LCC pastor called to serve as president of new American Lutheran college

USA – Luther Classical College (Casper, Wyoming) has called Rev. Dr. Harold Ristau, a pastor in Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC), to serve as President of the recently founded school. The college—being built on the grounds of Mount Hope Lutheran Church and School—is expected to welcome its first class of students in the fall of 2025. Dr. Ristau will begin his duties in April 2024.

Dr. Ristau received his M.Div. in 2000 from Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary (CLTS) in St. Catharines, Ontario; his M.A. from the University of Waterloo in 1996; and his Ph.D. from McGill University in 2007. In addition to serving in pastoral ministry in LCC, he served as a chaplain with the Canadian Armed Forces for eleven years.  In 2017, he was called to serve as a professor at CLTS. In 2022, he was deployed to Kenya to serve as Academic Dean at Lutherans in Africa’s Lutheran School of Theology.

“Dr. Harold Ristau brings with him a huge range of experience from his pastoral ministry in Montreal, a decade as a Canadian Forces chaplain, seminary teaching in St. Catharines, and most recently giving his heart, head, and hands to pastoral formation in the mission field of Africa,” said CLTS President Thomas Winger in a statement to the college. “His many publications in the field of pastoral theology demonstrate that he’s far more than just an academic. Luther Classical College will benefit from both his unshakable orthodoxy and his pastoral heart.”

Luther Classical College intends to “provide a conservative, classical Lutheran education to Lutheran students,” a purpose statement on the college’s website explains. “Paramount will be the promotion of Christian culture, a stress on the priority of Christian marriage, family, and piety, and a cultivation of confessional Lutheran theology, liturgy, hymnody, and identity.  With courses using the ‘great books’ of the past for the core curriculum, the college will offer Latin, history, theology, literature, logic, rhetoric, music, geometry, biology, and mathematics, all within a purposefully Christian and Lutheran framework.”

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