bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Lutheran Cathedrals Are Also In Trouble":
"For many [cathedrals], trust funds and endowments are all that is sustaining them."
That reminds me of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. With an $80 million endowment and growing, it only has 60-some M. Div students per class, and yet they pay through the nose to go there. Then they have all the non-M.Div. filler GED students (DELTO, etc) who have no business being there. Of course, the deaconesses are all pretty so I can't say anything about them.
Meanwhile, Dean Wenthe is retiring from Ft. Wayne. I guess he thought that making Ft. Wayne as expensive as Yale Seminary was enough of a life achievement, and everything else would just be anticlimactic.
5 comments:
Missouri provides virtually no support for the sems. They apparently think Ablaze (oops, TM) and suing four little old ladies in CA are better investments. Meanwhile, they will push the SMP to produce good little CG/CW/Ablaze (oops, TM)/open Communion generic Evangelical Protestant pastors that don't even have a working knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, or Latin. But there's always Fuller.
From where do the synods get their funds? Don't they get them, mostly from the donations of member congregations, and endowments?
How much does your congregation provide to the synod specifically designated to the operation of her seminaries? Does your congregation provide enough funds to any seminary for the four year education of even one student?
I am not directing these questions to Narrow-Minded Lutheran. I am directing it to all who would blame the seminaries.
Does your congregation have a son at an LCMS seminary? Do you provide for his entire education there?
Do not blame the president of the seminary if graduates are saddled with huge education debt.
Thank God that these men are willing to take on this debt in order to serve as shepherd to the flock of which you are a member.
Thank you, Dr. Wenthe for your service as the President of Concordia Theological Seminary.
John
An endowment makes the synods more independent, i.e., less dependent upon weekly offerings and more free to do as they please. If the members do not like it, they can go elsewhere.
As I recall from the 2010 Lutheran Concerns Association Conference in Ft. Wayne last January, each sem received $150,000 from the synod's one-billion-dollar budget for FY 2010.
Narrow-minded Lutheran is right about the LCMS seminary budget. The LCMS tabulates its budget like Schroeder says the WELS will do from now on, so that no matter where the schools or other entities get their money (gifts, tuition, etc), it still counts under the synodal budget.
The LCMS budget for both seminaries is $28,946,000, of which $300,000 comes from the synod for naming rights. The total budget for the LCMS is 1.16 billion dollars. See:
http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=10186
http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/Board_Of_Directors/Program%20Budget%20Summary%20-%20FY11.pdf
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