On Sunday night I learned that Dr. John Scheck died on Christmas Eve. Some of us had him as our beloved professor at Concordia University, Portland, Ore. He was my academic adviser, and I think I took every course he offered during those four undergraduate years (1980-1984), e.g., freshman humanities, several courses in American history, one on American thought and culture, and his introduction to philosophy. In addition to being a great teacher, he was an excellent preacher and musician. He wrote the lyrics for the school song. (A few decades later, he also composed a hymn for my son's baptism.)
John was among the shining stars that Dr. Thomas Coates, president of Concordia, Portland, brought to the school during his tenure (1946-1957). People called those faculty members "Tommy's boys." In addition to John, that illustrious group included Art Wahlers ("Mr. Concordia"), Don Lorenz, Dick Reinisch, Karl Keller, George Weller, Al Roth, and Hans Spalteholz.
When I started teaching at my alma mater, John helped to mentor me. (It took me a while to become comfortable using the first names of people who had been my esteemed professors just a few years earlier. They kept insisting that I was now their colleague, not merely their former student, and that I should thus call them by their Christian names, but every now and then I still referred to them as "Dr." or "Prof.") John graciously gave me many of his course notes and teaching aids, and he kindly took time to offer advice on how to deal with various higher-ed situations.
(When Martin Marty received an honorary degree from Concordia, John served as the M.C. at one of the accompanying events--Marty had been John's resident assistant [is the right term "dorm buck"?] at Concordia College, Milwaukee, Wis. Needless to say, that evening we learned some new things about Marty and about John that we hadn't known before. Indeed, I need to underscore that John is the one who introduced me to Marty's writings when I was an undergraduate. In one of John's classes, we used a Marty book on American religions as one of our texts. I don't think I would have gone to the U. of Chicago had it not been for that introduction to Marty and for the encouragement that John Scheck and Hans Spalteholz gave me to go to there.)
I got to know John's first wife because she was a librarian at Concordia. I have known John's second wife, Nan, my whole life. She, her first husband, and their family spent a lot of time with our family when I was growing up in Salem, Ore. (Nan, whose father was Rev. Amos Schmidt [who served at St. Michael's, Portland, and was at one time the LCMS' campus pastor at U.C.L.A., and who was also a close friend of my grandfather Emil], is the baptismal sponsor for my sister.) Nan and John were joyfully married for more than thirty years.
In so many ways, John represented the best that the Missouri Synod produced among its clergy in the twentieth century. Today, more than one of my former classmates has commented that Dr. Scheck helped them to know what the gospel is and how to preach it effectively. Many of us are remembering sermons he preached in Concordia's Chapel of the Upper Room and at St. Michael's. His wry humor always helped to bring a little spice to the message he shared.
John was a gentleman and a scholar. He was a kind man--and a forgiving grader of freshmen term papers (!). Always prepared to offer a quick and witty reply to an offhand comment by one of his conversation partners, John modeled the kind of Christian humanism he hoped his students would embrace, one that would resist the inroads of Protestant fundamentalism in the church body that he served, but also one that would maintain the essential, mandatory content of the classic Christian faith. Needless to say, his relationship to the Missouri Synod was always tenuous, especially after 1969, and he wasn't too surprised when some of his former students were eventually pushed out of the LCMS. (His funeral will be taking place at the main ELCA church in Salem.)
I will always be grateful for all that Dr. Scheck taught me, and for how he did that teaching and preaching. I am so grateful for the mentoring he later provided. I wouldn't be where I am today were it not for him and his example.
Here is a link to his obituary:
https://www.dignitymemorial.
Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints. May John rest in the peace of the Lord, and may the Lord's light shine perpetually upon him.
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