Rev. Craig Wehmeyer, Associate Pastor at Immanuel, Washington, notes that for him the pastoral calling came over time while growing up and feeling convicted while in college. “When I was younger, my parents were very involved in the church,” notes Wehmeyer. “I grew up in a tiny church, and a lot of members encouraged me to consider going to be a pastor. And in school, teachers pushed me about pursuing that.” Rev. Wehmeyer is originally from Missouri, having grown up attending Grace Lutheran in Holts Summit. Rev. Wehmeyer was very involved in his campus ministry in college, and it was there that he realized being a pastor was something that he “felt at peace [with] and knew it was what I needed to do.”

Considering becoming a pastor? Rev. Wehmeyer notes, “In one of my last seminary classes before graduation, I was assigned to read Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oration 2. Gregory makes clear that the pastoral office is a sacred office. The task before the pastor is more challenging even than that of an ordinary physician, for we are entrusted by God to be a physician of souls. Caring for the soul is ‘more laborious and of more consequence’ because it ‘comes from God and is divine, and partakes of the heavenly nobility.’”

Wehmeyer continues, “While holding such an office is of great challenge and consequence it is more importantly one that is filled with the beauty of Christ. Gregory writes:

...the scope of our art is to provide the soul with wings, to rescue it from the world and give it to God, and to watch over that which is in His image, if it abides, to take it by the hand, if it is in danger, or restore it, if ruined, to make Christ to dwell in the heart by the Spirit...

I daresay nothing brings me greater joy within this office than to be the vehicle through which Christ brings healings to souls.”