's study, but should be made available to all of the peo-ple.” After all, I thought, if I could understand and be moved by what I was reading, anybody could – and everybody should!

Thus, I was thrilled when council began to discuss the possibility of setting up a library in the church narthex, and even more thrilled when St. Ansgar received a gift of hundreds of books from the library of Pastor Henry Fischer, now retired. All of this got me looking at my own bookshelf and wondering, what books here might people take an interest in reading?

You may also be aware of the sad condition that the church's current bookshelves in the Fellowship Hall have fallen into. And yet, even there are some wonderful books that should be read. So, with all of this in mind, I decided to wet the congregation's appetite by creating a temporary mobile library on wheels us-ing books from all of these sources. It's turning into a little more work than I anticipated, especially since it's hard to resist the temptation to peruse each book that goes on the shelf, but it's also a labour of love.

The Lutheran heritage is one of the written word; from Luther's 95 Theses to the Book of Concord to the myriad of books written by Lutheran theologians and philosophers, and even down to the church newsletter produced in congregations everywhere – the written word inspires, moves, and challenges us in our faith. They are not the specialized tools of a professional clergy, they are the tools of the everyday Christian who desires to live their faith everyday of their life. I hope you will find the same joy in these works as I have.
Peace,
Pastor Brian