Willard Burce: A Legacy of Service

By Martin Dicke

On Friday, Nov. 15, 2024, we laid my Uncle Bill, the Rev. Dr. Willard Burce, to rest next to his beloved wife Elinor, my dad’s sister, and his youngest son Charles. The funeral was at St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Eau Claire, Wis. The interment was at his family’s cemetery several miles from Drammen Lutheran Church, where he was baptized.

Known simply as “Boos” in the mountains of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Bill left a great legacy of service for the sake of the Gospel through 40 years on the mission field. Humble, he eschewed recognition, pointing rather to Jesus Christ, whom he served. Yet the legacy of his decades of work lives on in many ways.

Bill entered eternal life the morning of October 4, 2024, at 100 years and nearly eight months old. Attending his funeral were his six surviving children, 14 grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren, along with colleagues, family and friends. Attending remotely were many Lutherans in Papua New Guinea (PNG) who watched on their phones. When Bill landed at Wabag in November 1948 with the Rev. Dr. Otto Hintze to begin LCMS mission work in the mountainous region, that would have been inconceivable.

40 years of faithful service

Only 11 years prior, the Australian government had sent the famous Hagen-Sepik patrol through the region, making the first official contact with the people there. Gold prospectors had previously visited, resulting in tensions after some confrontations and deaths. Despite World War II, the Australian government continued to establish a presence there and carved an airstrip out of a mountaintop at Wabag. It opened in 1944. A few years later, a chief from one of the four tribes in the Yaramanda area in the lower valley hiked several days over the mountains to the Australian Lutheran mission at Ogelbeng, extending an invitation for a missionary to live among them. Short on resources and still recovering from World War II, the Australians sought help from American Lutherans. In 1947, the Australian government opened the valley for missionaries and the LCMS approved mission work in PNG.

The Rev. Willard and Elinor Burce in their early years on the mission field, with their son Greg.

In 1948, as graduation approached, the president of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis asked Bill and Otto if they would serve in PNG. After checking with their fiancées, they both agreed. A whirlwind of activity ensued, including Bill’s marriage to Elinor on August 1, 1948. Elinor came from a long line of missionaries that included the Rev. Peter Dicke on her father’s side and the Rev. Carl Rudolph Klinkenberg on her mother’s side. Both of these ancestors were students at the Rev. Wilhem Löhe’s mission school in Neuendettelsau, Germany, before coming to the United States. In addition, Elinor’s father, Edward, had served for 11 years as an LCMS missionary in Brazil, where she was born. Interestingly, in Bill and Elinor’s living room was a wooden trunk that Carl had purchased in Germany. It traveled to the United States, then Brazil, and later to PNG before returning to the United States.

On Sept. 19, 1948, the young missionaries boarded a Pan American Clipper in San Francisco for the 40-hour flight to Australia. Clippers were flying boats that preceded passenger jets. The Mission Board would have sent them over by steamship, but were eager to have them enter the valley because the Roman Catholic Church and the Seventh Day Adventists were already there.

Lutherans in the Enga Province regularly celebrate the anniversary of Bill and Otto’s arrival on Nov. 2, 1948. Meeting them at the Wabag airstrip was the Rev. Harold Freund, an Australian missionary who during World War II was a Coastwatcher for the Australian army, spying on the Japanese. Harold worked with Bill and Otto for two years. Coworkers included scores of national Lutherans from the Huon Peninsula and the island of Siassi, who themselves left their families for the sake of the Gospel to become missionaries in their own land. They had heard the Gospel from the Rev. Johann Flierl and his colleagues. Flierl had been trained at Neuendettelsau, and in 1886 established the first PNG Lutheran mission near Finschhafen. Eventually the LCMS sent hundreds of missionaries to the Enga Province, establishing schools, churches and hospitals and ultimately the Gutnius (Good News) Lutheran Church (GLC).

Soon an invitation came for a missionary to live at Irelya near Wabag. In February 1949, Bill moved there, establishing Redeemer Lutheran Church, which still exists today. The mission work was remarkably successful, with the first Baptism being held at Irelya on Epiphany Sunday, Jan. 6, 1957. Seventy five were baptized that day, while many more watched, unsure. In June 1959, 510 were baptized in one day (see picture below). From 1960 on Bill’s work was devoted to teaching and training national pastors. Early on, he and Otto had decided that this was necessary to establish a sustainable and independent indigenous church. A full account of Bill’s ministry, including his work in Russia during retirement, can be found in his obituary. An extended obituary is available upon request. Otto’s book From Ghosts to God in Enga Land (LCMS, 2015) also provides much information.

Hundreds in line to be baptized by LCMS missionaries Rev. Dr. Willard Burce (front row, left) and the Rev. Victor Heinecke (right), along with the Rev. Karl Stotik (visible in glasses in the third row), in June 1959.

Bill served through many difficulties, including the extreme downsizing of the mission in the 1970s, changing administrations, PNG’s independence in 1975, and bitter church divisions, resulting in the GLC having two head bishops for decades, and more recently, three. Happily, due to many prayers and the skill of Sir Peter Ipatas, the governor of the province, Bill lived long enough to see the church unite in early 2024 under one head bishop. Interestingly, in the early years, Bill hired the governor’s father as an assistant and taught him to drive, the first local man able to do so in the Enga Province. The vehicle was a Land Rover, purchased with funds raised by Elinor’s mother who led the Minnesota LWML.

A lasting legacy

Bill Burce’s legacy includes many translations and publications, including his work on the first translation of the New Testament into Melanesian Pidgin, translations of several New Testament books into the Enga language, and theological works such as Luther’s Small Catechism (with an accompanying comprehensive study manual), and A Statement of Faith, both published in English and Melanesian Pidgin by the Lutheran Heritage Foundation (LHF).

Two of Willard Burce’s projects published by Lutheran Heritage Foundation, Luther’s Small Catechism in English and Melanesian Pidgin, pictured alongside a facsimile of the 1531 edition of the catechism.

His legacy also lives on in his many students, including the Rev. John Nathan, principal of Timothy Lutheran Seminary in Birip, PNG, who recently chaired a committee to revise the Enga translation of Luther’s Small Catechism (also published by LHF); and the Rev. Yakasa Maniosa and the Rev. Frank Paiyaka, who helped revise and reissue the Enga translation of the New Testament.

The Rev. John Nathan leads a committee revising the Enga translation of the Small Catechism in 2019.

At Birip stands a large bamboo tree that serves as a constant reminder of Bill’s faith and work. I was told that he planted it in the early 1960s when tasked with establishing a school there to train national church workers in their own language. While planting it, he explained that just as this small shoot would grow into a large tree, so the Gospel planted here would grow into many churches with many people. The school is now Timothy Lutheran Seminary, which continues to train workers for the harvest. The tree is now a massive bamboo grove over 100 feet tall and encompassing around 100 square feet. Before it stands a flame representing the Holy Spirit.

Seminarians from Timothy Lutheran Seminary, Birip, stand beneath the bamboo tree in 2018 that was planted by Burce in the early 1960s.

This object lesson is still being fulfilled. For example, in 2018, I visited Wai Pii (Good News) Lutheran Church in the Tarua District (four hours from Birip) at the invitation of four seminarians. There I met the son of the first man baptized in that area. His father had been baptized by “Boos” in the early 1960s. From that Baptism grew 12 strong, vibrant congregations who themselves were reaching out to neighbors further in the mountains.

Isingi Kandaso, the son of the first man baptized in the Tarau District, pointing to the location where that Baptism took place, in 2018.

Here are some of the other ways in which Bill’s legacy lives on:

He and Otto Hintze are mentioned in the timeline, “The Spread of Lutheran Mission Work” in The Lutheran Study Bible (pp. 2240–41) in reference to the beginning of LCMS mission work in PNG.

Both Burce and Hintze are included in the Concordia Historical Institute mission display at the LCMS International Center in St. Louis.

A meeting room at the LCMS Asia region headquarters in Chiayi, Taiwan, is named after Burce in recognition of his 40 years in Papua New Guinea (my dad worked with him for 20 of those years).

The administrative block at Martin Luther Seminary in Lae, Papua New Guinea, is named after him in recognition of his 21 years as teacher (1967–88), 15 of which were as principal.

Additional recognitions and achievements include a Doctor of Divinity (1967) and Christus Vivit Award (1994) from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, as well as a Distinguished Service Award (1984) from Concordia College, St. Paul (now Concordia University, St. Paul, St. Paul, Minn.).

Bill’s funeral service was led by the Rev. Jeffrey Kazmierski, who recalled being intimidated upon learning that Bill was his congregant. He had first encountered Bill in theological journals and missiology classes. Upon visiting Bill, he was put at ease and found that he was the one being ministered to.

The people of PNG are eternally thankful that God sent Bill to bring the Gospel to them (Rev. 14:6). His children and grandchildren will miss his gregarious smile, booming hellos and loving bear hugs.

The entrance to Yaramanda, the first LCMS mission station in Papua New Guinea, on Oct. 29, 2017, advertising its celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Photos: All courtesy of Martin Dicke.