Trinity Lutheran Church in Hampton is welcoming a new face to its congregation. Tyler Linneman arrived in August to begin his year-long vicarage as part of his training to become a Lutheran pastor.
Linneman, who grew up on a farm near Carrollton, Missouri, tells RadioOnTheGo News the Hampton area already feels like home.
“As people have been joking with me at the church though, not as good a corn. But other than that, pretty well similar. So I get along pretty well with the farmers here in town. Went to college over in Nebraska. So very similar kind of deal over there. And then been at St. Louis seminary ever since.”
Linneman is in his third year at the Concordia Seminary in St. Louis as part of the four-year educational program. He says the vicarage is a year-long internship where students take on most of the responsibilities of a pastor, including preaching, as they prepare for full-time ministry.
“During that year, you basically do everything that a pastor does except for a handful of things, consecrating the elements in communion and confession, absolution, things like that. But everything else, preaching, counseling, leading Bible study, all of these things are things that you do during the Vicarage Program. And it’s a really good opportunity for guys that haven’t had too much experience at that. Get a feel for what ministry really looks like, and it gives you an entire year to really get to know the people that you’re serving with and the community that you’re serving in and really build a lot of those skillsets you’ll take with you after your fourth year when you get your first call.”
Linneman says he first felt called to ministry in high school after several people encouraged him to consider becoming a pastor. Now, he’s already preached his first sermon and is leading Bible studies at Trinity.
“When they sort of told me that, I started to think about it and really give some thought to the idea of becoming a pastor, because up till then I’d never really considered doing something like that. You I had people that supported me in it. I’d grown up in the Lutheran Church my entire life, was very familiar with it. So I looked into it a little bit more, realized there’s a need and there’s a definite career path to be had here, and certainly a calling from the Lord to pursue this pathway. We need pastors in the Lutheran Church like you wouldn’t believe. And I was a man that was fit for the job and was called by the Lord to do so. And so about junior, senior year of high school, I think I came to the conclusion that this is what I was looking to do.”
Linneman will serve at Trinity through the summer of 2026 before returning to seminary to complete his final year.
