Throwback: A Brief Window to Save the Concordias and LCMS Seminaries

Eight years ago, I offered some observations about, and recommendations for the Concordias and Seminaries. How has it held up almost a decade later?

Written for Steadfast Lutherans in November 2016. The original decision tree graphic has been found and added to the post.

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The defeat of Hillary Clinton in this year’s [2016] Presidential Elections temporarily removes the target on the Concordia University System (CUS) and the two Synod seminaries. We no longer face an emergency, but the reprieve is only somewhere between four and eight years. That said, we should not discount Donald Trump falling in line with the current zeitgeist. The Synod has an urgent task to finalize the rationalization of its higher education assets before 2020.

This is what we know:

1. The LCMS continues its multi-generational decline in membership and attendance.

2. LCMS funding continues to shrink as a corollary of membership attrition.

3. America is increasingly hostile to religious liberty.

4. Tertiary education institutions that depend on federal funds through direct grants or indirect student loans are vulnerable to social engineering.

5. CUS and Seminary tuition has paced national trends, resulting in more indebted graduates.

6. CUS is admitting more non-Lutherans and non-LCMS Lutherans to maintain viability.

7. CUS no longer primarily graduates church workers to serve the Synod and Christ’s Church, as its Synodical mandate requires.

8. There is little uniformity between the Concordias when measured by acceptance standards, graduation rates, and courses offered.

9. The LCMS has abandoned doctrinal control over CUS.

10. The LCMS is expected to subsidize and underwrite CUS.

11. Alternate track routes to ordination are undermining residential seminary training.

12. A rising number of LCMS congregations are unable to support fully trained pastors.

13. Residential pastoral training and formation enrollment is low.

14. Significant theological differences exist between the two seminaries, reflected in their graduates.

15. The status quo is untenable.

The decision tree for what to do for the best outcome is quite simple (see diagram below - click to enlarge it). Some of the individual components are complex, but the decision flow clarifies what is needed. It will take great skill and leadership to carve through the vested interests at each current institution.

1. A national university with an attached seminary would be the most sustainable long-term solution.

2. A new institution should reject all Federal funds and government student loans, following the traditions of Hillsdale College and Grove City College.

3. Full-time undergraduate enrollment of at least 3,000 should provide efficiencies of scale.

4. Detachment from LCMS headquarters will be mutually beneficial, but the new institution must be kept under tight doctrinal supervision.

5. All faculty and students would be contractually bound to abide by the teachings of the Synod.

6. A policy of preferential hiring of LCMS members as faculty should be imposed in the tradition of Calvin College, which has never been at risk of losing its accreditation for its denominational-based hiring practices.

7. The LCMS has the capacity to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for an endowment by selling some of the Concordias and both Seminaries as going concerns, selling them for development, and/or asset stripping them. (CTSFW cannot be sold—it returns to the donor if its status changes.)

8. The campus of Concordia University Texas has the most potential for a national university and seminary and has an existing development plan that can be modified. CUT faculty would be required to reapply for their positions in competition with all other CUS faculty.

9. A new institution should have a primary mandate to graduate church workers.

10. Church workers should be offered subsidized tuition worth 80% of a four-year degree, with a balance provided by private funds and loans. In exchange for the subsidy, church workers would commit to working for the Synod in paid employment for at least 5 years, failing which, the subsidy would be converted to a pro-rated loan for repayment over a maximum of 15 years.

11. M.Div students should receive free tuition provided they are ordained and remain rostered for 12 years.

12. Alternate tracks to ordination should be ended except for the most exceptional circumstances.