October 15, 2020
Dear friends,
Maybe you’re familiar with that great picture of Rev. C. L. Wuggazer in the display case in the fellowship hall. He was Concordia’s first called pastor in 1887. I have some things to share about him in the future, but for today I only mention it to point out that the history of Concordia goes back several years earlier, to the work of travelling missionary Rev. Heinrich Vetter (1842-1907, pictured above).
There’s a record of Rev. Vetter leaving Germany in 18691 to serve as a missionary in North America. Settlement of Minnesota farmland was in full swing, and Rev. Vetter was a busy man. It is said that at one time he was serving 500 families in 42 different places in central Minnesota.2 He came to Fair Haven in 1882 or 1883 and held services in the homes of local Lutheran families.
Even if you’re not a history buff, I hope that this legacy makes an impact on you. Imagine first what it was like for Rev. Vetter to leave his home in Germany with no expectation of ever returning. He had contact with the Missouri Synod, but his job was to enter into unknown territory with the Gospel. Immigrants were making their way into remote parts of the Upper Midwest, and missionaries like Rev. Vetter knew that among those immigrants were Christians who needed to be fed with God’s Word. He knew also that among those immigrants were non-Christians who needed to hear the Gospel for the first time. And so he went.
Imagine next what it was like for the Markwardt, Lueders, and Rathje homes where services were first held. Life as a settler was uncertain and busy. There was always more work to do, always a greater effort to be made in gaining some security in a new place. But these families took the time to welcome a preacher. They took the time and made the effort to gather and hear God’s Word because they knew that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
We are far removed from those times. The gap between 2020 and 1882 can be measured in years, but also in terms of convenience and comfort and ease. We live very different lives now. For instance, 1857 brought a financial panic in America and a grasshopper infestation in Fairhaven just before harvest. Many spent the winter living on potatoes, salt, and corn meal.3
And yet, there is no gap between 2020 and 1882 in terms of God’s grace. It was God’s grace that fed and nurtured those families as they listened to the Scriptures and received the blessings of the Sacraments. It was God’s grace that gave them life, and life in abundance, in the face of a world of labor and hardship and death.
It is the same for us. Today we are the beneficiaries of the same grace, brought to us by means of generations of faithful hearers and preachers of God’s Word. It’s unbelievable. What are you and I, that God should be so mindful of us? What are you and I that he should choose to shower us with his grace?
Thanks be to God that he is our God and that we are his people.
God bless and keep you,
Pr. Buchs
- “Friedrich Brunn und das Proseminar in Steeden”, p. 44
- A Heritage Fulfilled: German Americans, p. 162
- A Historical Sketch: Fair Haven—1856, Vye, J. A., p. 3