Bethel University - Spire Yearbook (St Paul, MN)

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' S o tzacfi us, • • Time determines the stature of a man and fathoms his innate worth. This test of time has been applied to Dr. G. Arvid Hagstrom, and each succeeding year he has emerged with a richer and a fuller character. On the personal side, time has endowed Dr. Hagstrom with a dignity and courtliness few men possess. Anyone who has seen him will not soon forget his erect, youthful posture, his gray hair and his kindly blue eyes with their perennial twinkle. His is a life that is full indeed. He might well have said with the Psalmist, So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Every day in the life of this man seems veritably to have been numbered and every hour seems to have had its well-ordered place. And always he has been of a keen and inquiring mind—truly a seeker after wisdom. Yes, this one has made good use of the time given him. And so time has in turn dealt kindly . . . Dr. Hagstrom was bom in Sundsvall, Sweden, on September 8, 1867. His parents brought him to this country the following year, so he remembers nothing of his first long sea voyage. As a boy, he attended Sunday School and worship services at the First Swedish Baptist Church of Minneapolis. When he arrived at the age of fifteen, the age when most boys must make important decisions, he decided to accept the Lord lesus Christ as his personal Saviour and was beplized that same year. Dr. Frank Peterson was then serving the Minneapolis church Dr. Hagstrom, in later life, performed a labor of love and admiration for his pastor when he set his pen to the task of writing the Biography of Dr. Frank Peterson. The young lad was educated in Minneapolis public and business schools and also through the extension department of the University of Des Moines. He entered seminary training in 1889 and graduated from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Later he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity by Wake Forest College, Wake Forest, North Carolina. He gained his earliest actual preaching experience at Kenyon, Minnesota, where he served the church in 1890 and 1891. He next accepted a call to the church at Newark, Illinois, where he served from 1891 to 1893. In this church, in 1892, he was ordcined as a minister. On the first of June, 1892, the young minister of the Gospel married Caroline Wilhelmina An-

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Dn cz -jifixsciakion For twenty-seven years Dr. G. Arvid Hagstrom has been both a friend and a counsellor to students at Bethel as he has, with a God-given humility, wisely directed the course of our school. In appreciation for these years of service and for his unfailing kindness and sympathetic understanding, we dedicate to Dr. Hagstrom this 1941 SPIRE.

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• • • to nuniLrsx oux dau± • • • derson cf Scandia, Minnesota. The young couple later adopted a daughter, Marion, who is now Mrs. L. J. Melrose of St. Paul. Together with his family, then, the young Rev. Hagstrom continued in the service of the Lord. Later Mrs. Hagstrom became ill and was unable to continue her active work. Perhaps the greatest sorrow in Dr. Hagstrom's life came when, in February 1933, his wife suddenly pcssed away. On July 26, 1934 he was married to Miss Ebba Brundin of Englewood Church in Chicago, an active member and recording secretary of that church and an active young people's worker. She has been a great help to Dr. Hagstrom ir. his later years, both in church v ork and in the home. In the churches during Rev. Hagstrom's early ministry there were as yet no organized young people's societies. Then only twenty-six himself, he felt the need for an organization of this sort and worked to accomplish the founding of a unified group. As c result of his efforts, the first young people's union met in Rockford, Illinois, on June 7.4, 1893, with the young minister as chairman. The same year he was appointed Sunday School missionary for the American Baptist Publication Society and the Illinois Sunday School Union. He also found time to accept a further task as co-editor of the Young People's Paper for Swedish Baptist. In 1896 the First Swedish Baptist Church of Chicago called Rev. Hagstrom to its pastorate and he served there until 1907. Shortly after coming to Chicago he founded a religious paper, The Church and Home, and continued as its editor until he left to fill another position. The General Conference had decided tc appoint a mission secretary in order to effectively coordinate and further develop home mission interests. Rev. Hagstrom was elected to this office and worked successfully for three years to develop a stronger denominational consciousness. He resigned from this position in 1909 to accept the pastorate of the First Swedish Baptist Church of St. Paul, where he served until 1913. Then the General Conference which met in Duluth in 1913 passed a decision that set the future course of Dr. Hagstrom's life. At that time the Conference voted to move the Seminary, rich in tradition, from Morgan Park, Illinois to St. Paul and to consolidate it with Bethel Academy, which had been founded in 1905. Dr. Hagstrom, having proved himself a capable leader throughout his public career, was elected to the presidency of the newly combined schools. In addition to his executive tasks he accepted the duties of a professor's chair in the Seminary. A'mo