Faculty Spotlight - Getting to Know Pastor Andrew Weisner

The Rev. Dr. Andrew Weisner STS is a pastor of the North American Lutheran Church, serving as a long-term interim pastor at Antioch Lutheran Church in Dallas, North Carolina; director of the NALC Carolinas Mission Region’s McDaniel-Yoder Center for Theology, a continuing education center for clergy and laity; and an adjunct professor for the North American Lutheran Seminary (NALS). He graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne College with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy in 1979, and later returned to serve as the Dean of Campus Ministry from 1995–2020.

Pastor Weisner teaching during a June InterTerm class at the NALS Seminary Center.

Pastor Weisner’s academic formation in seminary, at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (LTS), was under the tutelage of Professors Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson in church history and theology. He earned both his Master of Divinity (1983) and his Master of Theology (1991) degrees from LTS. Later, through the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Pastor Weisner was a student of theologians Carl Braaten, Reinhard Hütter, and Fr. John Linnan as well as church historians Paul Rorem, Kurt Hendel, Bernard McGinn, and the Ukrainian Catholic historian Father Andriy Chirovsky. He earned his Ph.D. degree in church history in 2006.

Though his doctorate is in church history, Pastor Weisner has found himself teaching his passion, the theology and practices of Christian worship. He’s taught PT670: Theology and Practice of Worship for two semesters online at the NALS. Being a church historian and teaching on worship, he says, “I actually do teach church history, just specifically the history of sacramental theology. How we understand worship is rooted in our history.” He has been thrilled to teach at the NALS and says “the students at the NALS are top quality.”

When reflecting on vocation, the theme of the present issue of Word & Sacrament, he commented: “We all, through baptism, are called to one Christian vocation: love for neighbor and love for God. But I like to go even a little bigger than that. In an Athanasian kind of fashion, looking at the cosmos, we are all called to oneness with God. Our Christian vocation is that we are all called to oneness with God and unity with the Trinity.” It’s keeping that end in mind that centers Dr. Weisner’s pastoral and teaching ministries. For him and the entire NALS community, the end of all of our doctrines and practices is union with the one triune God.