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| "Brett, your Photoshops do not change one painful fact - all the seminaries are going down the sewer together, with us." |
Seminary status check - Living Lutheran:
"Michael Cooper-White, president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, said seminary education today takes “a new approach to formation and leadership development. [This] goes beyond checking off a list of courses. We are all looking for ways to better prepare people for the amazingly complex and challenging context of today’s ministry,” he said.
These efforts are occurring amid declining enrollment. Last year 1,627 students were involved in all seminary programs, said Jonathan Strandjord, ELCA program director for seminaries. That reduced number includes people not preparing for pastoral ministry or those already ordained studying for additional degrees.
In 2008, ELCA seminaries graduated 271 students with the Master of Divinity degree that usually leads to ordination. In 2016 there were 173 such graduates, down nearly 100 from eight years ago.
Those numbers parallel the decline in other seminaries affiliated with the Association of Theological Schools, where total seminary enrollment is down as much as 40 percent in other denominations.
GJ - Not to mention the LCMS, WELS, and ELS, which work closely with ELCA but hide this fact from their gullible members.
Merging and moving
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| United Getty-Philly has a Presbyterian president. In fact, three new ELCA sem presidents in a row are women. |
Several ELCA schools are already making major changes. Gettysburg Seminary, the oldest of the ELCA theological schools, is merging with the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia—a union contemplated as long as 50 years. This year the two schools will become United Lutheran Theological Seminary, with campuses in Philadelphia and Gettysburg.
Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, is merging with nearby Capital University, an ELCA school, in a union that will be completed this year.
Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, Calif., merged with the ELCA’s California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. The seminary will sell its aging and expensive-to-maintain campus and is moving downtown near Berkeley City College and the University of California.
Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, S.C., is now affiliated with Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C.
School officials see these moves as not only cost-saving but also as ways to expand the seminary experience.
“For some time, many seminaries had become monastic in nature,” said Wayne Powell, president of Lenoir-Rhyne. Today, he said, “seminaries are becoming more interactive with the real world, which, of course, provides the students with a more practical education.”
Cooper-White said the Gettysburg union with the Philadelphia school was not just a “merger, but a new approach to formation and leadership development.”
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| Louise Johnson - "more partners." |
Seminaries will seek more “partners” in the education of church leaders, said Louise Johnson, president of Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. The partners will include other schools, synods, congregations and other agencies, she said. For example, working through the campus ministry program at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Wartburg has five undergraduates taking seminary courses while still in college. The seminary is exploring similar partnerships in Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota.
The Philadelphia seminary works with congregations in Rochester, N.Y., and Boston to develop local sites for theological education, said David Lose, president of the school.
Curriculum and teaching style is also changing dramatically because the church doesn’t have “the same center of gravity or cultural prominence that it once did,” Lose said. “Congregations can no longer imagine that they are a spiritual destination that people informed by the culture will come to seeking inspiration.” Rather than a “concert hall attended by people who love music,” churches need to be more like a “community music school that equips people to better play music, to play the faith,” he added.
A pastor who leads a congregation will be “less of a performer and more of a coach,” Lose said, adding that the challenge to seminary education is to develop a curriculum content and style of teaching “to train that kind of leader.”
Congregations calling newly ordained pastors will have to prepare themselves for these kinds of leaders (see “A new kind of pastor” for a real hoot)."
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| Robin Steinke's Luther Seminary has not merged or moved...yet. Luther merged some years ago with Northwestern. What up with LSTC - Chicago? |
'via Blog this'
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| WELS and Missouri already have annual ministry conferences with ELCA clergy leaders, hosted and planned by Mark Jeske. |
