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Rev. Dr. David H. Benke's avatar

This is truly the case, Joel Dieterichs. The seminary presidents, no doubt harried by their boards of regents and subsets of alumni, have both been reactive in response and inhospitable to anything but "step back and shut up" as the CMPL posits alternatives to the current formation and development options for pastoral training.

The over-stress on residential training has always at its root been about real estate, that is, the absolute necessity of two midwestern seminary campuses (campi?) and all the buildings and substructures on X amount of acreage in Fort Wayne and St. Louis.

So the stiff-arm must be applied not only to an entire program and its faculty, but even to speaking about alternate opportunities in any public forum (viz. the Ahlmann apology). Using a bogus definition of the Synod's dissent process as a cudgel only demonstrates how frightened the Synodical leadership is when it comes to this necessary but hard conversation.

The solutions are simply not that difficult. Bring ILT in as a collaborative partner and deal with the real estate along the way. Move the ball down the court for the good of the church body.

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Glen Piper (ghp1580)'s avatar

Speaking of responses that are less than helpful in projecting best construction. Ascribing motives of unnamed cabals to trope-like greed, bogus bullying cudgels, fear, and an unwillingness to acknowledge (a singular view of) reality? This hardly seems like an invitation to open collaboration.

But, perhaps, it is a more honest statement regarding the increasingly binary gulf facing us.

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Rev. Dr. David H. Benke's avatar

Good to hear from you, Glen! The cudgeling is in the statements of the seminary presidents which is stiff-arming conversation. The conversation hasn't begun because it's been stopped before beginning. I still think it's all about real estate, legacy real estate. But I'm from New York, where everything is about real estate. In life, the participants are all from the same denomination, and many of them were faculty and staff inside the seminary walls. It's a fraternal circumstance meant - as is the case in pretty much all such programs across the country - to provide more non-residential options with integrity.

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