The Saint Timothy Society welcomes guidance, suggestions, and other helpful input from our donors, supporters, friends, and other members of the public sympathetic to our doctrinal position and goals. Below is a web version of our letter to donors from 2022 JAN 03. The .pdf version is available at http://tiny.cc/2021-June-Donor.
June 10, 2021
The Board of Directors
The Saint Timothy Society For Lutheran Seminary Scholarship
Dear Friends, Supporters and Donors,
We’re writing to you for two purposes. The first is to thank you, once again, for your gracious and
generous gifts of time, talent and treasure in support of Lutheran Seminary Scholarship overseas
and in North America. We’re being repetitive, of course, but repetition, in this case, is not
necessarily useless or boring. For those who embrace the doctrine and practice of the Scriptures,
the Augsburg Confession and the Book of Concord, repetition is not only the “mother of learning”,
but also a vital part of the school of prayer and gratitude. The students in this school are those
whom Christ has made part of His Heavenly Kingdom by the gift of faith through the Word and the
Sacraments, and in this school we repeat and speak back to God what He has first given and told to
us. So we’re not just repetitive, but also circular, and not very original or inventive in this regard.
We leave those last two to others; we’ll stick with what we’ve been told.
Our second purpose is to keep all of you informed about the projects and efforts you make possible
with your gifts and your prayers. By the end of this year the major effort which was our initial
impetus to organize in 2007 has reached a phase where our direct involvement will end. The work
itself is being continued by other organizations and agencies. As Rev. Thomas Aadland announced
some months ago in his newsletter to supporters, his residency at the Lutheran College in
Matongo, Kenya, has concluded in May. He will complete his duties for the Lutheran College and
finish his service for this project here in the United States, and may be called upon to return to
Africa this year. The Saint Timothy Society may still serve in some limited capacity for his future
work, but others will be more directly involved.
We would encourage all of you who have been so generous in your donations for Tom’s work to
continue to give to other agencies such as Mission Central in Iowa and to the Office of
International Missions of the LCMS in Saint Louis. The Saint Timothy Society would, of course, be
delighted to continue to receive your donations for our other efforts, such as bringing seminary
students from overseas to the seminaries in the United States, and sending professors to Lutheran
seminaries abroad. The donations we receive going forward will be used for those projects. For
those of you who wish to continue your support for a visiting professor at the Lutheran seminary
in Matongo, Kenya, we encourage you to contact the organizations listed above and discuss with
them what you are willing to support. Our expectation is that they would warmly welcome your
ideas and be very willing to guarantee that your donations are used as you expect. Our experience
has been that church and grant organizations benefit immensely when their donors require
greater clarity and precision. It is also true that churches have seen grave financial challenges as
“restricted gifts” increase and “general fund” contributions decrease. While these two terms may
be an over simplification of a complex topic, our approach favors the former. Other organizations
and churches will have very good reasons to favor the latter, which they should be glad to share
with you.
Prof. Aadland would be very pleased to contact you personally, and he may already have contacted
or written to you with more information and suggestions for projects for your future support. We
would urge you to give his suggestions your full consideration, and, hopefully, your enthusiastic
support. In the 14 years of his association with the Saint Timothy Society he has demonstrated a
superb and effective combination of traits that are not easily found. His background and
experience were also extremely rare, serving prior to this time as the Presiding Pastor of The
American Association of Lutheran Churches, and for almost two decades before that as a parish
pastor in Duluth, Minnesota. His faithfulness to the Word of God and the Confessions has been
evident in his teaching and writing. His concern and care for the seminarians at Matongo has
been extraordinary, so much so that he has been able to raise money and support for their medical
treatment under some very dire circumstances. While only Our Lord will be able to make the final
pronouncement on us all, what we have seen of Prof. Aadland brings to mind those words from
Matthew 25:21, “Well done thou good and faithful servant”.
As noted above, the work itself is not over, and we by the grace and will of God, will continue to
serve out our vocations and ordinations in the ways that He has appointed and given to each of us.
The Saint Timothy Society will continue to go about its work. We would be delighted to hear from
you and your ideas for new projects, grants and requests for proposals. While we will no longer be
receiving your donations for this particular project, we have, and will have, others that we hope
will be worthy of your support. We encourage you to examine our list of projects found on our
web page at http://tiny.cc/STS-Projects. Please let us know what you think of these, and we would
be delighted to receive your suggestions, comments, and correction should you find something
amiss or in error. Please also note that a .pdf version of this letter can be found at
http://tiny.cc/2021-June-Donor.
Sincerely,
The Board of Directors
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