bruce-church (http://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Lifetime Achievement":
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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bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Your LCMS Benevolence Dollars - Not At Work Suppor...":
Narrow-minded Lutheran, The tuition cost at the seminaries has always been prohibitive since the 1980s, I'd wager. Then because they couldn't get enough M Div students (to meet a projected demand that never materialized), they promoted the DELTO and SMP programs instead of lowering the tuition price and granting more scholarships to get more M. Divs.
This happened in the WELS, too. Both synods now have plenty of pastors who don't know any Hebrew or Latin. The WELS ministerial college (NWC and then at MLC) quickly became more expensive than the state universities, just like the LCMS.
I can't remember the acronym the WELS uses for these students (if there is an acronym), but they usually go by the title "second career students."
Due to there being so many DELTO and SMP grads, and WELS second career grads, now all available slots are taken, so the call system has been locked up for years in both synods. Several years ago already any LCMS pastor who resigned to the "candidate" status would have a hard time getting back into the ministry in the LCMS, since they had to make room for students to get calls. In the LCMS, if you don't make the cut, you're banished to one of the lower paying synods, or the ELCA, if you still want to be in the ministry. Good luck with that if you ran up a big student loan bill at LCMS schools!
Lately, a retired WELS pastor who wanted to be a vacancy pastor during retirement told me that the whole vacancy pastor field has dried up since the call system in the WELS has locked up, and calls are filled in record time. Now these pastors can only hope to fill in a mid-week or Sunday service here and there. Now they wish they hadn't retired when they did, and they rue the fact that many slots are filled by half-trained men.
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Narrow-minded Lutheran has left a new comment on your post "Your LCMS Benevolence Dollars - Not At Work Suppor...":
Thanks for your comments, Bruce. I well-remember the "pastor shortage panic" that Missouri was promoting. I think this past Spring's number of uncalled candidates, particularly at Fort Wayne, brought the truth to light, although I believe nearly all have been placed now.
The "shortage" figures were deceptive by including parishes not seeking a full-time pastor. Some parishes don't want to pay for the Concordia Plan, some are served by an emeritus pastor, and some are in districts whose DP's are happy to allow vicars to administer the Sacraments.
