Seminarian Art Hebbeler says the web today "is like the doors of the church on which Martin Luther posted his 95 theses."

He lives today in a world he couldn't imagine 10 years ago.

That's because Art Hebbeler, a Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia junior, served just over a decade ago as a missile launch officer in Grand Forks, SD, and "those ICBM missiles I used to watch over no longer exist."

From 1984 to 1988, Hebbeler fulfilled duty assignments "65 feet below ground" in an egg-shaped, high-technology capsule. Each shift he was part of an award-winning, two-man crew in charge of a missile-launch area "as large as the state of New Jersey, featuring 150 missiles. Twenty-two of the 24 hours on shift were monotonous -- performing routine inspections and tests. The other two were highly stressful and nerve-wracking." The stressful occasions sometimes involved performing exercises simulating a high alert situation.

In those days as an Air Force officer, missile launch work was a male-only occupation. The capsule environment's environmental system was noisy. Eighty-eight laps around the capsule's interior perimeter equaled a mile, and during his tour the 25-year-old missile system was undergoing its first major renovations.

"No soldier likes war," Hebbeler says. "My sense of faith at that time persuaded me that God would never allow these missile launch systems to be put to use. I took comfort in knowing I was playing a role in watching out for the welfare of my family and the lives of millions. I knew that someone like me was on duty in the Soviet Union. I also realized that that person knew that a well-trained American officer had the will to use these weapons of mass destruction if it became necessary."

Checkmate.

Hebbeler adds that the imagined scenario that an officer like him in a moment of madness could spontaneously launch the weapons was "totally unrealistic. We had many tests and safeguards in the system to prevent anything like that from ever happening." But Hebbeler said none of the officers at that time could have imagined the fall of the Berlin Wall and agreements that would make it possible to destroy the missiles he once monitored.

In subsequent careers, Hebbeler served as an air force recruiter, directed advertising campaigns for the military and supervised a transportation system as a communications officer for the Department of Defense. Eventually he resigned his commission in 1996 and found a job in an imaging company in Rochester, NY. During those months, he began to respond to a call he first heard from God via an Episcopal priest during his student days. While part of a Lenten study group "I began to look at the church differently," he says. "I began to see that the grace of God was a real factor in my life." The priest and others had suggested to him that "as long as I was coming up with any reason not to respond to God's ordination call, the time wasn't right for me. In 1996 I ran out of reasons."

Educated as a historian, Hebbeler decided to come to LTSP in part because of its strong academic record and partly because of the diversity and warmth of the Seminary's community spirit. He's a strong believer in the value and perspective second-career students bring to the community. "You need time to gain the perspective that you can do this (the ordained ministry)," Hebbeler says. "I realize now that I will never make as much money working in the church as in private industry, but that doesn't matter to me. What is important for me is to help people understand that God has made a place for them and that God has chosen them to be able to make a difference." Hebbeler said that while doing field work for an urban congregation in Dundalk, MD, he had discovered "the need to take the Gospel to the street."

Hebbeler, a lifelong Lutheran from Bowie, MD, loves technology and the difference it can make for the modern church. He was co-founder of "Luther 95," a web site where all kinds of Lutherans and Lutheran organizations have discovered "a safe place" to link up and talk about issues and concerns.

"The web today is like the doors of the church on which Martin Luther posted his 95 theses," Hebbeler says. Through the web site, messages have come from "St. Catherine's, the Ukraine -- communication that wasn't possible before. The web is a major community for people in the 25 to 45-year-old age bracket. It's a tool we can use today to follow Christ's great commission."