SMP05 Heaven on Earth: The Worship of Lutherans Today

Mentors are an important part of the SMP instructional team. They are the face of the program for their vicars for most of the year. This classroom is designed to provide a place to accumulate helpful documents, to discuss with each other, our professors and program staff questions that come up from time to time, concerns that you have about classes, assignments, etc. We will also be able to use this space to create together resources for you and for the mentors that follow you in years to come. Please also use the Faculty Lounge to post prayer requests, to fellowship and to get to know each other.

As the first course in the SMP curriculum, the student learns how the pastor brings people into communion with Jesus Christ. The mission of the Triune God, how God transmitted his mission to humanity in many diverse ways, is a persistent theme in the Old and New Testaments. This course will lay out biblical and theological principles for pursuing the task of bringing the Gospel to the world in varying contexts, especially emerging mission challenges and opportunities for parishes and their pastors.

Exploring the work of pastors through the centuries as stewards of the mysteries of God and physicians of the soul, the student learns how the center of the mission of the Church is Christ with his gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation, and how Christ cares for souls through the pastor in teaching the faith, pastoral counsel, individual confession and absolution, prayer and blessing for the unique circumstances of contemporary Christians.