Cordell P Schulten
Lecturer, Contemporary Studies
Fontbonne University (St., Louis)
CORDELL P. SCHULTEN is a Lecturer in Contemporary Studies at Fontbonne University, Clayton, Missouri, and serves as the Christian Legal Society’s Chaplain to the legal community in the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan area.
Over the past ten years, he has also taught at Handong International Law School in Pohang, Korea, and Missouri Baptist University. Prior to teaching, Schulten practiced law for ten years in St. Louis. He specialized in commercial litigation and was appointed by the federal courts to death penalty cases. Schulten earned his M.A. in Theological Studies from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, his J.D. from the Saint Louis University School of Law, and his B.A. in Social Sciences from Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Theology and Culture at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.
Personal Story for Cordell P Schulten
My parents were devout Lutherans. So, shortly after my birth, they had me baptized in their home congregation, Immanuel Lutheran, a Missouri-Synod church in Boonville, Missouri. I was confirmed in the Lutheran faith at age 13, and I expressed an interest in studying for the ministry. Although I had an “academic” understanding of the person of Christ through my upbringing in the church and even an inclination to pursue the ministry, it was not until my freshman year of high school that I came to personal faith in the Lord Jesus.
My algebra teacher spoke with me one day after class and asked me if I was “saved.” He also pointed me to a number of Bible passages that spoke about a personal relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. He encouraged me not only to read God’s Word, but also to study it seriously.
I began to attend Bible studies at my teacher’s home on a weekly basis and also during my lunch break from school in the basement of a Baptist church across the street from the high school. I developed friendships with other believers many a variety of both evangelical and reformed churches. After about one year of study, I came to a point where a made a personal decision to place my trust in Christ’s work alone for my salvation.
A Change Of Direction
At this point in my life I began to study the Scriptures with an even greater intensity and seriousness. I attended St. Paul’s College High, a Missouri-Synod Lutheran school located in Concordia, Missouri, for my junior and senior years of high school. My direction changed from ministerial training to Christian education, and I made a decision to resign my membership in the Lutheran church in order to fellowship with a small group of believers who met along the lines of the Plymouth Brethren.
My reading of the biographies of both George Mueller and Jim Elliot significantly impacted me during these years. I also met the young lady who would later become my wife while visiting a church youth retreat in St. Louis at the South Side Bible Chapel. My decision to leave the Lutheran church was extremely hard on my father, although I did not realize the extent of disappointment at the time. My parents, though, continued to support me and gave their blessing to both my marriage to Sandy and our decision to go into full-time ministry as a school teacher with Victory Christian School here in St. Louis.
Pre-Law
In August of 1978, Sandy and I were married at South Side and in that same month, the church commended me to full-time ministry as a teacher at Victory even though I had not yet completed my undergraduate training. I continued to take classes at local colleges during my two years of teaching language arts and social studies to the sixth, seventh and eighth graders. During these years of teaching, I developed an interest in the many legal issues facing Christian schools and ministries. After consulting with a number of older brothers and my parents, my wife and I decided to move to South Carolina where I enrolled in Bob Jones University in order to pursue a pre-law course of studies.
We spent three years in South Carolina. In addition to my studies and a full time job at a production machine shop, we were actively involved in our church, Overbrook Gospel Chapel, where I served in both the preaching and teaching of the Word. Upon my graduation, and the growth of our family to three children, we returned to St. Louis in the summer of 1983. We renewed our fellowship with the believers at South Side Bible Chapel and I entered law school at Saint Louis University.
During my years in law school, I continued to serve my church in the ministries of the preaching and teaching. My ministries also expanded to working with the college and career age young people. At law school, I assisted with the establishment of a local chapter of the Christian Legal Society at Saint Louis University and led Bible studies on campus.
After graduating from law school in May 1986 and passing the bar, I joined a large firm in downtown St. Louis. Still hoping to use my profession to serve the needs of believers, I attempted to develop a practice in the area of First Amendment law. I found, however, that the demands and restrictions of a large firm practice did not complement my pursuits. Instead, I became distracted by the wiles of “big firm” practice, and after about six years, I was nearly consumed by the world.
All the while, though, I continued to serve faithfully in my church. Through a series of circumstances over a period of about three years I ended up leaving my firm and joining a small firm of Christian lawyers in Clayton. My family and I also decided to move our church membership from South Side to Grace Bible Chapel, where we are currently in fellowship.
From Law To Grace
This transfer out of “law” and into “Grace” was also accompanied by my desire and interest to return to full-time ministry. The elders at Grace Bible Chapel invited me to spend a year praying and consulting with them about an opportunity to serve in a pastoral-teaching ministry within the church. That year turned into 18 months, after which Grace commended my family and me to the ministry in May 1996. From that time until the end of 1999, I committed myself to the ministry at Grace and experienced the Lord’s blessing in many encouraging ways.
By His grace, I was enabled to participate in the regular preaching of the Word, serve as a worship leader, start and lead several home Bible studies, organize and administer ten church ministry teams, conduct one-on-one discipleship training, engage in both hospital and home visitation, and develop a ministry of encouragement and exhortation to the men of our church.
The course of my life over the past 25 years has been marked by my respective callings to education, law and ministry. Now these three “life-strands” are woven together in my opportunity to join the faculty of Missouri Baptist College. All in all, I am greatly looking forward to the opportunities for service that the Lord has yet ahead of me as I seek, by His grace and strength, to fulfill His purpose in this my generation.
