Richard Kevin Schlak

1. 9/18/1959 Sycamore, IL USA

 

Spouse/Family

Wife: Maritza (nee Rojas), b. 1/29/1962 Caracas, Venezuela, m. 6/29/1991

Children: Michel (1984, to Maritza and her first husband); Katherine (1992);

Jennifer (1993)

Dates of Service Field Call Assignment

1983-1985 Mexico Vicar

1. Venezuela Evangelistic Missionary

2007-2008 El Paso, TX USA Director, Lutheran Hispanic Missionary Institute

 

Biographical Summary

After two years of vicarage (1983-85) spent in Mexico City, Rev. Richard Schlak began considering seriously the possibility of a call to Latin America once he received his degree from Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis.  During his final year, he learned that a call to foreign mission work in Venezuela was available, and it seemed to him that was what the Lord wanted him to do.  He volunteered for the call and received it upon earning his degree in 1986.

 

Arriving in Venezuela, Richard spent one year in orientation.  He lived in the city of Maturin and worked with the youth at a congregation in that city.  He was pleased to find that the Venezuelan mission team was very close and highly collaborative, working together and going out in teams whenever possible.  After his year in Maturin, Richard was asked to move to Caracas in order to revitalize a church which was reeling from its experience with a pastor who had been teaching false doctrine, which had led to conflict and confusion.  He lived in Caracas and acted as pastor to this congregation, working to heal wounds and performing the preaching, teaching and care-giving duties of a pastor, for several years.  He also worked with other churches in the area, filling in and teaching classes.  During this time, Richard was introduced to and began dating a young woman named Martiza Rojas who had previously been widowed, leaving her a single mother to son Michel.  Richard and Maritza were married in 1991.  At the time, Maritza was teaching preschool at a Montessori center, and she was able to put quite a bit of her knowledge to use in the church as time went on.  In the next two years as their daughters were born, Maritza decided not to work for a time, but she still continued in her profession by training teachers at church for Sunday school and Vacation Bible School.  She also ran a preschool in Maracay for one year for children from the barrios who otherwise could not afford to go to preschool.  During Richard’s years in mission, Maritza did all kinds of planning and ministry in the churches he served, and by the end of their time in Maracay, she was running at least three Bible studies in different barrios, teaching, and evangelizing as well.

 

In 1994, Richard moved with his family to Maracay to start a church, an exciting prospect since he had wanted to do this kind of work from the beginning of his call.  The Schlaks remained in Maracay until 2003, as their children grew up and both Richard and Maritza embarked on their ministry.  Unfortunately, in Maracay Richard had to work alone for the most part (rather than in a team as had been the general practice in Venezuela) because there were at that time fewer missionaries in the country.  Maritza was a great help to him, although both were frequently ill during the first part of their time there.  They also found some initial disappointment because the techniques they tried to spur church growth did not work as well as they had hoped.  As they made some changes, however, the response to their work began to grow.  By the time they left Venezuela, sixty or more people were coming to church each Sunday, and there were thirty-seven full members and communicants.  The church is now independent, and several people who were youth in the church while Richard was there have now been ordained or are on track to be ordained in the Lutheran Church of Venezuela (LCV).

 

During all this time, besides working as missionary for the LCMS and pastor in the LCV, Richard joined the other LCMS missionaries in Venezuela in sharing plans and working together and served as professor for the church’s theological institute, called the “Juan de Frias” Theological Institute.  The LCV does not have a residential seminary, and all theology classes are taught by extension.  Therefore, missionaries and pastors of local churches taught classes to rising church leaders.  Richard taught both in the churches for which he was pastor and at other congregations that were close enough, normally presiding over a weekly meeting of students and assigning homework to be done during the week.  Richard’s other main responsibility was to serve as a representative of “Christ for All the Nations,” which was the Venezuelan version of the Lutheran Hour.  Listeners were offered booklets on particular topics, and the church tried to have pastors and missionaries deliver the booklets personally to those who were interested.  This gave Richard the opportunity to make many personal visits during his time in Venezuela.

 

In 2003, the LCMS had a drawdown of the number of missionaries in the field, and the Schlaks left Venezuela for the United States.    Missionary Ted Krey took over for Richard at the church when they left, for which the Schlaks were grateful.  They settled into life in the U.S., where Richard undertook doctoral work in Old Testament at Concordia Seminary for several years, until he was called to be Director of the Lutheran Hispanic Missionary Institute in El Paso, Texas in 2007.

 

The Lutheran Hispanic Missionary Institute (LHMI) is part of a special track for theological education provided by LCMS for people who are of Hispanic origin to become pastors, deaconesses, and lay leaders.  Many Hispanic people who may wish to be pastors or church leaders are unable to attend seminary full-time, and the LCMS provides a Spanish-language track with two levels.  In El Paso, LHMI provides the first level of courses that can prepare people to be academically eligible to be a deacon, deaconess, parish assistant, or other lay leadership role recognized at the district or congregational level.  The second level of courses takes place through Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and involves 2-3 weeks per semester of intensive work at the seminary until eighteen courses are completed.  After this training, graduates are eligible to be nationally rostered, commissioned deaconesses or ordained pastors.  Richard both teaches in and administers the LHMI program.  Maritza has returned to school to study for a B.A. degree in early education in order to continue in her profession of teaching.  After many years sharing the Good News of Christ with the people of Venezuela, the Schlaks continue to serve God and their neighbor wherever they go.

 

Nota Bene

In Venezuela, Richard developed and shared materials for the benefit of the church.  This included work on catechism materials as well as rewriting certain theology courses used to train new leaders, in order to make them better and more accessible.

 

Made a special effort to bring the Gospel to and promote leadership among the youth in Venezuela, and served as pastoral counselor for the national ladies’ group of LCV.

 

In the U.S., Richard has written a large number of exercises for learning Hebrew that are still used at the seminary in Hebrew classes.  At LHMI he teaches all regular courses except the evangelism courses and continues a process of rewriting the courses taught to first-level students of LHMI.  These courses were originally written as extension courses and need to be updated now that they are taught in person; Richard is also reworking them to have a greater emphasis on mission.

 

For his doctoral studies, Richard has a forthcoming dissertation on messianic prophecy in the Old Testament.

 

Phase 2 Information

Biggest missiological issue faced?

Richard notes that one of the biggest issues on the foreign field in general is that of dependency.  Whenever a person or group begins mission work, some type of dependency is inevitably created, so that avoiding dependency at all costs actually means not doing ministry at all.  This does not mean that dependency is a positive thing, but it is something that cannot be avoided and must be dealt with.  Missionaries have to accept this fact and do their work, but always have in mind that the goal is for the people served to do for themselves.  A missionary must always be looking for the opportunity to “teach people to fish” rather than fishing for them, and there are no consistent rules for what will work in a particular situation.  Dependency is a perennial issue that always requires thoughtfulness and work on the part of missionaries and those who they serve.

 

In Venezuela, and large parts of Latin America, mixed with the people’s nominal Catholicism is a heavy dose of animism, or belief in spirits or powers that affect people’s lives.  Many people with whom Richard spoke had an idea that God was very far away, and if they were generally “good” God would let them into heaven. For day to day activities, however, people felt they needed some sort of power or intercessor to help them and make sure things went well.  Sometimes they prayed to saints as this type of intercessor, or if that didn’t work, went to witch doctors or spiritualists.  Finally many people might try a new church – if things continued to go badly, they would “try out” a Mormon, or Protestant, or Pentecostal church – which led to a lot of people who came to church only to find help with particular problems in their lives.  Because of this phenomenon, Richard felt it was important that a churchgoer learn and understand the full catechism before becoming a full member of the congregation, so that those who became members truly understood the idea of God’s grace in believers’ lives.

 

Doing Hispanic ministry in the United States carries its own set of challenges.  It must be many-faceted, because churches are reaching out to first-generation immigrants who have come from another place and know only or mostly Spanish but also to the second and third generations who are as comfortable or more comfortable in English and have grown up in the U.S.  The church has had the experience of reaching out to immigrants who spoke German, Norwegian, Swedish, etc., but still seems to be missing the opportunity given by God who has brought so many people who speak Spanish into this country.  The work must continue and improve.  A final issue is simply economic: it’s difficult to reach out to first-generation immigrants and create a self-sustaining ministry, simply because many people do not make a lot of money, and because groups of immigrants also tend to be mobile in their search for work – if job opportunities arise in another community, they must leave the community and any congregational ties that may have been established.

 

Finally, many Hispanic leaders of the church will need to be bi-vocational for practical reasons.  Many must study and work at the same time in order to support their families.  Students end up having four major commitments: church obligations, work, family, studies.  LHMI tries to make it as easy as possible for people to do their ministry studies while attending to all these other commitments in order to raise up leaders for the church.

 

Most significant contribution during missionary service?

The contribution Richard felt most blessed to make while in Venezuela was that of mentoring and encouraging prospective leaders (especially youth) in the churches he served.  Several of those who were youth during his time in Venezuela are now becoming ordained and commissioned as vicars and pastors.  The Lord was good to him in placing in front of him young people with leadership potential and working through him to sow the seeds for future leaders, everywhere he went.  Richard helped re-establish a strong presence of the youth group in Maturin; Adrian Ventura, one of the youth in that group, is now president of the Lutheran Church in Venezuela.  The youth group in Maracay has produced a number of pastors and leaders.  Several adults also have gone on to serve as pastors or mission leaders. One woman he worked with who was originally from Spain took several theology courses, and when she went back to Spain she was instrumental in starting a Lutheran congregation there. These leaders, and more, were put into Richard’s path, and God raised them up through his ministry and encouragement.

 

Connection to today’s mission?

The Lutheran Church of Venezuela is a small but independent national church and is involved in many different types of ministry, including schools, a medical clinic, prison ministry, orphanage work and food pantries.  All the congregations Richard served are still in operation.  The LCV also continues to administer a Theological Education by Extension program to train pastors and other church leaders.  The Juan de Frias Theological Institute, which develops these courses, is flourishing.  In fact, one of the youth from Richard’s church in Maracay was ordained in 2008 and is now a professor teaching theological courses at Juan de Frias.  The last LCMS missionary in Venezuela, Ted Krey, did good work in preparing the LCV for complete independence and left the mission field in 2009, leaving the LCV with no full-time evangelistic missionaries.  In general, the missionaries always acted as facilitators for communication between the LCMS and the church in Venezuela, and this was also true in the transition from mission field to national church.  The LCMS continues to work in partnership with the LCV on specific projects.

 

Richard’s own work in Hispanic ministries and ministry with people from Latin America continues in the United States through his involvement in the Lutheran Hispanic Missionary Institute.  His work with this institute is helping to develop the role of and training for Hispanic leaders in the LCMS.  He hopes the institute can be a facilitator for communications and cooperation amongst the different entities doing work with Hispanics.  Part of the purpose of the LHMI is to draw people together and help them cooperate, as well as to help make sure issues in Hispanic ministry are a priority for LCMS.

 

Lessons Learned

• Richard learned firsthand the importance of cultural awareness in mission work when he began working in Maracay in the hopes of forming a church.  At first, he did evangelism work and tried to start a number of house churches, but the attempts seemed to fail.  It turned out that most people had a natural suspicion of groups that met in houses, thinking that somehow the groups were too secretive.  A technique for evangelism that had worked well for other missionaries in other places turned out not to fit well with the perceptions of the non-Christians in the area.  If Richard and a small group of Christians wanted to reach out to others, they had to change their techniques and focus on the cultural needs and perceptions of those around them.  The experience gave him a very strong understanding of the importance of adapting to cultural needs in mission work. Moreover, every missionary needs to realize that God is the one who plans things out and that a missionary’s idea of what will “work” does not always match up with God’s plan, so that openness to God is of ultimate importance. Richard notes that God did lift up the church in Maracay regardless of initial fumbles and mistakes.

 

• In a similar vein, sending churches can make silly or just wrong decisions regarding missions and relations to the national churches they establish, yet somehow the Lord still has worked through missions to raise up people who know Him as Savior and who become leaders in their own church and worldwide.

 

Best Practices

• The whole mission team in Venezuela was very committed to working together.  Some of the missionaries had differences theologically or liturgically, but all were in agreement that, as a team, they would work out their differences and all go forward together.  This was an important and successful attitude for a group of missionaries.  No one person in the team struck out on his own or disregarded the others. Most importantly, the team planned together, and they had a plan for how this mission field could be evangelized from the beginning of their work.  Formulating plans and working together is one of the most important things missionaries and church bodies can do, and deserves to be emulated both on the foreign mission field and in the United States.

 

Phase 3 Information

Inspiration for entering foreign missions?

When Richard was in high school, he had the chance to attend a Bible study hosted by two Chinese sisters who had been sent to the United States by their parents to go to school.  The members of this Bible study were of many different nationalities, and the experience of talking about Scripture with this diverse group first led Richard to think seriously about being a missionary.  He first thought he might go to the Far East.  Knowing that he wanted to serve the Lord full-time in his profession in some way, Richard attended Concordia College (now Concordia University) in Ann Arbor, MI.  By the end of college he had decided to attend seminary and was still interested in foreign mission work, so he requested a vicarage abroad and was sent to Mexico City.  At first, Richard assumed that most people in Latin America were Christian, but he came to realize that many were only nominally Catholic, and that most people’s main religious beliefs had to do with animism and witchcraft.  This experience with ministry in Latin America, as well as his desire to be somewhat close to his home country, led Richard to seek a call to Venezuela.  It seemed to him that the Lord had led him in that direction step by step, without his having planned or even anticipated it, and by the time he received the call from the Board for Mission Services, he was sure that this was God’s call for his vocation.

 

Quotation by/about or brief story:

• In Richard’s work with LHMI, he taught a woman named Rosy Lira, a single mother who cares for and works to support her family in addition to her involvement in church and study with the Institute.  After finishing the course on Christian Education, Rosy immediately wanted to begin a Sunday School for the many children in her congregation in Mexico.  Richard initially discouraged her, feeling that with all her responsibilities to church, family, and work, not to mention her studies, she would over-commit herself to take on anything more.  Nonetheless, Rosy went back to her church in Juárez, just across the border, and began a Sunday school; she also asked for materials for adults and began teaching three adults in her church what she had just learned.  After this, she went to another church in Juárez and started a second Sunday school, and also found three youth at that church and started teaching them to be youth leaders!  Her attitude toward her work was summed up when she said, “I cannot just sit around when these people need help.”  Rosy is one example of some of the amazing people who come through the LHMI with many, many responsibilities, and yet continue to do the Lord’s work with an energy acquired through deep faith.

 

• Richard and Maritza met while he was working in Caracas, through the efforts of some very determined matchmaking missionaries.  He and Maritza had known of each other and were members of different churches in Caracas, but had never really spoken during the first part of his time in the city.  At one point, some other missionaries introduced them to each other, but since they didn’t begin dating right away, they then found themselves invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at which they were the only two single people.  When they still didn’t “get it,”  another missionary couple invited both to dinner at their house and, when the meal was finished, both husband and wife abruptly left the table together “to check on the children” or something similar.  At that point Richard and Maritza decided they had better at least go on a few dates together, or everyone would be disappointed!  The rest was history, and Richard is very grateful that “I brought the best part of Venezuela back with me.”