8. Interview with Fred Fritz (Part 1)

12/1, 9a
Conference Room
Dawn led, Randy helped, Amy took notes

Our questions for Fred, which we brainstormed during our processing the night before:
His passions:
History
5 statistics
worship attendance
describe activities
how many seminarians - why is that in your brochure.
What's the next big thing - your vision for ministry, future goals?
What's the pattern of ministry here for you?

We introduced ourselves to Fred.

FF: You're from Ohio - how did you get here?

Attended Ohio State majored in agricultural economics. Did some discernment while managing an elevator one summer, and decided I wanted to go into ministry. Transferred to Capitol for my senior year and graduated, went to Trinity, thought I would be a rural pastor. However, I got interested in youth ministry as a part of my contextual education site in suburbia. I volunteered at that church for a second year after my required year, took kids on retreats, national youth gathering… the pastor there said he thought I had a gift for suburban ministry. My internship was unique - two congregations had gotten funding to share an intern - 2 cong, 20 miles apart, 2 supervising pastors, I was responsible for 7th grade confirmation and evangelism calling. I did 500 home visits, but got chastised for not doing enough calling! I preached 2 times a month, was at the regional trauma center one night a month, at a county mental health center one day a month. I survived and went back to seminary and Jim Berquist asked me to be his assistant. I loaded up on missiology classes. The national church approached my wife and I and asked if we would go to Senegal. We got ready, went up to do the interview at NW Career Counseling and we're eating dinner and they were talking about a 25 year commitment. 2 years of language study - 1 year of French, another year of 2 local dialects. Kay was shocked - she's an only child, older parents. They said, "Why don't you think about it for a couple hours?" So we did. Came back and said, "hmmm…." And they said how about Middle East? So I went back to school and studied Islamics, they wanted me to go to Egypt and do doctoral studies and then work in the Middle East for the rest of my career. It's 1979-80 the big glut year - more candidates than positions. The division of missions decided to put the ME on hold, so they told me to get an assignment - and it was already ½ way through the draft. I ended up assigned to Canada and then world missions as a back up. Then Brazil… we finally wanted to be assigned to a district and got Eastern ND. Got into a congregation outside an airbase that started 16 years before as a mission start, and in that 16 years they'd had 3000 baptized members go through. Town was founded by Presbyterians - before the town was founded there was a Masonic Lodge. When they built the Lutheran church it was for the airbase. Church had decreased from 620 members to 220. When we arrived I did visitation 3 nights a week. When I left four years later we were at 350, I had done 160 affirmations of baptisms, 100 infant baptisms, 5 or 6 adult baptisms. Only 2 funerals. When I left we were at 60% worship attendance - highest in the synod. I learned how to make due with not a lot - got creative - paid off the mortgage, took care of the building… Then I was at a crossroads - our son was born with special needs and we were looking at a 45 minute bus ride for him to go to preschool. I got a call to campus ministry in Spokane - worked out of 4 congregations, served 6 campuses - Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA, 2 community colleges, Gonzaga, Whitworth, and UW-Spokane. I had 2000 kids on a mailing list, a part time secretary and responsibility for raising 60% of my budget. We worshipped 60-70 on a weekend and were second in attendance on the west coast after PLU. I served ALC, LCA and the LCMS. After 5 years, I had confirmed or baptized ½ of the core group of students.

But we were isolated from family - they were in Ohio, so we said let's try to get back to the Midwest. This position was open - the Lutheran ministry rented a room in this house at the time. It was appealing because it was one place, a solo call, and a development job. I accepted the call and came in 1988.

FF: So you thrive in non-traditional ministries?

That's one reason I've never filled out mobility papers. I'm so used to being entrepreneurial. Getting into a parish where 90% of your schedule is prescribed by the calendar - that's scares me.

I get to do a lot of different things here, which is fun. I got to contractor for the building, one-on-one counseling, worship planning, and now I've made connections and teach on campus. I took my one and only sabbatical and went to Good Earth as the camp pastor/maintenance guy - I really enjoyed myself, until a hornets nest fell on my head and after I got out of the hospital my wife wouldn't let me go back. I was at home doing some work when the head of the education dept approached me and asked me to teach some education classes. Then I took a .75 appointment and taught classes. My first year the student senate voted me teacher of the year. The next year my faculty colleagues elected me chair of the educational foundations dept. Last year the College of Education filled the position for full time, and I was a finalist but I withdrew my name because it would have been hard for me to leave ordained ministry and hard for whoever followed me here, as well. I continue to be adjunct, and teach exploring and applying values, plus 2 freshman orientation courses. Now I'm teaching Ethics in Society up at the technical college - and the instructional dean wants help developing their humanities program. I'm also on staff at St Mary's recruiting doctoral students - and getting my EdD in leadership.

FF: How has your teaching changed the ministry here?

When I first came I volunteer coached so my connection was through athletics. I ran the weight room, coached different teams (baseball), worked with the women's swim team. So that was my way of meeting people. My good friend who is the baseball coach leads FCA - I've done Bible study for them and for Campus Crusade. Here we've tried to avoid tension between the programs because kids are searching. Some of the things they do at Campus Crusade and Intervarsity I can't do. But we are sacramental. We do Sunday morning worship, we do vocational discernment, we do Bible Study, we do one-on-one counseling. So they go to these other places for the rah-rah stuff, and come here for worship and one-on-one time. That's our niche and I'm comfortable with that. This is a pretty active ministry campus - Chi Alpha has a core group of 30 , FCA 100 kids, CC (leader comes here for worship on Sunday mornings- because CC is fun, but this is church. I need them both.) Jen Kruger was one of my interns who went up to Luther. She did FCA and said that's where my friends are, but LCM (Crossroads) is where I learned to do ministry.

FF: What does it mean to be in leadership here?

Right now we have a deficit of student leadership here, that's been a tough nut for me to crack. Many students want to be a part of but not lead. Also, I can do a lot of things and so students know I'll pick up and do things if they let the ball drop. Over my tenure in campus ministry I have had great leadership where the students come up with things, plan it and do it. In 1994 I had 5 students who went from here up to Luther - that was an amazing group. I just got out of their way. I had some pretty good leadership until about 2 yeas ago. I graduated 20 core seniors two years ago and things haven't picked up since. I have this group of core first year students that seem pretty engaged, and so I'm hoping they'll become leaders. We get 2000 new students a year and they all live on campus. But we lost 1/5 of freshman after the first year. Those who are left move off campus. 80% of the students here come from somewhere within 100 miles of here, so they go home for weekends - jobs, boyfriends, etc. Some of those kids come for Bible study during the week and then are teaching Sunday school at home on the weekends. Our strength is that we are a Sunday morning worshipping community, and that's our weakness. 35-45 Sunday morning, 5-10 on Sunday eve. It will start picking up now that the weather is getting bad - students stick around for weekends.

FF: What are your dreams for the future?

I wrote a grant and got $2700 to get us started in the Alpha program. So we'll give it a shot. We have enough money to buy materials for 100 people, I'm going to ask the students to commit $10 to get them to commit. I'm going to try it for a couple years and see what happens - hoping to spin off small groups and study leaders from it.

FF: You have community people that worship here?

Continue to Part 2