bruce-church (http://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Modest Proposal":
All conservative Lutherans in America should be supporting St. Catharine's Lutheran seminary because it is affordable enough for younger seminarians to attend--not just second career students and retirees. Who wants a geriatric ministerium? Besides, no one should recommend a seminary that a student couldn't possibly afford.
Even if a church chips in, say $2,000, each year towards his seminary education, that's just loose change compared to the seminary bill and cost of living. Moreover, these churches often don't give any money during the vicarage year thinking that the seminarian is employed, but yet the pay is so very low that during that year the seminarian runs up great credit card debts.
He might enjoy the seminary while he's there, not thinking about how many experience crushing debt and penury afterward, especially if the seminarian doesn't receive a call. (The reasons for not receiving a call a myriad, and often quite petty.) That's no reason to put any seminarian at risk. Just recommend St. Catharine's to be on the safe side.
***
GJ - Bruce C. is right.
The synods should say, "This seminarian is from your congregation. We expect you to pay a substantial part of his education." Perhaps there is a more diplomatic way to say it, but that is the main point.
10 comments:
Bruce,
If a sem grad winds up owing a great deal of money for his education, will he not attempt to recover his expenses?
All the learning on how to do Greek or Hebrew will just be sidelined. Because at the end, the tools he will apply will be from an MBA course, like crowd psychology, politics, marketing and advertisement. He will turn the church into a service organization.
Greek and Hebrew got nothing to do with this scheme of things, no?
Just me old skeptic self,
LPC
Thanks for the tip. I may have to look into becoming a temporary Canadian. I doubt my wife would mind since she is a Detroit girl.
One of the reasons I had to forego The Fort was because of the health insurance premiums. My wife was going to carry us with her job, but she was "down-sized." Given her pre-exising conditions, we would have had to go on Concordia's insurance, since nary an agent would talk to her. Although Concordia is great insurance, it would have run seven-grand per year for the two of us.
Due to health insurance premiums, your point about vicars also needing help is a good one.
Hi Narrow-minded Lutheran,
Glad I could help, and thanks for the comment!
The Preus brothers going to St. Catharines right now live on the US (NY) side, and commute the 15 miles to seminary. I don't know whether they have a wait at the border both ways. Give the seminary a call to find out.
There's no need to become a temporary Canadian unless you want to. I'm sure it would be easy to do since most countries give student visas nearly automatically, but the process might take six months if Canada is anything like the US in that regard. If you are a regular commuter, there might be a fast lane you can go through at the border--sort of like E-ZPass or I-Pass.
Talk about commutes to seminary. In St. Louis a lot of students commute ten minutes from apartments in Maplewood. Clayton, where the seminary is at, is way too pricey unless you live in campus housing, though that's probably more costly than the Maplewood apartments. By contrast, there are plenty of reasonably priced apartments near the Fort.
The WELS seminary in Mequon is also in a pricey area, so the married students often stay in Milwaukee neighborhoods that haven't been gentrified yet. They often travel 18 miles to seminary. (The WELS and ELS seminaries are unaccredited, but are priced as though they were.)
The longest seminarian commute I know of was a WELS seminarian whose wife was a teacher at Jefferson, WI, or maybe it was Ft. Atkinson. However, they were staying at an apartment in Johnson Creek, WI, so neither would have a super-long commute. Her commute was 7 or 15 miles long on state roads, but his was 57 miles, mostly on interstates. I asked him how he could afford gas at $3.25 per gallon, and he said he drives a motorcycle when the weather is decent. He probably didn't study a whole lot after being on the road three hours per day fighting traffic, I'd bet:
Map of Johnson Creek, WI, to Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, Mequon, WI:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=FRFKkQIdgWm1-ikDrezQEdYFiDEGF4gB7AlZLg%3BFc2xkwIdWVjB-iE-AZi1rObBKw&q=from:johnson+creek,+wi,+to:Wisconsin+Lutheran+seminary,+Mequon,+wi&aq=&sll=43.13027,-88.38167&sspn=0.665482,0.979156&gl=us&ie=UTF8&ll=43.13027,-88.38167&spn=0.665482,0.979156&z=10&saddr=johnson+creek,+wi,&daddr=Wisconsin+Lutheran+seminary,+Mequon,+wi
Thanks, Bruce. I'm checking out their website as we speak.
Hi LPC,
No need to think your skeptical. (Besides, you probably meant cynical.) I'm sure that in an effort to pay off their student loan debt, pastors pressure the congregation for money, especially if they grew up an upper-middle class family, e.g. dad was a GM worker.
PK* pastors often think of staying in the ministry until they are 70, but non-PK pastors often want to retire when their dad did, at 64 or even 56. Those are the ones that really pressure the congregations for a higher salary. And like GM union workers, they want their big salary no matter what might happen to the company/congregation, and no matter how poor a job they are doing. They'll just blame everything on the "management" like they did at the old GM until it went bankrupt even after a sizable bailout.
In the last couple decades Thrivent Retirement Planners have went around saying everyone needs to have at least $500,000 in investments to retire comfortably, so that's caused a lot of pastors to demand more, except that Thrivent counselors also talked to the congregants about retirement, so people are less willing to give to church, except maybe after they die. (I'm not sure how heaven looks at giving after one dies. The widow with the mite had great faith to give the mite, but it doesn't take much faith in order to bequeath money to the church after death!)
*Preacher's Kid
This post refers back to this earlier post:
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2011/02/modest-proposal.html
Looking at stats, I find it humorous that the 70,000 member LCC provides 25% of the sem's financial support. The 2.5-million member LCMS, with a budget of a billion smackers, provides each of their sems with $150,000.
The LCC provides 25 times as much support for their seminary as the LCMS does for theirs (or at least for the St. Louis Concordia). I assume that the Fort budget is about the same since the Fort is actually slightly more expensive to attend than St. Louis.
Okay, now to "show your work":
The budget for Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, is $15 million, and they only receive $150,000 from the synod. That works out to one percent of the seminary budget. The LCC synod provides 25% of St. Catharine's budget. So the LCC supports their seminary at rate 25 times greater than the LCMS does.
Pictures:
Waterloo Lutheran Seminary parking lot plus building:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6533641
Another Waterloo Lutheran Seminary building in Google's Streetview:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=seminary,+Ontario,+Canada&aq=&sll=43.115489,-79.246101&sspn=0.020801,0.030599&ie=UTF8&hq=Seminary&hnear=Seminary,+Waterloo,+Waterloo+Regional+Municipality,+Ontario+N2L+3B4,+Canada&t=h&layer=c&cbll=43.471591,-80.528719&panoid=R3rAZh4SXSRY0qzjJvwDTA&cbp=12,333.57,,0,0&ll=43.471601,-80.528723&spn=0.00517,0.00765&z=17
Concordia Lutheran Seminary, St. Catharines, overhead and Streetview:
http://www.brocku.ca/concordiaseminary/
Streetview:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=St.+Catharines+seminary,+Ontario,+Canada&aq=&sll=43.150847,-79.249878&sspn=0.083157,0.122395&ie=UTF8&hq=St.+Catharines+seminary,&hnear=Ontario,+Canada&ll=43.121496,-79.243419&spn=0.002616,0.003825&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=43.121379,-79.243409&panoid=f0mu_n4HK2954lUgv2qgOw&cbp=12,273.39,,0,3.36
Overhead:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=St.+Catharines+seminary,+Ontario,+Canada&aq=&sll=43.150847,-79.249878&sspn=0.083157,0.122395&ie=UTF8&hq=St.+Catharines+seminary,&hnear=Ontario,+Canada&t=h&ll=43.121782,-79.244267&spn=0.001308,0.001912&z=19
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