Dear Delegates to the Atlantic District Convention:
Greetings from Concordia University, St. Paul, where we celebrate that Jesus Christ is the one who holds all things together as we live, learn, and serve God’s church together as a university (Colossians 1:16-17).
As a university of the LCMS, Jesus Christ is at the center of all we do at CSP. Our Lutheran identity guides our work and empowers us to see students as loved by God in Christ and uniquely gifted to live out their vocations.
We are thrilled to prepare workers for our LCMS churches and schools. Counting traditional undergraduate and colloquy students, church work enrollment this past fall surpassed the 100-student mark for the first time since 2012.
Our Church Work Tuition Guarantee makes CSP an attractive option for students who feel called by God into full-time ministries. Churchwork students pay a maximum of $6,000 in tuition each academic year, while pre- pastoral and pre-deaconess students pay $0 in tuition each year. This is possible due to generous donors and prioritizing our financial resources to benefit a new generation of workers for the church.
In addition to a growing population of church work students, our fall 2024 census increased to a record 5,928 students, including a record 2,066 traditional undergraduate students. We are the second-largest among private universities in Minnesota and Lutheran universities nationwide.
Concordia St. Paul offers more than 100 academic programs, from associate to doctoral degrees. We serve students on our St. Paul campus, at a nursing site in Portland, Oregon, at a brand new location in Denver, Colorado, and online worldwide.
As the people of God gathered together here for the Atlantic District convention, I invite you to recommend CSP and our to students of all ages, regardless of the degrees God calls them to pursue. Even more importantly, I ask that you pray that we would be grounded in the Good News of Jesus and faithful in all our endeavors as universities of the LCMS.
As you gather under the theme “In This Hope We Were Saved,” may the God who saves bring you wisdom and discernment as you worship, pray, listen, and conduct the business of the Atlantic District together. May He bless each congregation, school, and church worker as I was blessed during my Martin Luther High School service nearly 40 years ago. It is a joy to walk together as parishes, institutions, and individual members of the body of
Christ and bring the hope of the Risen One to a dying world.
In Christ,
Brian L. Friedrich, MDiv, PhD
President
