Bruce Church wrote about the inexpensive Missouri seminary at St. Catherine's, Ontario, so I looked up my old seminary and found a real bargain.
Waterloo Lutheran Seminary tuition and fees.
An international student (Yankee) pays only $3,000 net per term, thanks to a generous credit. Senior Yankees (over 60) pay only $2,000 net per term.
Canadians pay less than $2,000 - unless they mean servants and maids when they say "domestic students."
The advantages are many. Waterloo's first president was Little, a UOJ advocate - once admired by Robert Preus, no less. He mentioned Little to me.
Thanks to UOJ Pietism, the seminary moved from its original base to the Canadian version of ELCA, eh? They were a bit ahead of ELCA in gay marriage department. My vicarage congregation announced they would perform same-sex marriages whether the synod approved or not. An Episcopalian bishop was interim senior pastor for a period of time. All of the above would have given my vicarage supervisor a coronary, stroke, or both.
Waterloo did not ordain women when I graduated in 1972, but one woman was a student. Now women are faculty members and ordination is open to everyone. The lesbian bishop of the Canadian Lutherans came from Waterloo and the Eastern Canada Synod, although biographical details are sparse and vague.
Some advantages for the Syn Conference guys:
1. Experience ecumenism. The seminary usually has students from various denominations, all pursuing ordination or earning a real degree after ordination.
2. Enjoy co-ed seminary instruction. The progressives who want to have women openly ordained and teaching men should spend some time in Waterloo. You also have twice the chance to find a date for Saturday night.
3. Meet future leaders. The lesbian Lutheran bishop of all Canada is from the seminary. The newly fired head of Church and Society, ELCA, graduated from Waterloo. Least of all, this blogger, without a friend in the world, earned an MDiv before heading to Yale University and Notre Dame, taking up a blog that no one reads because it has no credibility.
Satire button off.
Looking the seminary is good reason to follow Lenski's advice - "Resist the beginnings." I loved being in Ontario and serving at that huge church for several years, as a student worker and vicar. There was little difference at that time between St. Peter's and the nearby conservative LCMS congregation - worship, practice, doctrine, and culture were almost identical.
I was already getting in trouble for challenging people in class at Waterloo. But I never expected the depths of apostasy and depravity that would hit that school in the years to come.
The downward skid is just like the acceleration of a falling object. The initial movement is slight, but it keeps picking up on the way down. Try to stop a sect which is going straight down at full speed. God's Word can do it but few want to apply to Word to anything.
---
bruce-church (http://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Another Canadian Lutheran Seminary Bargain - Ideal...":
Yes, the liberal Lutheran seminaries are all relatively very inexpensive. It's counter-intuitive that the conservative seminaries used to have many more M Div students than the liberal seminaries, and ended up being more inexpensive. You'd think more students, the cheaper it would get. However, some devil whispered it into the ears of synodical officials that seminary students would make good cash cows, and it's all history now:
seminarian cash cow:
http://www.ericnagel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/cash-cow.jpg
I say conservative seminaries "used to" have more M Div students because both LCMS seminaries are now pushing only 50 M Div students per class, with the rest being filler students. They are only 30 years behind the liberal seminaries in that regard.
What's not so funny is LCMS seminary profs advise their students that upon graduation (M Div) they should go for a higher degree, or go study for six months at Westfield House in Cambridge, the ELCE seminary, which has access to Cambridge library. They think they are in the old days when students graduated without debt, without huge student loan bills to pay back, and they had contacts who would pay for such things. Seminary students who approach rich donors generally are told they are 25,000 donor request letters from synod too late, and almost all their discretionary money is gone, and like Esau, the students would have to accept a lesser blessing, or nothing:
http://www.westfieldhouse.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2&Itemid=3
