Message from the President

Before you, on your screen, or in your hands, is a portal to the world.

Sounds a bit like overselling. How can an academic catalog be a portal to the world?

Look beyond the various requirements for completing your degree (as important as it is to arrive at graduation day with every requirement checked off). See past the specific details of each class and what it teaches (as much as each class’s content is another glimpse of the wisdom of a good and gracious God and of the world and people he created).

As you digitally scroll or physically page through this catalog, see opening before you the world the degree programs and courses at Martin Luther College prepare you to serve. Waiting for you in every one of your courses – in ways beyond which even your professors may fully be able to describe – is a world desperately in need of the hope you are being prepared to bring in Jesus’ name.

So, behind all this catalog’s details, see faces that belong to immortal souls redeemed by Jesus. Imagine that student’s face who will one day sit before you in a classroom. Her family seems to be falling apart, but your face, smiling with Jesus’ love, is a tangible glimpse for her of the rock of Christ in that storm. Picture that unchurched prospect’s face you will meet at your favorite coffee shop. Suddenly your casual conversation turns into an opportunity to speak to his heart about matters eternal. Do you see the weeping family member’s face who has just suffered the death of a believing spouse? As you weep with her, you help her find hope in the One in whose magnificent presence all tears are forever dried.

That is the world God longs for you to touch with his grace. Through every degree program and in every course in this catalog, God is assembling another piece of wisdom into your life to relate to the immortal souls who populate his world. What may seem at times disjointed or unrelated to us, is never so to your Savior. Remember, “all things were created by him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). Every bit of true knowledge and wisdom in this world serves Jesus’ purpose.

So, whether the course is The Ancient Near East or Administration of Early Childhood Education, whether it’s Biology or Biblical History and Literature, whether it’s Calculus or Chemistry, God will use each building block in your unique program path through MLC for your good and the good of those in that world he is using and will use you to serve. In each course, in ways you can see and in ways you cannot, he is lovingly molding you into his unique servant for the world he loves.

So, peruse this catalog carefully! It is indeed a portal to the world! Through what this catalog lays before you, your Savior is equipping you as a Christian witness to his world.

In him,

Rich Gurgel President, Martin Luther College

2 Message from the President | 2021-22 Undergraduate Catalog