One of the prime goals of the website here at Catechism.co.uk is to encourage young Christian men into the pastoral ministry, especially within the U.K. where confessional Lutheran congregations are fairly thin on the ground. A recent idea I’ve had to help this goal become a little closer, is to adopt an initiative my home church (www.oslc.org.uk) has ran regularly over the past five years called “Pester a Pastor“. The idea is that regular interviews are set up with my own pastor Tapani Simojoki, and various groups of people (especially younger groups), where questions can be put forward that have been possible stumbling blocks to faith in Christ. This has been well received over the years, and has often been acknowledged as being helpful to those who attended.
My idea is to simply adapt this idea to an online format, where a series of live interviews are to be arranged with experienced pastors and church leaders within the confessional Lutheran churches both here in the U.K. and further afield. The interviews will be held on the Zoom platform, where those participating will be able to ask questions, and gain valuable feedback from called and ordained servants of the Word. It’s with great pleasure that I can announce that the first of these interviews has been arranged for Wednesday 3rd June 7pm (UK time) with Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller who has very kindly agreed to be the “Pester a Pastor” guinea-pig!
For those interested in attending the meeting, the first point to remember is that the Zoom app needs to be installed on your device in order to participate. This is completely free, and can be found easily on the major app stores, plus on the Zoom website itself. Due to a maximum capacity of 100 particpants for our meetings, I have set the forthcoming event to be by registration only. It’s completely free, and only takes a minute or two to register on the link below. Depending on the demand, I cannot guarantee that all who register will be able to attend, so please don’t leave it until the last minute to do so.
On the registration form, you will be asked for simple information, such as your name, email address, and approximate location where you will be joining from. Also on this form, you will find an area to include any specific question you would like to see posed to Pastor Wolfmueller. I will do my best to select a good cross section of questions that will fill the time slot for the interview, and during the event, the person who sent the question in will be invited to ask Pastor Wolfmueller directly. Obviously those people whose questions are selected will also guarantee their entry into the event, so make them as interesting as possible to ensure your place.
I must point out to all potential registrants, that I will be attempting to record the entire meeting, and providing all goes well, I will be publishing it to the Catechism Youtube channel so that it can be freely shared afterwards.
As I’ve already stated, the primary goal is to encourage those who are feeling a call to the pastoral ministry, however please don’t feel this is a necessity in order to take part. If you have a question regard theology or the pastoral calling that you would just like to ask out of personal curiosity, then of course they will be considered too. For those who are familiar with Pastor Wolfmueller’s various online ministries however, one question will be completely forbidden; and that is “Can you speak in an Australian accent Pastor Wolfmueller?“.
Anyway, enough said, I suggest you think of a question to ask, hit the following link, and register a.s.a.p.. Make sure you use the social media share buttons on the form to tell your online buddies too.
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