Bruce Church wrote about the Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne Library in this post:
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2011/05/at-home-in-knappy-synod-ft-wayne-more.html
I was impressed with the original library, which was simple and packed with plenty of good books. I attended one of the gatherings when Wenthe was proposing his expensive building project, based on improving the library. That was many years ago, perhaps 1992.
Now that both seminaries in Missouri are failing, even with their Yale Divinity level tuition, the folly of the Mistake on the Lake is clear.
Books are no longer the essential of a seminary education. A student can carry far more ebooks on one digital device in his hand than their pulp equivalent in a large car. Many books are still handy for study, but how do they compete with Lenski, 40 translations of the Bible, grammatical helps for the Bible, and Luther on a hard drive?
That is just part of the folly.
Even worse is spending all that money on a gaudy complex while starving future students with enormous tuition loans. Did anyone on the faculty consider how they are living like princes on the government loans taken out by their students, on the puny salaries earned by the seminary wives?
How many seminary professors leave seminary teaching (willingly) for a parish? That is a cushy job.
The Syn Conference leaders have several great ways to improve their sects:
1. Raise more money.
2. Build more buildings.
3. Use the vast resources of the stewardship department to locate rich adulterers who want to buy indulgences, i.e., buildings named after them.
4. Rely on Thrivent loot.
5. Beg the foundations to expand their work for the Lord in a generic, non-threatening way.
