Otto Charles Hintze

1. 3/22/1923, El Paso, TX USA; m. June 27, 1948 to Vera Jeannelle (Jill) Ruth Karcher

 

Spouse/Family

Wife: Vera Jeannelle (Jill) Ruth (nee Karcher) Hintze

1. 5/26/1927, Vernon, TX USA; m. June 27, 1948

Children: Kathryn Jeanne (Prange); David John; Margaret Ann (Frank); Charles Ernest;

Nathan Gary (died at birth); Kenneth Michael

 

Dates of Service Field Call Assignment

1948-1965 Papua New Guinea Evangelistic Missionary and

Language Teacher

1976-1978 LCMS World Mission Secretary, World Areas

1978-1988 LCMS World Mission Area Secretary, Latin America

 

Biographical Summary

Both Otto and Jill Hintze were born and grew up in Texas.  Otto first attended Texas (University) College of Mines and Metallurgy in El Paso, where he studied electrical engineering for three full semesters.  However, inspired by a professor of organic chemistry to do some serious thinking about vocation and faith, he left his engineering studies and began studying for the ministry at St. John’s College in Winfield, Kansas.  He matriculated to Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO and graduated with a B.D. degree on June 6, 1947.  He remained at Concordia for a Master of Sacred Theology degree, conferred on June 4, 1948.  Although Otto had studied some Arabic and Sign Language and had learned Spanish and become acquainted with Mexican  culture during seminary summer field work, thinking that he might serve in Hispanic ministry, he was instead called to serve as an evangelistic missionary in Papua New Guinea.  Otto and Jill were married on June 27, 1948.  Otto left for Papua New Guinea in September of that year.  Jill, stayed behind until their first child, Kathryn, was born, and joined him in July 1949.

 

At this time, part of Papua New Guinea had just been opened for mission work, although missionaries from the U.S. and Australia had worked previously in the coastal areas.  In 1947, the highland interior was opened for mission work the second time, after the murder of two Roman Catholic priests had been settled.  The American Lutheran Church (ALC), which had taken over the administration of all of the work of the Lutheran Neuendettelsau and Rhenish Mission Societies of Germany after their work had been orphaned by the Second World War, wanted to extend the mission work west from their Mt. Hagen stations in the interior to the Enga people of the Lai River Valley.  They were short of missionaries, in part because some had been killed by the Japanese invaders. So they asked the Australian Lutheran Church, which had mission work on and off the coast of Papua New Guinea, for help with missionaries.  However, having also lost missionaries to the Japanese, this church could not comply. Consequently, the ALC asked for help from their partners, the LCMS, who called seminary graduates Willard Burce and Otto Hintze and sent them to the Enga people.   When these first two LCMS missionaries flew into Wabag in Enga territory on Novermber 2, l948, they were met by Rev. A. P. Harold Freund and Mr. Armin Kleinig of the Australian Lutheran Church mission from the Siassi Islands, who had established the joint mission station with the LCMS at Yaramanda in August of 1948.  Subsequently, the mission effort called New Guinea Lutheran Mission-Missouri Synod was aided greatly through supply centers and Papua New Guinea evangelist-teachers.  (Eventually, in 1950, the Australians began new mission work of their own among the Kukakuka tribesmen at Menyamya, leaving the LCMS to evangelize the Engas.)   The Hintzes remained at Yaramanda ,the center of about 25,000 people, to begin their work.  They learned the spoken language of the Enga people and helped reduce it to written form.  They also learned to communicate in Pidgin English, which was the lingua franca for many different tribal peoples on the island.  They served as evangelists and church-planters, traveling around the Enga region to spread the Gospel.  Because the ALC mission lent Papua New Guinea evangelist-teachers to the Missouri Synod mission, Otto was able to establish Christian Day Schools in many areas around Yaramanda at a very early stage in the  work.  The first school opened at Yaramanda early in 1949.  Having evangelist-teachers living and proclaiming and teaching the Gospel, in addition to the missionaries, was a great help in planting the Church.

 

While serving as a missionary evangelist, Otto strove to learn the Enga language well, and he was able to preach in the language after about three years in Papua New Guinea.  Jill notes that, having arrived at such a strange place so far from home, she spent much of her first few days  “watching people through cracks in the split cane walls” of the guest house at Irelya, the second  mission station the Burces established on the road near Wabag 25 mile east of Yaramanda.  Nevertheless, she learned to converse in the Enga language and spent much of her time working with the women of the various tribes in the area, teaching personal care, care of children, sewing, knitting, and in particular Bible stories, the Gospel and spreading the Good News.  This was all done while raising the Hintzes’ children, of whom two were born before their first furlough, David, in 1951, and Margaret, in 1954.

 

The mission of the Hintzes was truly a holistic one: in addition to work directed toward evangelism and church-planting, they served as a first aid team for basic injuries, illnesses, and even births; helped people of the area to set up stores for basic needs and to learn to trade with money; introduced new foods and coffee; did educational work of all kinds; taught them stewardship; and generally served to assist the Enga people to better their lives in a self-sufficient way.

 

Though one man named Paki had been baptized shortly before his death, the first group baptism of the Enga people took place on June 9, 1957 – eight years and eight months after Otto arrived at Yaramanda.  In order to attend the catechumen classes regularly for the duration of the instruction, many of the Enga catechumens built temporary housing close to the Yaramanda station, some staying for six years or so. It was important for the mission to be certain that the people, who had never conceived of a living God who created heaven and earth and who forgives human sin through the death of His Son, were thoroughly instructed in the Scriptures and the catechism before baptism.  Moreover, group baptism helped the new Enga Christians to support each other in the Faith.  As congregations formed, missionaries found it extremely important to train and develop lay leadership so that worship and the spreading of the Gospel could continue.  Each congregation would select pastors, who would be trained by missionaries and would also study periodically at the church-workers’ school at Birip.

 

It was very clear from the beginning of work among the Enga that linguistic work was a crucial part of evangelism.  The Enga language was not a written language, and the concepts used needed to be understood and compared to the English of the missionaries and the Greek and Hebrew of the Bible so that the Gospel and Scriptural stories could be accurately taught in the Enga language.  Otto and the early NGLM staff found the textbook Phonemics: A Technique for Reducing Languages to Writing by Kenneth Pike, sent to them by a seminary classmate, invaluable for transposing the spoken language of the Enga people into writing.  Once the spoken Enga language was transcribed into writing, Otto worked on translations of the Ten Commandments, the catechism, and other important Scriptures into the Layapo Enga.  Eventually, he translated all the Bible stories that were taught to the Enga catechumens before baptism, as well as every Sunday Bible pericope of the liturgical church year.  At one stage of the translation work, when it was discovered that Enga was a tone language, Jill painstakingly typed on stencils for duplicating the tone marks on each word of the Enga that her husband translated.  Fortunately such marking was later deemed too cumbersome and unsightly to write down.  While the Hintzes spent much of their first furlough (1955-56) traveling and speaking about their mission work, Otto spent a few weeks of the first part of it in Hollywood with Dr. Hernan Gockel helping as technical advisor for the LCMS full length film The Unfinished Task, and also studied at Concordia Seminary during the fall quarter 1955.   During the summer of l956 he and the family lived in Norman, Oklahoma where on the University of Oklahoma campus he studied at the Summer Institute of Linguistics.  As his final project for the course of study, he wrote a grammar of the Enga Language.

 

Adding to their family, the Hintzes had three children after they returned from furlough in 1956.  Their son Charles was born in 1957; in 1959, their son Nathan was born but died shortly after his birth; and another son, Kenneth, was born in 1963.  Kathryn, David, Margaret and Charles all attended boarding school at Amapyaka during their time in Papua New Guinea, returning to their parents’ home only on weekends.  Since the Hintzes left for furlough in l965 and remained in the United States, Kenneth was the only one who did not attend Highland Lutheran School.  Using Queensland Australian materials, Jill home-schooled Kathryn, David and Margaret before they went off to HLS.

 

In 1961, just after the Hintzes returned from their second furlough, all 68 of the Enga congregations started by the Hintzes and other missionaries up to that time joined to form the Wabag Lutheran Church, now called the Good News Lutheran Church, setting the stage for greater self-sufficiency, though complete self-sufficiency has not yet been achieved.  At about the same time, the Lutheran seminary at Birip was developing and the LCMS missionaries began helping the Wabag Lutheran Church to express its doctrinal identity in a statement of faith.

 

The Hintzes moved to Irelya in 1963, when Otto was assigned as language teacher for  missionaries learning the Enga language.  For over two years he taught a total of 70 staff members.  To assist in this teaching, Otto also developed a textbook Mai Enga Conversational Pedagogical Grammar and its companion Workbook and co-authored an Abridged Enga-English Dictionary for the conversational pedagogical grammar.  Later he would write A Phonemic Statement of Mai Enga, which was published by the Journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea, 1975.  The family went on furlough in 1965.  Though they intended to return to Papua New Guinea, Otto was asked to serve as Professor of Missions in the newly established John Behnken Chair of Missions at Concordia Theological Seminary in Springfield, Illinois.  After a month of consideration in prayer, the Hintzes decided to remain in the United States so that Otto could serve in this new calling.  Otto’s professorship lasted from 1966 until 1976, when he was called to join the LCMS World Missions staff as World Areas Secretary.  After serving in that position for two years and another ten years as Latin America Secretary, he retired in 1988.  However, he  continued to serve ten years first as minister of inreach and outreach at Ascension Lutheran Church in St. Louis, and then from 1999-2007 as chaplain at the LCMS International Center of the LCMS.  In retirement, the Hintzes continue to live in St. Louis.  They returned to Papua New Guinea in 2006 for a month-long visit to edify and encourage the church. They found themselves encouraged also by the church.

 

Nota Bene

Otto’s work included transcribing the spoken Layapo Enga language into a written language and producing literacy helps. He then translated an entire series of Bible Stories from Genesis to The Acts of the Apostles, Luther’s Small Catechism,  a liturgical order of service, one entire series of Sunday service Scripture readings from the New Testament and some books of the New Testament,

 

Author of A Discussion Concerning Prerequisites for Christian Adult Baptism Among the Enga People and Adiaphora Connected With Its Administration, 1955-56,  and  An Introductory Grammar of the Enga Language in the Mai and Layapo Dialects, 1962, and textbook Mai Enga Conversational Pedagogical Grammar, and companions Learning to Speak the Enga Language in the Mai and Layapo Dialects Workbook,1963 and the co-compiled Abridged Enga-English Dictionary for the Enga Conversational Pedagogical Grammar, 1964. 

 

Later he authored  A Historico-Cultural Analysis of the Layapo Enga Religion and Its Contact With Modernity, 1967 for Professor J. Kitagawa’s class on Modernity and World Religions at the University of Chigago, and A Phonemic Statement of Mai Enga  which was  published in Kivung: Journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea, v. 8 no. 2, Dec. 1975.   

Phase 2 Information

Biggest missiological issue faced?

The most challenging issue the Hintzes faced during their service was that of building up an indigenous self-supporting church in Papua New Guinea, using the cultural resources and means of the people. The mission was not sufficiently persistent from the beginning on through the years in training the church with tough love and an eye on the future  to trust God and accept and carry out the responsibility of supporting the Lord’s many-faceted work themselves and, when necessary, how to work in partnership with the church to achieve the goals and projects that required both partners to work in interdependent complementarity.  Later, as the church developed, it also became evident that the transition to an indigenous church by the removal of missionaries likely happened too quickly and radically. The Good News Lutheran Church has lingering feelings of abandonment.  Ideally, more missionaries would have been left as partners in strategic positions to help train more and more theologically sound pastors, teachers and leaders, men and women full of the Spirit, doing God’s work His way, and training others likewise.

Most significant contribution during missionary service?

The Hintzes first give all glory to God for using them in service to the Gospel.  They feel blessed that along with other missionaries, they were able to evangelize so many people who were baptized and continue in the Faith in significant numbers,   There are now close to 140,000 Lutheran Christians in the Good News Lutheran Church, men, women and children.  The Hintzes also praise God for His help in doing the Enga Language work and translation of His Word, which has been a mighty,  indispensable innovation through which God has brought about the above-mentioned number of  Christians.

 

Connection to today’s mission?

The LCMS retains ties as a partner church to the Good News Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea through its Board for Mission Services, the International Lutheran Conference and in various other ways, including through the Papua New Guinea Mission Society, a Recognized Service Organization.  This organization sponsored the Hintzes’ trip to Papua New Guinea in 2006, in order to edify and encourage members of the Good News Lutheran Church in and around Yaramanda and other Layapo areas.  A Lutheran university is now being established in Lae on the campus of Martin Lutheran Seminary.  Two graduates from the seminary in Lae have taken graduate courses at our Lutheran seminaries in St. Louis and Ft. Wayne, and a third is likely to study for a Master of Theology degree at the seminary in St. Louis in a year or two.

 

Lessons Learned

• “It is God’s mission.”  The Hintzes note that it took over eight years, almost nine, for the first group baptism to take place in the Yaramanda region.   They learned in Papua New Guinea that the Spirit works within His own time framework, not in ours, to create saving faith and Christians with a living faith.
• Once churches have been established on a mission field, missionaries should not leave or be called from the field too quickly.  For obvious reasons capable partner missionaries will be needed to stay and assist the newly established church, especially in training new pastors, teachers, evangelists, administrators and other Christian leaders.
• All Christian people have been endued with gifts from God which He intends for them to use to plant and water His Church in the world.  Both the mission and the churches are to be aware of these gifts and use them complimentarily to assist one another in their common cause, God’s mission.
• Independence and complementary interdependent partnership to achieve the mission of God should be a key goal of planting God’s Church in any ethnic group of people anywhere in the world.

 

Best Practices

• Sharing the Gospel with people in their own language or dialect.
• Training Christian lay people to evangelize and perform Christian works of ministry to their fellowmen.  In the Yaramanda area some of the young men who were still catechumens would teach other catechumens what they had learned and would travel to outstations to teach and help people in the Christian Way and Truth and Life.  It became clear that the Holy Spirit must be trusted to bless the witness and work of lay people also and bring it to fruition.  The Gospel is spread more rapidly when the laity is moved by the Holy Spirit to action.
• A Bible-story approach is most helpful for evangelism; Scripture is better understood when people can learn from God working in the lives and deeds of other people.
• As Jesus did, the holistic approach to mission work is indispensable.  People need to know that they are cared for in all aspects of life, and that faith in Jesus is the foundation for real life.  Examples of this approach from Papua New Guinea are those of schools and medical work, in particular.  Through these God was able to show Enga that another Power was present and active which surpassed that of their ancestral spirits, and which worked to turn them from their futile and evil life to true life in God.
• Treating all kinds of people in various stages and states and conditions of life, of the same tribe or of perennial enemies, as creations of God who deserve not hatred and murder but unconditional love and care as God manifests.
• Convincing by God’s Word and Christian modeling that prevalent sexual sins, murder, idolatry, dishonesty, stealing, lying, hatred, and fear are wrong and need to be renounced in order to live in agape love the Christian life.

 

Phase 3 Information

Inspiration for entering foreign missions?

When Otto was growing up in Texas, he saw how his father valued and treated with respect the Mexican people among whom he had lived from childhood and with whom he worked on the job as a steel fabricator.   This was one of the things the Holy Spirit used to inspire Otto to consider how he could bring the Gospel to Spanish-speaking people.  At St. John’s prep school he roomed with two men who were interested in mission work among Hispanic people.  That became an additional encouragement to consider mission work among Hispanics abroad.   After he enrolled in seminary, God used 1) a student mission society, 2) inspiring missionary speakers, 3) spending extracurricular time to learn about other cultures and their languages, 4) doing summer field work among the Mexican people in the lower Rio Grande River valley, to keep the fire burning for foreign missions.  He was therefore quite ready to accept a call to mission work abroad, even though the call sent him where he had not expected to go!

 

Jill reports that she first became interested in missions as a young girl, when missionaries from India came to speak at her church.  In addition to their stories, the Lord used the familiar mission hymn “Hark, The Voice of Jesus Calling” with its refrain “Here am I, send me, send me” to inspire her to answer in her mind “well, here am I send me!”– and later Jesus did send her to Papua New Guinea with her husband.

 

Quotation by/about or brief story:

• During their work, the Hintzes saw evidences how the Gospel transcended tribalism, even ingrained tribal hatred, between different groups.  People who had been at war for decades and would kill their enemy on sight could sit in church and congregational meetings together without hatred or fear.  The Yaramanda church was also careful to choose pastors from the different tribes that made up the congregation, in order to facilitate harmony in the church.
• The story of Paki, the first catechumen from the Yaramanda region to be baptized, is the story of a sorcerer of “white magic” who was converted by the power of the Gospel and studied as a catechumen, along with his son.  During his catechumenate, Paki became very ill, and his son would bring home to him what he had learned each day as a catechumen.  As Paki’s illness grew worse, his son summoned the missionaries, who examined and baptized Paki.  The next morning his son came to report that Paki had just died.  When Paki had been carried outside to lie in the sun, suddenly he sat up, looked to the sky and said, “Come and get me, come and get me,” as if he had seen the angels coming to bring him to his rest with God.  Paki was buried differently from the normal custom; he was not buried secretly but publicly, lying prone rather than in a fetal position.  The burial gave the missionaries a further opportunity to speak of Christian faith in the resurrection.
• Jill looks back on the support and encouragement she received after the birth and rapid death of the Hintze’s fifth child, Nathan.  When she returned home, she was greeted by a woman who had helped her with gardening, who came to her and said, “Don’t be sad.  You’ll see him again; he’s with Jesus.”  In a time of grief, those who had been taught the promises of the resurrection to eternal life through faith in Jesus gave back to the Hintzes in faith.
• The Hintze’s trip back to Papua New Guinea in 2006 also proved to be an opportunity to see and hear about the fruits of their labors.  A former kitchen helper sought Jill out to tell her, “I love you – because of you, I’m going to be in heaven.”   Other church members told Otto in the Enga Language, “Today the Gospel is in the marrow of our bones” and, “We don’t try to glorify you, but we glorify God, because you came to tell us of salvation.”