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Welcome to Mission Works, Thanks to Donors. I'm Dale Meyer. As people

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get older, they often travel overseas and that includes pastors.

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Who after many decades of ministry, will go to the Holy Land, to see

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the places of the Bible, including the places where Jesus showed

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himself to us and earned our salvation.

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But think what if a young Pastor or a seminarian were able to do that

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before getting into the ministry think of the blessings for decades to

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come?

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Well, Concordia Seminary has of course

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that does exactly that. With us today is Dr.

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Thomas

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Zelt who has pioneered this course in Israel.

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Thanks for joining us Tom. Describe the course for us

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if you would?

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It's a privilege to be with you this morning, but it is a course that

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does really two things.

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One is, it sets the biblical story in its geographic and it's local

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and it's real context.

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The biblical events happened before the written word happened.

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And so it's attempting to take the word and connect it up to the

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biblical places.

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The Valleys the hills, the cultural context in which those stories

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happened to bring them to life and so it's a very exciting opportunity

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to take seminarians and those will be teaching the word and connect it

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to places

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like the Elah Valley or the Wilderness of Zin or Mount Arbel in

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the Evangelical triangle. And just people to understand the

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reality of what's happening and these great things that God did for us.

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So that's one

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big part of this class is to get people into the setting in which it

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happened, so that then they might be able to teach it more effectively

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with greater impact. And that's the second half of the class, and that

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is trying to improve or deliver kind of a toolbox of 

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teaching skills that pastors can use in teaching the word. I sure appreciate what you said about how at the end of their life they often go there. 

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And what a great way for teachers of the word to start their Ministry by having this

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experience.

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How long does the class last and is there activity before or after?

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We meet on campus for two full days, to do an orientation of the land

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and some teaching methodologies and then we travel and then we spend a

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full two weeks or 15 days in the country and we go all the way down

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from the south of the Wilderness of Zin

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 all the way up to Mount Hermon on, on the Syrian border

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actually, we thoroughly cover the land. In places

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that are not typically gone to in order to get the kind of the

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context of the biblical story. The students whoa are blessed to go on this trip,

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always brag about you, they say, Pastor Zelt is wonderful.

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I'm wondering how did you get into this depth of knowledge about the

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Holy Land?

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Well, it is started really with two profs that, you know, well, that

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was Horace Hummel, and Erich Kiehl, and professors there at the

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Seminary, who really kind of whetted

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my appetite about that and then Dr.

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Hummel encouraged me to go study at The Institute of Holy Land Studies.

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Now the Jerusalem University college.

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So I did that and got a master's there.

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And that is just kind of been a passion all along in terms of

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teaching the word from its context and it's kind of been a

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lifelong hobby so to speak.

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And I've got the privilege of teaching at all the time with this role

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of the pastor where I serve and so it's just kind of been able a

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growing experience over a lifetime of of ministry.

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That's one of the reasons why Concordia Seminary was honored to name

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you

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The alumnus of the year in the last year, 2020's graduation.

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Let the old administrator come out in me.

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How is this course, funded?

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Yeah, that is always a challenge.

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Students are obviously always strapped for money because they're

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spending four years going to school here or adding it to their already

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busy schedule, if they're an SMP student. So it's really by donors who

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have stepped up and said will help them

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has happened for the most part.

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It has been people that have been donors of the inside of my circle

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in Prince of Peace out in Fremont, California.

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And we look forward to having donors just step up and say, we really

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think this is a great value to the students, and we want to support

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that. The cost is about $4.500 per student and the student

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only pays $1.000. So it's under written about $3.500 per student and

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we usually have between 15 and 20 students.

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So you know, it's somewhere between 50 and $70.000 every year to fund

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this class.

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You know our students who are blessed to go on this trip.

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Say it

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it will influence their Ministry for all the years that the Lord gives

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them.

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I want to thank you Tom, for being with us, this is inspiring.

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It's one of the reasons why Concordia Seminary is so energetic in this

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mission of our Lord, Jesus, our students get to go

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see where he walk, where he taught, where he died, rose again, and

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from where in heaven

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he pours his holy spirit on us. And this like so much in the mission of

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our Lord through Concordia Seminary happens.

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Thanks to Donors.