Concordia Seminary celebrates 100 years in Clayton

Living Stones for Church and World

Delivered during the Service of Vespers. 3 p.m. Sunday, April 26, 2026 at the Chapel of St. Timothy and St. Titus

In the name of Jesus Christ, our cornerstone, Amen. The text that engages us is the epistle reading read earlier from 1 Peter 2:4-9. My dear sisters and brothers in Christ:

INTRODUCTION

Forty-five years ago in 1981, I set foot on this campus for the first time as a prospective student, as a visitor. I was a young 20-year-old. I’ll never forget that experience because as I viewed this beautiful campus—its magnificent buildings—I was in awe. Oh, I had seen photographs of the campus, but it wasn’t until I was here in person beholding it with my own eyes and going into the buildings that I really experienced the wonder of this place. And it is a wonderful place!

That was 45 years ago. 100 years ago, there were many more people who were on this campus. The report is that over 75,000 people came for the dedication of this campus! The local newspaper had as its headline: “Sea of Humanity at Concordia Seminary.”  The reports of the interviews with people who attended paralleled my experience: awe at the beauty, the quality, and the wonder of the campus—its buildings, facilities, and grounds.

We gather here today, 100 years later. Maybe we don’t have that same awe and wonder anymore because it’s not the first time that most of us have seen this campus. In fact, for many of us, we live on this campus, we work on this campus, and we study on this campus. It has become so familiar to us that we don’t really notice the beauty and marvel at it. So, I invite you today to again experience that wonder—the wonder of this campus as we reflect upon the gift that God has given to us in this campus. Especially let us thank God for the legacy of this campus and of this seminary that God has given to us. I wish to highlight two legacies for us especially to reflect upon and give thanks for. The first is the legacy of permanence.

Permanence

This campus manifests permanence! At least the historic buildings do, being built out of stone. Even the roof is stone slate, which was quarried in Vermont and brought here. True permanence! Just a few years ago, my wife and I had a new roof put on our house, and the salesman for the roofing company told us it’s a 30-year roof. I thought that was pretty good. Man, it’s going to last for 30 years? That’s a good deal. That’s permanent! But what about the roof on the historic buildings here that are made of slate? I’ve been told it’s a 500-year roof. I have been looking back at the photos of these buildings when they were dedicated, as they were newly constructed, and you know, they didn’t look much different than they do today! Or maybe I should put it this way: they don’t look that much different today than they did 100 years ago. That’s the constancy of these buildings, the permanence of these buildings.

Yet, there is something even more permanent than these buildings: the Church that this campus serves. The Church of Christ. This is the point that Peter makes in our text today, from his first epistle, the second chapter. He says to Christian people spread across what we would now call southern Turkey, He says: “You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house” (v. 5) -–a house built of stone, a building built of stone. But not physical and material, he’s speaking of a spiritual house. This is the Church, the temple of God, the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. That house! And it’s a permanent house, Peter says, which is built up of stone.

But notice that this house is constructed with living stones. Now, when I think of stone—even the stones that our buildings are built out of—I don’t think of them as living. They’re dead. In fact, we have an idiom to describe people who are really dead. We say they are stone dead.

But these are living stones. How does something that was dead—stones—become living? Peter tells us in chapter 1: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:3). God has taken that which is dead and caused it to become alive. We are born again to a living hope. And how? Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Borrowing from Paul’s language, we who were once dead in our trespasses and sins, God has made alive—by grace you have been saved (Eph. 2:5).

This is the permanent hope, the living hope that we are living stones in this spiritual house. Ours is a life that will never end—eternal life. Talk about permanence! And it’s all through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! As a result of Christ’s resurrection, we now have permanence in His household, in His spiritual house. This life, His life, is forever!

That permanence is reinforced, as Peter here says, because of the foundation of the house. He states: “You come to Him, a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious” (v. 4). We’re always reminded of the work of Christ: rejected of men, His state of humiliation, His suffering and death for our sin. But He is chosen by God and precious: exalted in His resurrection, ascended on high to the right hand of the Father. This is our crucified and risen Lord!

So, we come to Him. We come Him because He is our cornerstone, Peter says, as he quotes (v. 6) from the Old Testament passage of Isaiah 28: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious.” The cornerstone was that upon which all the other stones were affixed, which all the other stones found their support. It was the foundation. And Christ is our foundation! He is the Church’s foundation. “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord,” we sang earlier. Because of the foundation of Jesus Christ, the Church has permanence.

This is a permanent status that we have with Christ in His presence and righteousness through the forgiveness of sins, through justification. The Apostle Peter, quoting the prophet Isaiah, goes on to say: “Whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame,” that is, they will not be condemned (v. 6). Through faith in Jesus, you have a permanent standing in His gracious presence forever. And with His righteousness you will not be put to shame. “There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

There is no condemnation for you who, by baptism and faith, are in Christ Jesus! In the Greek translation of Isaiah 28 here quoted, the word “not” is actually two negatives put together. Only the negatives don’t cancel out each other. They reinforce one another. It’s like saying, never, never will he be put to shame. Will you be put to shame before Him? No way!  Never! All because of that permanence of Christ our foundation.

Concordia Seminary stands firmly upon that foundation of Jesus Christ. Concordia Seminary is all about Jesus Christ. It is about His finished work and about His Word—the Word of God that endures forever. This is our foundation. This is our legacy of permanence. So that’s the first legacy that we have, a legacy of permanence.

PURPOSE

And yet, Peter here points us to another legacy that we celebrate on this anniversary. And that is the legacy of purpose. Purpose! We are given an identity, but we are given responsibility also. We respond to who God has made us to be, which is our purpose.

Peter here employs the same metaphorical field of a temple. But he shifts the imagery from the building material, the stones, to the workers in the temple, to priests. He applies that imagery to us, His Church. He says: “You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (v. 5). That statement is a purpose clause, meaning that this is the purpose for which Christ has redeemed us and made us His own in His Church. We have a purpose to be priests in this world.

Peter here is referring to all Christians, all the baptized. This is our blessed Lutheran doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. And what does a priest do? In the Old Testament, the priests were primarily the representatives of God to people. So, you had the Aaronic priesthood in which the priests represented God to the people of Israel. But God also called the entire people of Israel to be His nation of priests. They were to represent Him to the world, to the Gentiles, to those in the darkness of idolatry and unbelief. They were to represent the Lord and bring His truth to them. As Isaiah said, they were to be a light to lighten the Gentiles (Is. 42:6, 49:6, 60:3). This was their vocation. And now the Church, the new Israel, has this as its vocation as well—to be priests to the world, God’s representatives to the world. That is our purpose.

Peter says that this holy priesthood is “to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (v. 5). Oh, through Jesus Christ; it’s always through Jesus Christ! It’s only through Jesus Christ that any sacrifice that we offer can be acceptable to God. Yet now in faith, we offer sacrifices of our service, of our worship, that are acceptable to God. As Paul puts it, “by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 21:1). This is our purpose. We gather here to worship. This is our sacrifice to Him. This is the purpose of the church: to gather, to worship, to receive the gifts of God, to thank and praise Him for these gifts.

Peter goes on to say more about this purpose in verse 9: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”  In this statement there’s another purpose clause: “that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him.” Now the Greek word used here that is translated as “proclaim” has embedded in it the word “out.” Proclaim out. We proclaim amongst ourselves—yes, that’s wonderful. But Peter says that as priests, as representatives to the nations, we are to proclaim out into the world. We proclaim out the excellencies, the heroic, mighty deeds of God, who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

It is because the Lord has called us out of the darkness of sin and unbelief into the light of His eternal blessing that we now are moved to go out into the world and to proclaim what God has done in Jesus Christ. This is the mission of Concordia Seminary. This is our purpose, the legacy that we have received. The legacy is one of sending, to send workers out into churches so that the Word goes out into the world as well.

Concordia Seminary does not produce priests in the common societal sense of that term. We produce pastors, who then go forth and produce priests. Because it is in baptism that God produces priests. The priesthood of the baptized—that’s what our seminary is all about! To send forth pastors, shepherds, those who through Word and Sacrament ministry will form baptized priests.  These lay people in their everyday vocations, their everyday lives in the world, shine the light of Christ. This is so that others might be brought into that light, and into that life as well. That is our purpose, the legacy of purpose that has been passed down to us.

CONCLUSION

I invite you to take your worship folder and turn to page 7. There you see a photograph of an inlaid carved stone that is here on campus. We’ve been talking in this sermon about stones, and this is my favorite stone on the whole campus. This stone was put in place a hundred years ago at the construction of the historic campus. It continues to be a witness to us, as well, about the purpose of this seminary.

Now you see it has a symbol of a shield, and on the shield a seven branched candlestick. I’ll get to the symbolism of that later. But the words underneath, on the banner, are Greek words: tais ekklesiais. These Greek words translate into English as “to the churches.”  This expresses very well the purpose of this seminary: to send out to churches pastors, deaconesses, missionaries, and leaders. We will celebrate this sending in just two days, on Call Day, when we have candidates for pastoral and diaconal ministry sent out into the churches to carry out ministry. So, it’s “to the churches.”

But actually the Greek words here in the dative case could also be rendered, “for the churches.” For the churches—that’s why we send out church workers to the churches. It’s for their well-being—to bring to them wholeness and healing.

Now there’s something very unique about this stone carving. Those of you who know Greek see it immediately. You see that the word for churches, Ekklesiais, is misspelled. The first letter should be an epsilon but it’s a sigma. Now I don’t know the story behind that. I suspect that the stone craftsman received the design and he didn’t know Greek. And so, he put down the character, that he perceived here, a sigma rather than the epsilon.

I think it’s great that this has never been corrected, this flawed spelling of the word for church. Similarly, the churches to which we send out our graduates also are flawed. These churches are filled with fallen, sinful people. What they need is the gospel. The gospel brings healing for sin. And so, our graduates are sent out to the churches with the gospel message for the churches to bring healing and wholeness in Christ.

Lastly, this symbol is very meaningful to me because of the picture of a seven-branched candlestick. This is the image in the Bible, especially the book of Revelation, of the church. Each of the lamps or lights on the top of the candlesticks represent churches, congregations, that are united as one Church in Christ by the Holy Spirit. The point I want you to see is again the purpose. The churches are lights in the world, in the darkness.

So, the message of this stone is the purpose of this seminary: graduates sent into the churches, for the churches, with the gospel message to give light in the world. It’s all there. That’s the purpose! That is the purpose of Concordia Seminary, all because of the permanence of that gospel message and the permanence of the Person upon which the Church is built—Jesus Christ, the risen One, the cornerstone.  In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

100^th Anniversary Video Tribute

In anniversary years like this it is good to give thanks and praise to God for his gracious love and for his many gifts. Give God glory for what he has done in this place for the past 100 years! We also thank him for the people of our church and of Concordia Seminary, and for what God has accomplished through them over the past century.

When construction of this campus began, the Missouri Synod was about 75 years old. Just a few years earlier, the Synod had translated its name from German into English. It was becoming an American church. It continued to grow and over time people started to come into Missouri Synod congregations who did not have German last names. Concordia Seminary continued to grow especially here in this new place. This campus was built by forward-thinking people, by people who were concerned about the church and its mission, and the future.

In 1920, the Missouri Synod in convention dedicated $1,000,000 to the building of a new seminary campus. In 1923 it dedicated another $1,500,000. The old campus, on South Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis, had served well, but the seminary was growing and simply ran out of space. Synod purchased this De Mun Estate property as the site for the new seminary, but many of the funds towards that purchase came from congregations in the St. Louis area. It was Synod and its congregations that dedicated their gifts towards the building of this place, but it was also individuals and families that sacrificed to help make this new campus possible. It is worth remembering their gifts and their love for the church.

When I was serving as a pastor at Salem, in Affton (South St. Louis County) I got to know well a couple in the congregation: Walter and Ellen Wildermuth. Walter died at age 97, but I visited him regularly in the years before that. I remember the time Walter told me that he was here for the dedication of the new campus of Concordia Seminary in 1926. He came with his family from southern Illinois. He was a boy then, about 12 years old. He didn’t remember much about the speeches and sermons and the ceremony of the day, but he remembered running all over the campus, going through the new buildings and exploring. It was a memorable day for him.

Walter then told me about another day, several years before the dedication day; it must have been about 1923. On a Sunday afternoon, the Wildermuth family had a visitor to their home out on the farm in southern Illinois. It was Professor Theodore Graebner from Concordia Seminary. He was on the building committee for the new campus. Mr. Wildermuth told me that Professor Graebner sat down at the kitchen table with his parents and told them about the new Seminary campus. Graebner went into some detail about the plans for the new buildings, what it would look like, what it would cost, but also about the need for a new place to train pastors and missionaries. Young Walter must have been watching this whole conversation because, at one point, he said, “Professor Graebner told my Mom and Dad that $500 would be a wonderful gift to help build this new campus.” ($500 was a lot of money for a farm family in southern Illinois in 1923; in today’s dollars it would be close to $10,000.) Walter told me, “Professor Graebner was really good, and he went away that day with a check for $500 in his pocket.”

It was the Synod, it was congregations, but it was also families like the Wildermuths and countless others that made this place possible. It’s important to remember them, and to give thanks to God for them. Their gifts, their sacrifices, their love that by the grace of God built this place of which we are the heirs.

Why would the people of this church make Concordia Seminary such a priority in 1926? Because they wanted to train and form pastors. They were forward-looking and they knew that in the future they would need pastors for their congregations, and missionaries to bring the Gospel of Christ to the world. Concordia Seminary was a place for forming those servants for the church. And so, they got to work…

The work has continued over the years, and it still continues to this very day.

Thanks be to God, the people of this church continue to make Concordia Seminary a priority still today in 2026. They do so because the need for servants in the church is as great, if not greater, than it has ever been. Concordia Seminary is dedicated to the formation of faithful pastors for the Office of the Holy Ministry. It is dedicated to training teachers, deaconesses, and missionaries for faithful service to the church and to the world.

The people of the Missouri Synod are Lutherans and have never forgotten Martin Luther’s emphasis on central message of the Scriptures: Human beings are lost in sin, and it is God who justifies. After that, Luther says, everything else is hollow by comparison. The most important thing in the whole world is the Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Concordia Seminary remains dedicated to preparing people to bring that message to the world. We never forget that the Lord is the one who builds his house. It’s his church, created and sustained by his Word. And His Word remains, now and forever. Thank you.

Description of Commemorative Medallion and Booklet

As part of the planning for our 100^th Anniversary of the Clayton Campus, we spent some time looking to the past to see how the seminary has observed its anniversary milestones over the years. And one of the projects that emerged from that study was the design and production of a commemorative coin or medallion.

Well, wouldn’t you know that we just happen to have a world-class numismatist on our campus. Now what, you might ask, is a numismatist? (I imagine Leo Sánchez is already trying to connect this to “pneumatology” or something.) (Ha!) But seriously, a numismatist is “a person who studies, researches, and collects coins, tokens, and medals.” And so we are extremely blessed to have been able to collaborate with a world-class numismatist, Dr. Daniel Harmelink, and to partner Concordia Historical Institute in producing a commemorative coin for this anniversary.

Not only is Dr. Harmelink an esteemed collector and scholar of Reformation coins and medals, but he is also a skilled artist and designer as a result of his early training as an architect. And so we asked him to propose a design for our commemorative medal.

Dr. Harmelink’s first thought was to see whether the original line drawings and blueprints of the Clayton Campus might provide an artistic possibility.

That led to his recollection of a design that was used by East Berlin medalist and illustrator Heinz Rodewald, which was used in Germany for the Luther 500 anniversary in 1983 for a commemorative 5 Mark coin. It depicted a bird’s-eye view of the Wartburg in Eisenach, Germany.

From there, Dr. Harmelink sought out how to capture a bird’s-eye view of our campus Quadrangle, with the top of Luther Tower placed squarely in the middle. With the assistance of young August Nafzger and his drone in early 2026, a color photo acquired and converted to a high-resolution, black-and-white image, which Dr. Harmelink then used to develop a comprehensive design for medal.

The committee approved this design by Dr. Harmelink. It includes the high-res photo on one side surrounded by a description of the commemorative occasion. And then on the reverse side, it includes a simplified graphic of the seminary’s historic seal with lettering in the historic Copperplate font, which was popular in the 1920s.

And here you see a final, computer-generated proof of the coin. “But where,” you might ask, “can I acquire one of these beautiful commemorative coins?” I am pleased to announce that for each faculty member here there is one waiting for you on the table [at the back of Koburg], with your name on it. In fact, each commemorative coin comes in an attractive box, along with a certificate of authenticity, signed by Dr. Harmelink. There were only 250 of these coins created, so each certificate is uniquely numbered to reflect that.

And now, would you please join me in acknowledging Dr. Harmelink’s beautiful and magnificent work.

In closing, I would also draw your attention to this very fine “History of Concordia Seminary’s Iconic Clayton Campus,” which was developed by our seminary communications team.

Closing Remarks

Looking ahead to the future of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis: the next 100 years.

Thanks to each one of you for being here today. And before I make further remarks, let’s express our appreciation for two groups of people. First, thanks to the planning committee for this anniversary celebration, to our campus events and hospitality staff, our food service workers, and all who served to make the celebration back in April and today’s gathering wonderful occasions for our seminary community and our guests. [Applause.] And second, thanks to those who so lovingly and skillfully care for this campus: Chad Cattoor, Martin Hague, Ray Allen, Gayle Zollmann, our C & W employees, and our student workers.

Without God’s people who serve here, without all of you, all these grand buildings don’t do much good. But over the last 100 years here in this place, and seated all around you here today, God has blessed this Seminary with such wonderful people with such diverse gifts and personalities, serving our students, serving the church, serving in the name of His beloved Son, serving to His glory, serving not themselves but others, and one another.

When this Seminary campus was built 100 years ago, Theodore Laetsch, pastor of historic Trinity in downtown St. Louis, secretary of the Synod at the time, and a member of the building committee, described the new campus with these words:

“The [buildings are] constructed of stone laid up in the very best grade of cement mortar. St. Louis limestone is used for the backing, while the facing is a combination of different kinds of stone from various parts of the country. From Perry County, where stood the cradle of our Alma Mater, comes the golden-brown Wittenberg stone, which lends some of its warmth, its concentrated sunshine, to the rather cold gray of the local limestone, while blended into almost perfect harmony with these two kinds of stone are the soft pink of the Lyons stone, the bluish-gray of the Zell stone, and the rich red of the Boulder stone. Bedford stone is used for the cut-stone trim. Each kind of stone serves to bring out the beauty of all other varieties, and, in turn, has its own beauty enhanced by all the other kinds. Even the heavy slate roof is not lacking in beauty. Especially when the sun strikes it, it shows a veritable gamut of beautiful hues and tints…. Like the living temple of God, the Church of Christ on earth, these stones and slates, every one of them, serve not themselves, but others, blending together into one harmonious group, helping to make it a thing of beauty, and a joy to behold.” [Walther League Messenger, Vol. 35 (1926): 616]

When I was a student here, back in the 1990s, Tori and I would sometimes go the Galleria Mall. Remember when people used to go to malls? We would often stop at a coffee store there called Gloria Jean’s Beans. Man, that place smelled so good—the fresh ground coffee beans. One of my favorite smells in the world. I would always think, it would be so great to work here and to smell that all day long. One time I asked the girl behind the counter whether she kept noticing the coffee aroma through a whole shift or whether she just got used to it and couldn’t really smell it after a while. And she said, “Yeah, you don’t really smell it when you work here.”

For those of us who work every day at Concordia Seminary—I hope that our senses never grow dull to what a beautiful place we’ve been blessed to enjoy here. In the busyness of our work, in the inevitable frustrations and weariness of our work, may an occasion like this anniversary serve to help us to smell the coffee, so to speak—to recognize anew the magnificent, beautiful place that our forefathers planted here for us that that so many supporters and workers have continued to maintain for us, and that we get to enjoy every day.

But most importantly, I pray that our hearts never grow dull to the magnificent, beautiful work the Lord has placed into the hands of Concordia Seminary. Teaching, learning, and proclaiming the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.

Today, we have looked backwards. But we also look forward. Over the next decade, God willing, we will be making our own contributions to the ongoing beauty and usefulness of this physical campus. Our Campus Plan includes the renovation of Faculty Houses 13, 14, and 15, completed this summer, and the consideration of additional faculty housing construction. We will break ground on September 14 for the complete reconstruction of our Married Student Housing Apartments in the Woods, new and definitely improved. We will renovate three large wings of the historic campus core – the stone and slate buildings just across from the chapel, using them for office functions and for social and meeting space. We will demolish Loeber Hall, and on its footprint build new single student housing. We will update and further beautify the interior of the chapel and make needed repairs and upgrades to its organ.

We have received much. God grant us that we may pass along much—a campus in good condition, with a beauty that testifies to the goodness of God and the holiness and eternal significance of the work that He does here.

100 years ago, Professor Theodore Graebner authored a commemorative book describing the new campus, its history and construction and features and symbolism. Please indulge me as I close these remarks with this excerpt from Graebner’s first chapter, as he summarizes the history of our Synod and our Seminary up to 1926:

“We stood isolated among the denominations. We were travelers in a foreign land. The culture of the nineteenth century was in its very essence secular and antichristian; its tendencies such that we had to testify against it continually. There was much organized opposition. What prospect did our fathers have in their fight against such a league of hostile forces? What chance had a body of believers who upheld the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible in an age which regards the Scripture at best as a record of ancient religious experience? Knowing the age in which we live, how could we expect to be more than a minor body in the roster of denominations? Not as if there were reasons for discouragement if such had been the history of our Synod. Success in the kingdom of God is not a matter of numbers, but of faithfulness to revealed truth. The smallest body, loyal to the Lutheran Confessions, would still be the visible Church of Christ on earth. Its work would be as glorious if it counted its adherents by thousands instead of hundreds of thousands.

“Whenever the transactions of our synodical sessions are given to the printer, the last line is made to read: ‘Soli Deo Gloria—To God alone be glory!’ And in printing this concluding line in 1926, we are not merely in a formal way echoing the refrain of hundreds of District and General conventions in the past, but we confess that which is our heart’s conviction. To God alone, —not to power of organization, not to wise leadership, not to prudent expenditure of funds, not even to faithfulness of our workers in church and school, —but to God alone we give honor for the success which has been ours in the past. To Him alone all glory for the new, commodious Concordia Seminary! Praise be to God alone, who has so blessed the work of our public teachers in college and seminary that our dear Missouri Synod today stands not only strongly united in the apostolic faith, but has extended her tent-ropes and set far the bounds of her domicile, until the sun never sets on the territory where her Gospel is proclaimed. These colleges [and seminaries] of our Synod have been the power-houses from which ever new currents of living forces have issued into the organism of the Church. They have been the roots by which, out of the soil of the living Word of God, our Synod has drawn the vigor of her spiritual life. For who shall calculate the influence upon the life of a church exerted by those thousands of faithful workers in pulpit and school who have come forth from the halls of our Concordias in the past eighty-seven years?” (Concordia Seminary: Its History, Architecture and Symbolism)

And today, we can say, “the past 187 years!” Thanks be to God. To God alone be the glory.

Please join me in prayer:

Dear Father in heaven, Creator of all good things and Redeemer of the world, we give you thanks today

for this campus,
for those who have gone before us,
for their faithful, sacrificial labor,
for their testimony to Your goodness and Your Gospel,
for the blessing of one another and our shared work in this place,
for the beautiful truth of Your love for us in Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of our sins in
His blood, and the joyous certainty of life in your kingdom forever.

Watch over these buildings and grounds and all who live, work, or study here. Use this place and use us for Your gracious purposes, and to Your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.