Lutheran Theologians for the Church
The Rev. Dr. Orrey McFarland
NALS Adjunct Professor of Biblical Studies
Pastor, Peace Lutheran Church (Edmond, OK)
If you attended the recent weeklong continental gathering of the NALC— “Lutheran Week”—you may have seen one group listed on the schedule with which you weren’t familiar: the Lutheran Theologians for the Church.
In 2012, the theologians Carl Braaten and Bob Benne formed a group called the “Younger Theologians Colloquium” to be a kind of theological “think tank” for the church. The idea was that once a year theologians and pastors with advanced theological degrees would gather for conversation, fellowship, and to do theological work on a particular theme or doctrine. The goal was that the group would help these younger participants to grow and mature as both pastors and theologians for the sake of the Church.
Over the years, the group has evolved. The joke used to be that anyone younger than Carl or Bob could be considered a “younger theologian.” But as the group continued to age, we decided that the name, while humorous, was no longer completely accurate—neither in terms of the group’s membership, nor, and more importantly, in terms of the group’s purpose.
Therefore, in 2023 the group was renamed “Lutheran Theologians for the Church.” This slightly more cumbersome name captures more clearly the purpose of the group: we are a group of Lutheran theologians, primarily from the NALC but with some participants from other Lutheran denominations, who desire to do work that builds up the Church.
While one cannot always draw a straight line from a conference, conversation, or paper presentation, to its influence on the broader Church, our hope and aim is to do theology—and be theologians—specifically for the church. That is, our goal is to be a source of theological formation for the NALC and to serve as an auxiliary to the NALS. Thus, in addition to our yearly meetings, we also hope to be active in other ways: teaching within the North American Lutheran Seminary, presenting papers at theological conferences, providing educational talks and resources for churches and mission districts, and serving our churches in other ways as needs arise.
As a group, we want to be useful for the Church. So if your church or mission district has a need that we could help meet, we’d love for you to be in touch with us by filling out the form at the below this article. We have a wide range of expertise in the group—biblical scholars; historical and systematic theologians; church historians; liturgical scholars—with participants spread all over the U.S. and Canada. We want to be of service for God’s people.
