Biltz's Leadership in Concordia: Expansion on all Fronts

Pastor Biltz, his wife and younger children in front of the parsonage.

                The ending of the Civil War enabled Pastor Biltz and St. Paul’s congregation to return its attention to efforts to serve the growing German population in Concordia and beyond.  These efforts would include planting new congregations, forming branch schools and establishing a preparatory school for pastors and teachers.  Already in his lifetime, Biltz had seen the fledgling Saxon immigrants of Perry County grow into an established community and take leadership among the German Lutherans of the Midwest in the founding of the Missouri Synod.  Now Biltz would be a leader of the Missouri Synod’s work on the Missouri frontier.

                Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Emma (four miles to the east) was established as a daughter congregation of St. Paul’s  prior to the ending of the Civil War in 1864 (Like St. Paul’s, Holy Cross is celebrating a significant anniversary as they observe their 150^th anniversary this year).  Through Biltz’s leadership and tireless commitment, other congregations would be established in Alma (eight miles north of Concordia), Higginsville (fifteen miles northwest), Ernestville (six miles southwest), and Norborne (thirty-eight miles north).  Especially noteworthy are his efforts in the founding of Trinity Lutheran Church in Norborne.  Biltz traveled by horse to the Missouri River and then crossed by ferry to reach Norborne and serve the flock there.  Biltz also began some of the early work in Independence (some fifty miles west), conducting baptisms of several children, though no congregation was organized until after his death.    

                There has always been a commitment to Lutheran education within St. Paul’s congregation.  Mr. M. Broening had been called to be the first teacher to assist the pastor in 1858.  The first separate school building was constructed in 1867 (known as the Hamm School). Just two years later, St. Paul’s would begin operating branch schools (small one room schoolhouses) in the areas surrounding Concordia (these branch schools included the Blackwater school, North Davis school, Jacksonville school and Wilk school). The last of the branch schools, the North Davis school, closed in 1941 and all of the students were transferred to the single school, which had been built across from the church at 5^th and Main Streets in 1921. 

                Pastor Biltz was also the leading voice for a college to assist in the preparation of men for ministerial vocations as pastors or teachers.  At the time, there were no “prep” schools remotely near Missouri and other “Western” states.  Already in 1880, Pastor Biltz was appointed to a committee of the Western District to consider the establishment of a “progymnaisum” within its borders and make recommendations to the 1881 Synod Convention.  The late Rev. F.A. Baepler, longtime pastor at St. Matthew’s in Ernestville, notes that the Synod took no action at the convention.  LCMS Historian August Suelflow suggests that the lack of action fell upon the Western District.  Suelflow writes, “The indecisions disturbed F.J. Biltz, who, as District President, repeatedly received requests from far and near for pastors and teachers.  Knowing that pretheological schools had been established elsewhere in the Synod without specific direction be either Synod or District, he together with his own and neighboring congregations came before the District with a liberal offer of assistance if the school would be located at Concordia.  Again the district hesitated to act…however, when assured that the school would not cost it a cent for the next two or three years, the District endorsed the project as its own.”  The school began with Rev. Andrew Baepler serving as the first professor.  The first classes began on January 3, 1883 with three students present, but grew to sixteen in just after Easter. 

                 However, this period of growth and expansion did not happen without hardship.  There were troubling times that the congregation would still face even after the Civil War.  A grasshopper infestation and epidemic of Scarlet Fever beset the residents of Concordia during the trying year of 1870.  The growing congregation lost 62 souls during that particular year, 48 of whom were between the ages of birth and 15 years of age.  The family of Fritz Brackmann lost four children to Scarlet Fever over the course of just five days.  Pastor Bitz’s own son, Eduard Ernst Biltz would also die that year.  Over the years of his ministry, Biltz would bury eight of his own children as well as his wife. 

                Reflecting on the 50^th Anniversary of his ordination, Pastor Biltz described his service as “truly a rich life, rich in trouble and labor, rich in cross and suffering, but also certainly rich in blessing, comfort and joys.”  What fitting words from a man who had endured much hardship and yet had been sustained and strengthened throughout by his faith in God.  Pastor Biltz is certainly a wonderful example of God’s grace under immense pressures.