bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "The Boomers Got Their Cheap Seminary Education, On...":
In the comments above I spoke of the psychological poking and prodding LCMS seminarians rec'd, especially the M. Div students who are in a 4-year program versus the short term DELTO and SMP students. Not only did all this psychologizing make seminary needlessly more expensive involved, but I'm sure students with big student loan debts got exasperated or were washed out thanks to the psychologizing and the praxis training and all the extra driving that's involved, most of which prior seminarians never had to go through. Not only does
this drive up the student bill, but it makes holding down a part time job at seminary next to impossible--a double financial hit. Anyway, some of this ministry formation program may be coming to an end due to the financial crunch and maybe lack of M Div students.
See:
LCMS Ministerial Growth and Support Department Eliminated – “Good Riddance,” by Pr. Rossow
http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=13394
excerpts: The December issue of the Reporter includes an insert in which the LCMS Department of Ministerial Growth and Support announces that due to the structural changes approved at the July synod convention, their department has been eliminated. To that, I say “bravo” and “good riddance.” I pray this is only the first in a number of psychologically and sociologically ginned up programs based on felt needs to get the axe in the LCMS. It is too bad that it took a financial crisis to bring this about.
Speaking of training at the seminary, this department was also responsible for on-going ministerial training. There is a great irony here. The mindset that brought us this department is the same mindset that replaced the old fashioned, real ministerial growth endorsed by Luther and Walther, doctrinal studies at conventions and conferences, with new-fangled psychological presentations and sociological programs for church growth.
Ironically, there are now two more reverends who are without work because of the demise of this department. The same spirit of psychologizing, sociologizing and relational-vitalizing that brought this department into existence also brought us such questionable programs as SMP (specific ministry pastors), DELTO (long distance education and training of pastors), “lay ministers” (the classic relational oxymoron) and the like, and now because of a glut of partially trained pastors from these programs, these two men will have a difficult time finding a call.
related:
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2010/10/boomers-got-their-cheap-seminary.html
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Norman Teigen has left a new comment on your post "LCMS Seminary Costs":
I didn't follow these comments very well. Is there a vocabulary that I do not understand?
Is it timely to raise questions about seminaries? Here is my thought.
Close Mequon, Mankato, and Fort Wayne but retain St. Louis as a hub. Pool the financial resources of these former Synodical Conference groups. Allow for cultural and historical differences that do not impact the essence of the faith. (Some Conservatives, for example, don't allow women to vote in congregational meetings. Other Conservatives may assert other individual emphases which deserve attention.)
What think ye? Isn't it time to pool our dwindling resources and better proclaim the message of god's grace?
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GJ - I think it is going to happen, Norman, because of fixed costs. There will be a lot more consolidation. Americans do not want to have children, so the population is upside-down. I know two only-children who married and had no children. Many career women have one, trophy child.
Besides that, the seminaries have made education extremely costly without being valuable. They delight in forcing men out of seminary (after they have the tuition money) or out of the ministry.
Congregations are merging, which is another way of saying they are closing.
I suspect the Canadian "Missouri" seminary gets a direct subsidy. As I recall, Waterloo Lutheran University received a half-subsidy until it was sold to the province. As Wilfred Laurier University, WLU received a full subsidy and the seminary got a cash bonus. The seminary is still under-water because of pension obligations, the last I heard. They discovered their lost lamb when they needed money from me. Ha! I enjoyed that letter.
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Narrow-minded Lutheran has left a new comment on your post "LCMS Seminary Costs":
Enter Missouri's SMP program, to replace one (or both) sems. Having attended the Lutheran Concerns Assoc. conference a year ago, the skuttlebutt was that Missouri was kicking around the idea of sem students receiving initial pastoral education at the Concordia U's (ain't that grand, since CU's are such bastions of orthodox Lutheranism?). They would then finish it distance ed style.
I assume the Biblical languages are still taught at the CU's, but they are not required for the SMP. Okay, I've ranted enough recently about DELTO/SMP, so I'll shut up, other than to suggest that they just send them to Fuller and get it over with. Rodney Zwonitzer's "Testing the Claims of Church Growth" is a good read and refers to Fuller as the LCMS's "third seminary." CPH mysteriously stopped printing the book, so it's only available used, unless you have $200+ to spend on one of the few new ones left.
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GJ - Larry Olson, Drive-by DMin, Fuller Seminary, bragged about his alma mater graduating so many LCMS students too. For Missouri, WELS, and the Little Sect, Fuller Seminary is the path to promotion.
"Incidentally, during my mission counselor days in California during the 80's, I did take a course at Fuller from Carl George and Peter Wagner. I am grateful for the opportunity to have done so because it helped me to see through the lousy theology espoused by David Luecke in "Evangelical Style and Lutheran Substance" a book, by the way, which has been roundly criticized in WELS circles as your own columns have noted." Rev. Joel C. Gerlach (WELS) to Pastor Herman Otten, no date. [Gerlach taught at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary]
"Please stop exaggerating the amount of study that I have done at Fuller. After four years of study at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, which involved sixty-two different courses and a year of vicarage, I graduated in 1983. From 1987 to 1989 I took four courses where I was in a classroom with a Fuller instructor. That is the extent of my Fuller coursework...In addition, I have taken two courses at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and one at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. Because of Fuller's liberal (would you expect anything else?) policy on transfer of credit, and because of two independent studies I undertook, I could complete the degree by simply writing a dissertation." Lawrence Otto Olson, D. Min., Fuller Seminary, "A Response to Gregory L. Jackson, Ph.D.," Christian News, 3-28-94, p. 23
"To the best of my knowledge, only three WELS pastors have ever taken classes at Fuller Seminary: Reuel Schulz in the 1970s, and Robert Koester and I in the 1980s." Lawrence Otto Olson, D. Min., Fuller Seminary, "A Response to Gregory L. Jackson, Ph.D.," Christian News, 3-28-94, p. 23.
"You may reply that by 'Fuller-trained' you mean anyone who has attended a workshop presented by the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth, an agency which is independent of the Seminary. If that is the case, your attribution of 'Fuller-trained' is still simply not true. It would surprise me if even half of the two dozen people on your 'WELS/ELS Who's Who' list have attended a Fuller workshop; I personally know of only five who have." Lawrence Otto Olson, D. Min., Fuller Seminary, "A Response to Gregory L. Jackson, Ph.D.," Christian News, 3-28-94, p. 23.
"...and in the process we got a look at the inside of his study. [WELS pastor David Reichel, Mandan, ND] He's got all the standard reference works you'd expect to find in a confessional Lutheran pastor's office. But the handiest shelf, right at chest level, was reserved for a long row of binders from annual seminars at Fuller." Source: Pastor Paul Naumann, CLC. April 1, 1996, e-mail.
"The church growth movement has made inroads into nearly every denomination in America. Once considered only the turf of conservative evangelicals, you will now find church growth practitioners in the United Methodist Church, in the Presbyterian Church in the USA, and among the Episcopalians. The LCMS has more pastors enrolled in the Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary, the seedbed of the movement, than are enrolled in the graduate programs at their Fort Wayne and St. Louis seminaries combined, and most of them include church growth as part of their studies." Lawrence Otto Olson, D. Min., Fuller Seminary, "See How It Grows: Perspectives on Growth and the Church," EVANGELISM, February, 1991, Parish Consultant for the WELS Board of Parish Services and his district's Coordinator of Evangelism. p. 1.
"In late 1976, 80 district mission and evangelism executives and board members attended special Fuller Seminary sessions and by the late 1970s, courses on Church Growth principles were taught at both LCMS seminaries." [Toward a Theological Basis, Understanding and Use of Church Growth Principles in the LCMS. 1991. p. 1] Rev. Curtis Peterson, former WELS World Mission Board, "A Second and Third Look at Church Growth Principles," Metro South Pastors Conference Mishicot, Wisconsin, February 3, 1993 p. 10.
"Then there is the church growth movement, which has made more devastating headway in LCMS than in ELCA (although it is evident enough in the latter). Today, it is said, Missouri has three seminaries-- St. Louis, Ft Wayne, and Fuller Seminary in California, the hothouse of church growth enthusiasms. The synodical and district mission offices are frequently controlled by church growth technocrats...But the idea that Word and Sacrament ministry is somehow validated by calculable results is utterly alien to the Lutheran Reformation...The triumph of style over substance, however, is all too evident in LCMS congregations that look like Baptists with vestments. As we have noted before, second-rate Lutherans make fourth-rate Baptists." Rev. Richard Neuhaus, (ELCA at the time), Forum Letter, 338 E 19th Street New York, NY 10003 November 26, 1989 p. 2.
