Claus Lauritz Clausen, a Danish student of theology seeking employment as a tutor in Norway, was persuaded, probably by the father of Sören Bakke in Drammen, to heed the call from America.[90] On his arrival in the West in 1843, he found the need for a pastor and preacher more urgent than for a teacher, and accordingly he sought and received ordination at the hands of a German Lutheran minister, October, 1843.[91] He proceeded to organize, in Heg's barn at Norway, the first congregation of Norwegian Lutherans in the United States, and so began a career of useful ministration which lasted nearly half a century. Not long after his ordination, its validity was called in question by strict Lutherans. The question was finally submitted to the theological faculty of the University of Christiania, which decided that "the circumstance that an ordination is performed by a minister and not by a bishop, cannot in itself destroy the validity of the ministerial ordination."[92] At any rate, Clausen's activity, general helpfulness, staunchness of convictions, and length of service, if not his ordination, make him one of the typical pioneer preachers.[93] [90] Nelson, _Scandinavians in the United States_, (2d ed.) 387 ff. [91] Bothne, _Kort Udsigt_, 835 ff. [92] Jacobs, _Evangelical Lutheran Church_, 411. [93] Bothne, _Kort Udsigt_, 835; Jensson, _American Lutheran Biographies_, "Clausen." Another clergyman of the same class as Clausen, was Elling Eielsen, a Haugian lay-preacher who went from place to place in the Northwest from 1839 to 1843, holding services with his countrymen. He was ordained in the same month as Clausen, and, like him, in a semi-valid fashion, by a Lutheran clergyman, not a bishop.[94] Like Clausen, also, his term of labors as a Haugian apostle, passed forty years.[95] [94] Brohough, _Elling Eielsens Liv og Virksomhed_, ch. II, and App. [95] Nelson, in his _Scandinavians in the United States_, 388, is probably mistaken in stating that Eielsen built the first Norwegian church and organized the first congregation in 1842 at Fox River, confusing the fact that Eielsen had built a log house on his own land, and held religious services in the loft, with the possibility of the formation of a congregation. Eielsen's biographer makes no mention of his organization of a regular congregation. Brohough, _Elling Eielsens Liv og Virksomhed_, 61.