Move to Indiana and Search for German Protestants

In August 1838, a letter from Johann Häsbärt arrived at the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Ministerium Mission Society, highly recommending Friedrich Wyneken to them. The Executive Committee invited Wyneken to visit Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to meet with them. In the company of Häsbärt, Friedrich met with the committee.

So convinced of his fitness for the task and likely moved by his zeal for the work, the Missionary Society set aside their usual practice of waiting until September to send out their workers. They commissioned him to “move to Indiana, to search for scattered German Protestants to preach to them, and, if possible, gather them into congregations.” While the Committee intended Wyneken to make Indiana his base of operations, they intended to have him range widely throughout the frontier, directing him to labor in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. Credentials in hand, Wyneken embarked upon his ministry as a Missionary, traveling in the company of Häsbärt as far as Havre de Grace, Maryland.

In Pittsburgh, Wyneken met for the first time C.F. Schmidt, the editor of Lutherische Kirchenzeitung, who would prove a close friend and the channel through which Wyneken’s first appeals would reach the world. From Pittsburgh, Wyneken traveled by train and canal boat to Zelienople, Pennsylvania where he purchased a horse and cheerfully rode off to be, as his friend C. F. W. Walther would later describe him, the Lutheran Apostle of the West.