If you ask most young pastors today their biggest complaint, it would be that the financial hurdle to enter ministry is too high. As a result, a majority of them are saddled with debt that, as far as they can tell, may never be repaid. When you ask seminary administrators about this problem, they point to the synod itself, which offers little or nothing in the form of operating income to support the seminaries operations. This problem has been simmering for over a decade. This leads many thoughtful people to ask, “What about the synod’s priorities? Are we unable to fulfill them?” Good question!
Is the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod a poor church? Hardly! Lutheran Church Extension Fund assets are about $1.8 billion (Sept. 09). Concordia University endowments are about $193 million (Oct. 09). The synod owns thirty-five district offices, ten university campuses, two seminary campuses, and two office campuses, almost all in US suburban metropolitan areas. Congregational offering plate revenue is about $1.4 billion per year, $51 million of which is sent to the districts, and $19 million of which is sent to synod offices (Sept. 09). The LCMS Board of Directors annual budget is about $81 million (Sept. 09).
The synod does not have a money problem, if you simply look at assets and revenue. The problem is allocations and priorities. These allocations and priorities are set, for the most part, by resolutions adopted by the synod in convention. If the synod in convention does not aggressively and regularly adopt resolutions for the financial support of seminaries that are mandatory, specific, and generous, the other agencies of the synod will use their influence to direct the revenue stream and the asset bank in their own direction.
The result of this redirection of revenue and assets is that, in recent decades, the seminaries cannot cover their own costs and then have to pass on their expenses to their students. In addition to this heavy financial burden on seminary students, they are now also faced with the discouraging prospect of no call and no job upon graduation. The last graduating class had 80 seminarians who could not be placed in the Spring placement. But all Specific Ministry Program (SMP) students are placed automatically, since they study where they live and serve.
Today’s potential seminary students look at their costs, look at the uncertainty of placement, look at the SMP option, and then vote with their feet. Today the SMP program enrollment is nearing the enrollment of residential students at the Fort Wayne seminary. At some point, when SMP gets a sufficiently large enrollment, people might realize that the SMP is a whole lot less of a financial burden for students, it doesn’t really need seminary professors or seminary campuses, and then both seminary professors and their campuses could become extinct.
What would the synod lose if it closed its seminaries and did all pastoral training by SMP? Most significantly, the synod would lose the social cohesion among its pastoral rank and file that comes from the shared seminary experience. This cohesion, or concordia, is a fragile thing and when lost leads to sectarianism and schism. Secondarily, the synod would lose the theological cohesion that comes from seminarians submitting to the teaching of a “faculty,” i.e., a team of professionals dedicated to a doctrinal standard and to common goals for the common good of the church.
In addition to these factors, which are vital to the health of the synod, the students would lose the communal benefits of “outside of the classroom” discussions with professors, the support group of fellow students, the vast libraries, the expertise of professors with Ph.D.s in various theological disciplines, a daily spiritual discipline in genuine Lutheran worship, and the development of friendships for themselves and their wives that last a lifetime.
Persons who have not studied at our seminaries don’t know what a treasure our synod has there. At Saint Louis and Fort Wayne are some of the world’s foremost Lutheran exegetes, theologians, church historians, missiologists, homileticians, liturgiologists, church musicians, pastoral counselors, and experts in pastoral practice of every sort. Christian theologians around the world recognize the names of: Nagel, Scaer, Feurhahn, Weinrich, Kolb, Wenthe, Arand, Just, Voelz, Rast, Raabe, Gieschen, Gibbs, Resch, Rosin—just to name a few in no particular order.
If the synod closed its seminaries, it would also miss out on the greatest opportunity of the Third Millenia: globalization. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has four things to offer the new Lutheran churches around the globe: financial support, charitable support and relief, seminary education, and post M.Div. graduate theological education. For world Lutheran churches that are still small, or struggling financially, the best way that we can help is not to send “missionaries” (though those are still needed in some places), but to educate their future pastors and leaders at our Fort Wayne and Saint Louis seminaries. If we want to talk about “missions,” this is it! This is already going on, and producing amazing results! (see http://mercyjourney.blogspot.com/2010/03/its-time-to-rock-lutheran-world.html)
This is another reason that we like Matt Harrison. He has traveled around the world numerous times, and understands the challenges and opportunities faced by our partner churches. He understands the impact that well-trained pastors have on the world and how essential they are for missions. At a time when our synod has cut back support for its residential seminaries, he says it’s time to reinvest in them, that with God’s help we might “rock the world.” Lutheran seminaries have been transforming men and congregations for five hundred years. Now is no time to hinder that amazing work of the Holy Spirit!
