The tech people here at Concordia Seminary have done an amazing job bringing new resources in new ways to the teaching of students both and campus and off, and to the Church throughout the world.
Occasionally they find time to bring out old things, too. Now on the seminary’s iTunesU site is a 16 minute silent movie clip of the 1926 dedication of the Clayton campus.
There are many gems in the clip — views of Walther Arch before the Luther Tower was added some 40 years later; photos of the old South Jefferson campus; footage of a synodical convention meeting at Holy Cross Lutheran Church nearby (really? Not in a convention center?); a positively jovial Franz Pieper; even Walther’s carriage was hauled out and displayed, relic-like, for all to behold. Most of the shots are of the crowds, of the people who played a key role in the planning and building of the campus — the vast majority of whom, notably, were lay people, not church officials, and, of course, of the “beautiful and commodius buildings.”
At the end of the piece, scrolling silently in what looks like one of the new campus’ window frames, is a “A Prayer for Concordia.” “Concordia,” is Latin for “harmony.” And so this prayer for Concordia is a prayer that God would work through those who pass through the halls of these “stately edifices” to bring about harmony in his Church. Thus their prayer, and ours.
“God of our Fathers, in whose name and for whose glory and honor a new and greater Concordia is dedicated, grant our trusting hearts beseech Thee, that Thy peace brought earthward by Thy son, our Savior, may pertetually hallow these halls and that a true concord of faith and hope and love may find a consecrated expression in its every ideal and effort.”
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