Archives for March 27, 2019

The Bible Division invites graduating M.A. and M.Div. seniors to submit papers for the Milton Prize for outstanding work in Old Testament and the Bruce Prize for outstanding work in New Testament. These prizes will be awarded at commencement to the students submitting the best papers in the area of Old Testament and New Testament studies. The prizes include monetary awards and bragging rights.

The papers submitted may be course papers, independent study projects, or papers written for the contest. Papers should not exceed 6,000 words in length.

To submit an essay for consideration for the Milton Prize or the Bruce Prize, send it as an email attachment to the Chair of the Bible Division, Kathryn Schifferdecker (kschiffer@luthersem.edu) by Monday, April 22, 2019. For details on judging criteria, go to

• Milton Prize
• Bruce Prize

For more information, contact Prof. Kathryn Schifferdecker, kschiffer@luthersem.edu.

All are invited to this public event, where DMin Congregational Mission & Leadership students defend their theses. We will be in OCC 215 during the following times:

Wednesday, April 3
• • 8:30-10:00 AM – Douglas Dent, “Breathing with God: Inhaling God’s Spirit, Exhaling God’s Reign”
• 10:30-Noon – Andrew Barnett, “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow: Innovation, Evaluating, and Improving Worship to Participate in God’s Mission”
• 1:30-3:00 PM – Meghan Finn, “Practicing Community: Naming, Claiming, and Practicing the Holy Spirit’s Sending of a Congregation in the Midst of Change into an Open Future”
• 3:30-5:00 PM – Albert Triolo, “Unity and Diversity: How a Bilingual-Multicultural

Thursday, April 4
• 10:30-Noon – Ernest Kadiva, “Cultivating a missional Hermeneutic in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania for a Common Participation in the Mission of God”
• 1:30-3:00 PM – Douglas Peterson, “We Do Not Lose Heart: Missional Leadership in Dying Congregations”
• 3:30-5:00 PM – Neil Christians, “Leadership and Faith Formation in Youth Ministry: Explaining the Relationship Experiences and Faith Formation in Middle School Students”

Friday, April 5
• 8:30-10:30 AM – Mary Caucutt, “Practicing the Journey: Forming Missional Christian Leaders”

The Students Affairs Office is hosting an Internship Placement event from noon to 5 on Thursday April 4th. If you are planning on going on internship next year, come to eat and put your name on the big map of the regions when you find out where you are going. Join other students in NW 100.

Please fill out this form if you would like to attend or if you are going on internship next year and can’t attend (to sign up for a reminder email to send us your site or location so we can put you on the map).

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdQ2dblTObxhF6kOcdnOBesBI0bc77C-oTOCr2tkWgaSpXJXQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

On Monday night (3/25/19) several public web forms on luthersem.edu received several hundred submissions. This is not uncommon and typically is from an automated program (usually referred to as a bot). We identified the source of the program and have blocked it. We are working with our web contractor on options for protecting the public forms from this sort of automated submission.

In the meantime this looks to be mainly an exploratory scan looking for vulnerabilities or trying to overload our forms. No data was compromised, nothing was hacked. We employ our own scanning service to look for vulnerabilities in the website.

If your form received a barrage of submissions feel free to delete the emails it generated. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and are working on a solution to protect our public forms.