Theology Studies

Pastor Felix Meylahn

Director of Studies UELCSA
Stellenbosch

E.: fmeylahn@live.com
C.: +27 (0) 82 579 6381

Introducing our students 2025

The Interns

Hermann Düvel

– he has nearly completed the whole training (7 years) and is preparing to do the second theological exam in March 2025.

Hans-Christoph Lange

– after completing his studies in Stellenbosch he has been placed as an intern (Vikar) in the St. Martini Congregation in Cape Town.

Tristan Krüger

– after completing his studies in Stellenbosch was placed for a short time as an intern in the North Rand Congregation and then he was invited to complete the full internship program in Germany (Erfurt).

PJ Hanekom

– studied theology in Potchefstroom and then decided to join the Lutheran church and completed his MDiv in Stellenbosch and his first theological exam in 2024, after which he was placed as an intern in Durban.

The Students

Rutendo Gora

– has completed her Master of Divinity (2024) and is preparing for her first theological exam (March 2025) after which she will start with her internship

Bernhard Schiele

– is doing his fourth year of the Bachelor of Divinity degree here in Stellenbosch

Chundre Filippus

– has completed her second year of the BDiv in Stellenbosch and will be in her third year in 2025

Jeandre Rhodes

– a student from ELCSA has just completed his Bachelor of Theology Degree (2024) and is preparing to go to Germany to continue his studies there

Mia Peters

– joined us last year (2024) and did her first year BDiv – she will be entering her second year of studies for the BDiv course.

New Students

Erika Spangenberg

– from the North Rand congregation will also be doing her first year of studies this year.

Sven Voges

– hails from Kroondal and will be a first year student in Stellenbosch in the Bachelor of Divinity Course.

Students from elsewhere

Pascal Pienaar

– a church historian (PhD) who has joined our Lutheran congregation in Bloemfontein and there came to the decision to become a Lutheran theologian and pastor. She is preparing for her first theological exam after which she will start with her internship.

Wikus Opperman

– studied theology in Potchefstroom and came to the decision to become a Lutheran theologian – he is taking 2025 as a year of preparation for the first theological exam in 2026

Q & A

Since the future pastors of our church have started studying theology in Stellenbosch, and we have met more and more of them, the following comments have come up quite regularly in conversations: “How does one become a pastor in the Lutheran church? It seems to take quite long and include a very wide spectrum of subjects”. I want to give an answer in terms of information, but also as a way of encouraging people to consider this path if you find yourself drawn to ministry in the church. It is indeed a matter of being drawn – not just a rational career choice. In our traditional language we speak of someone being “called to the ministry”. Now this may be a deeply-felt conviction that God is calling you to be a servant of the Gospel. But it can also happen that there are others in the congregation or the wider faith community who see that you “have what it takes” to be a pastor, a shepherd of God’s flock. This usually happens when they see you being actively involved in the congregation. This “outer calling” is a legitimate reason for you to investigate further, what this might mean for your journey through life.

You will need to take the following steps:

  1. Have a conversation about this with your pastor. He or she will guide you in discerning more about this “call” or “vocation” and be able to give you ad- vice about the next steps. (Some time spent working in a congregation would help greatly in this discernment process.
  2. Together with your pastor make contact with the bishop of your church and make an appointment for an interview with him or her. Among other things, you will be required to do a set of psychometric tests. If your pastor and the bishop agree that you “have what it takes”, the process of enrolling at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Stellenbosch can go ahead, and you can request to become a candidate for the ministry of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (UELCSA). This includes the opportunity of applying for bursaries for your studies and you will be placed into the care of the Tutor/Director of Studies appointed by UELCSA to accompany all theology students and interns throughout their studies.
  3. The degree that you will register for is called a Bachelor of Divinity (a four-year course). This includes many different subjects – the ancient languages of Hebrew and Greek, church history, systematic theology, practical theology and a whole lot more that you will need in order to be able to work responsibly as a pastor in our church. Once you have done your Bachelor of Divinity, you will register for a Master of Divinity, which is a course-based Master’s degree that takes another year to complete.
  4. After these five years of academic studying, you can enrol for the First Theological Examination which includes both written and oral examination before the Examination Board of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa.
  5. If you pass the First Theological Examination and the Church Council of UELCSA discerns that you can be appointed as an Intern in a congregation of the one of the member churches, you will be sent to such a congregation for your internship (usually this takes approximately two years and can be done in two different congregations – one of these years can be done overseas).
  6. After your internship you enrol for the Second Theological Examination, which again includes written, practical and oral examinations by the Examination Board of the UELCSA. Once you have passed this exam, the Church Council of UELCSA can decide to ordain you into the office of the ministry and appoint you as Pastor Collaborator in a congregation of one of the member churches of UELCSA. You are a pastor now, but not eligible to be called by a congregation yet – you will still be working under the guidance of a pastor from a neighbouring congregation, until the church committee of that congregation and the Church Council of the member church in which you are serving agree that you can be declared eligible to be called (the Pastor Collaborator time can extend over one to four years).
  7. Once you have been declared eligible for a call, the congregation in which you have been serving can decide to call you and you can decide to accept that call, or you can also decline and seek to find another congregation in which to serve.

It is indeed a long process (at least seven years), in which you will need to buckle down and learn many things, but also grow in faith, courageously face doubts and questions about your faith, and perhaps even struggle with uncertainty about your calling. All of this is good – because you will be called to guide, comfort and support people who are also going through such questioning, doubting

and uncertainty about their lives. I have been using the phrase “have what it takes” with some hesitation, because it is not quite so simple to determine whether someone “has what it takes” to become a pastor. A faith community following Jesus of Nazareth should be quite critical of any kind of “measuring of human potential”. After all, have a look at the first disciples of Jesus. Did they “have what it takes”? No
modern “personnel manager” would have employed any one of them and if I look at their track record, I would agree that they were not suitable according to human standards. But God seems to work only with people who are not suitable – perhaps God cannot find any other ones. The Bible tells the long story of God’s faithfulness to faithless, failing, sinful and unsuitable humans. That is how
God gets the work of proclaiming Grace done. Ask yourself whether God might be calling you to be a proclaimer of Grace too.

Felix Meylahn

The above question and description of an answer has been my constant companion over the years of my life as pastor and, more recently, as director of studies for the Lutheran students of theology at the Faculty of Theology in Stellenbosch.

Now, we all are theologians — i.e. humans who talk about God: it’s a combination of the Greek words ‘theo’ (God) and ‘logos’ (word). We might not be speaking explicitly about the God of the Bible — but whenever we speak about the things that really matter to us, the things we need to live our lives, we are actually being theologians. Students who study theology, however, want to learn how to speak about the specific God of a faith community — in our case, the Christian faith community — and more specifically, as students of UELCSA, the Lutheran “tribe” of the Christian faith community. Luther once described the lifelong process of becoming a theologian as a life of prayer, mediation and spiritual trial (Gebet, Meditation und Anfechtung). We live in a relationship with God as Christians — listening to God’s word and responding in prayer, then we meditate on the Word, mull over it in our minds and hearts and try to connect it with life in this world, and this, if we listen carefully and honestly, will bring on what Luther called Anfechtung — spiritual trial or affliction — why?

The world in which we live and the lives we lead are troubled in so many ways that we question the truth of the Word, we begin to doubt the promises of God: Can it be true that God promises mercy, forgiveness, grace, justice and peace? The evidence we see contradicts these promises — and in despair or near hopelessness, we turn, not to our own strengths and powers of positive thinking, but back to prayer, listening again to God’s Word, crying out again to God against the evidence in audacity and courageous hope against the hopelessness around us and in us. This is a lifelong experience, and it equips us to speak graciously to those who despair, who want to give up, who do not see a way forward — and that, in a nutshell, is the task of being a pastor and theologian.

As “director of studies”, tutor and mentor of Lutheran students of theology, I spend my time guiding, prodding, helping students to become such theologians. I accompany them through their academic studies for a Bachelor of Divinity (4 years) and then a Master of Divinity (1-year structured master’s degree), and then also during their internship in congregations, where they work alongside another pastor, learning to put into practice what they have learnt (2 years internship).

Felix Meylahn

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Liturgy Explained

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Re Framed Lutheran

We use words like “liturgy”, “doctrine”, “denomination”, and so many more. But often people do not even know the meaning of frequently used Christian terminology.

The Reformation of 1517 and the theology of Martin Luther (and many more) are constantly reminding us to keep reforming! We must keep thinking, keep asking questions, keep conversing and keep reforming.

The Gospel message is one that will never change, and neither needs no change. Our contexts and culture however are ever-changing. The question that I often find myself asking is what kind of “frame” are we placing our message in?

The frame of an artwork serves the purpose of guiding the viewer toward the image.

Our words and actions “frame” the messages that we convey.

Let us be conscious of the frames that we use. Are they taking all the attention away from the image being portrayed, or are they guiding onlookers to see the beauty of what is being portrayed?

Let us keep reforming, let us keep reframing!

Why is the liturgy important?

What is the meaning of “Liturgy”

Is there such a thing as a service without a liturgy?

What advice would you offer people who are working on the liturgy?

Is our liturgy relevant for our time?

What does denomination mean?

Why do we need confessions?

What does it mean to be Lutheran?

What does it mean to be evangelical?