Erb, Earl S.

While attending Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Earl S. Erb set a school track and field record that stood for twenty years by running the mile in four minutes, twenty seconds. Years later the Rev. Earl S. Erb would employ an even faster form of transportation, the airplane, to log approximately 500,000 miles while traveling in his capacity as executive secretary for the Board of Foreign Missions of the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA) and then its successor, the Board of World Missions of the Lutheran Church in America (LCA).

Rev. Earl S. Erb, once described as a revolutionary and leader in advocating a new missionary philosophy, when interviewed for an article in an alumni publication of Muhlenberg College remarked, "The work of the Lutheran church is a fellowship. It is not a question if there is a place for the missionary or the national, but as to what place each should fill." This philosophy of fellowship was very different from the early days of mission work when missionaries were in place primarily to convert indigenous people to Christianity. Rev. Erb and others involved in mission work began working as advisors "to informed, independent nationals on a multitude of complex church-related topics."

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