Strege, Paul H., 1924-

Paul H. Strege was born on August 5, 1924, in Ludell, Kansas, a rural town of only 100 people. His father, the Rev. Paul J. Strege, was the pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Ludell, where he served from 1920 until his death in 1946. Paul's mother was the former C. Beata Ruff, who had arrived at Immanuel in 1922 to serve as its school teacher; she married Pastor Strege the following year. Paul had two siblings: Arthur, who was born in 1929; and Ruth, who was born in 1930 and died in 1932.

Paul graduated from high school in 1942, and that fall started at St. John's College in Winfield, Kansas. In 1944, following his graduation at St. John's, Paul enrolled in the Concordia Seminary at St. Louis, Missouri. In early 1945, while attending meetings of the Local Walther League in St. Louis, Paul met Vercile Schmidt, who was about to graduate at the head of her class from Roosevelt High School in St. Louis. She later invited Paul to her graduation party, and they continued dating after Vercile entered the Lutheran Hospital School of Nursing in St. Louis.

Vercile Schmidt was born on July 5, 1927 in the small town of Farrar, Missouri, the daughter of Theodore Schmidt and the former Frieda Lorenz. Vercile's father died shortly before she was born. Vercile had a sister, Leola, who was three years older than herself: Leola died at the age of ten. There had also been a brother born before Vercile who had died in infancy. Thus when her mother remarried in 1936 (to Eldor Petzoldt), Vercile was her mother's only surviving child. Life began anew for Vercile as the Petzoldt familv moved to St. Louis, where in 1937 it was enlarged by the birth of Melba, who was ten years younger than her sister Vercile.

In the fall of 1946 Paul commenced his vicarage (a year of practical intern-like training) by filling a teaching vacancy in the high school department back at St. John's College in Kansas. His brother Arthur was a student there, and their now-widowed mother also joined them in Winfield, where she resumed teaching elementary school. In the summer of 1947 Paul served for three months assisting the pastor at Calvary Lutheran Church in Kansas City, Missouri.

Paul's dating of Vercile Schmidt had been interrupted by his removal to Winfield and Kansas City, but upon his return to Concordia Seminary in the fall of 1947 their steady relationship resumed. They were engaged in December 1947 and married in St. Louis on November 6, 1948.

By the time of his engagement Paul had developed an interest in mission work and applied to the Board for Missions of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod for an assignment. In the spring of 1948, just before his graduation from Concordia and ordination, he learned that his mission assignment was to Japan. Thereupon Paul undertook a year's training in preparation for mission work, while Vercile pursued further training in nursing at the Lutheran Hospital School of Nursing.

The Streges arrived in Japan on July 31,1949, and after two weeks proceeded on to their assigned station in the medium-size city of Sapporo, on the northern island of Hokkaido. .Chief focus of the initial work in Sapporo was the construction of a youth center, with funds provided by the Walther League youth organization back in the U.S.; once completed (after several years), another full-time missionary was placed there. The LC-MS mission board was also eager for Paul to initiate mission work in Asahigawa, a city 100 miles north of Sapporo. So, while he and his family were still settling into Sapporo in late 1949, Paul began making train trips to Asahigawa to conduct Bible classes there on every-other weekend. In the fall of 1951 it was decided to move the Streges' residence to Asahigawa, where they were to remain until their furlough in January 1956. Another focus of Paul's work involved offering correspondence Bible courses to those Japanese who responded to the messages of the Lutheran Hour, which in the early 1950s was being broadcast over 30 radio stations in Japan.

Upon his return to Japan from furlough in January 1957, Paul was assigned to the Tokyo Lutheran Center Church, first as an assistant, and then (from July) as pastor. Once in residence he began counseling individuals who came to the center, and soon also was also made the dean of a local Bible Institute. A highlight of Paul's pastorate in Tokyo was that his church's midnight Christmas Eve service in 1957 became the first Christian service ever broadcast on Japanese TV. Paul was a strong advocate of passing control of Christian institutions in Japan to natives as quickly as possible. He urged his Tokyo congregation to call and install a Japanese pastor as his successor. It completed this process in July 1958, at which point it was only the second Japanese congregation to have installed a native pastor.

In November 1958 the Streges moved back to Sapporo. There Paul pastored a small church and taught Bible classes while frequently traveling about the adjacent countryside to preach at remote locations. In April 1960 Paul was elected Conference chairman, which put him at the head of the approximately 40 LC-MS missionaries serving in Japan. In this capacity Paul continued to push for an independent Japanese church, setting up training programs for lay leaders as there were still relatively few Japanese pastors.

In July 1962 Paul was elected by the LC-MS Board for Missions as Area Counselor for East Asia, which involved oversight responsibilities in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The Strege family remained based in Sapporo, but Paul now traveled widely throughout the Far East and had to give up his chairmanship of the Japanese conference. In 1965 the LC-MS mission operation was reorganized, one result being that the Area Counselors were renamed Area Secretaries and were brought out of their mission fields to occupy offices at LC-MS headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri.

By the late 1960s the LC-MS was increasingly divided between those who promoted greater inter-Lutheran and inter-Christian cooperation and those who wished to check these developments and return the LC-MS to its traditional separatist posture. Many within the missions staff, including Paul Strege, believed that the time had come to consider mission areas as now "sister churches" deserving of operational and formal independence. By the early 1970s, however, the LC-MS Board for Missions had come under ultra-conservative control, and several years of uneasy peace between "conservative" board and "moderate" staff exploded into open confrontation in January 1974, when the contract of James Meyer, Area Secretary for South Asia, was not renewed by the board-for allegedly promoting "false teaching" in overseas missions. Paul soon learned that similar charges against him were being uncritically accepted by board members, indicating that his contract-due to expire at mid-year-would probably also not be renewed. Faced with a roll-back of many of their mission initiatives, Paul and many fellow mission staff executives resigned their positions in the period April-September 1974.

Paul Strege and other former LC-MS mission executives soon formed a new mission operation, "Partners in Mission" (PIM), which initially sought to operate within the LC-MS but soon was associated with the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC), a 100,000-member body formed in 1976 when "moderate" congregations finally left the LC-MS. Around 200 AELC congregations provided PIM (the AELC'S "Committee for Mission") with regular mission donations. James Meyer was PIM's General Director, while Paul served as its Projects Director. Following Meyer's death in early 1984, Paul became PIM's Director.