Six students from the Distance Education Leading to Ordination (DELTO) program at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, received calls and vicarages during winter placement on Jan. 20, bringing the total number of DELTO graduates to 26, since the inception of the program. An additional three students have calls pending at this time.

Calls into the Pastoral Ministry
Jenina Gatnoor, Call Pending to Sudanese Mission, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Edward Gross, Call Pending to Trinity Lutheran Church, Delray Beach, Florida
One Chanh Keoouthai, Asian Lutheran Mission, Des Moines, Iowa
Michael Meyer, Trinity Lutheran Church, Fremont, Nebraska
Max Phillips, Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Bouton, Iowa
David Prentice, Faith Lutheran Church, Westchester, Illinois
Jerome Terry, Call Pending to Epiphany Lutheran Church, New Orleans, Louisiana
Simon Yiech, Sudanese Mission, Des Moines, Iowa

Vicarage Assignments
Travis Lackey, Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Birmingham, Alabama

The DELTO program allows students to gain the experience of a vicarage along with their academic work, rather than as an intensive one-year internship. During their formation, the students are engaged in Word and Sacrament ministry in some capacity. The students who received calls and vicarages are part of a DELTO cohort that began in September 2001. They are the last class to complete the old DELTO model, which was organized much like a correspondence course. Referred to as the “dispersed cohort,” this class of students did not all come from the same geographic area and were the first to meet together at Concordia Seminary for residential workshops.

Today, DELTO is administered using WebCT, making it a distance education program. The new model also requires a yearly residential retreat and the involvement of pastor mentors. There are two DELTO cohorts that operate according to this new model, consisting of 27 students.

“We give thanks to God for the gifts given these men for service in the church,” commented David Wollenburg, associate professor of practical theology and director of distance education at Concordia Seminary. “We also thank the students for the many lessons they teach us as we continue to work to make the DELTO program more available to students and useful for the church.”

For information, contact the Office of Distance Education at Concordia Seminary, 801 Seminary Place, St. Louis, MO 63105; 314-505-7139; wollenburgd@csl.edu.