Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Page 248
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 248

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

248 HIGHER EDUCATION

ethnic minorities as, with recently awakened self-con-
sciousness and self-esteem, they explode from the physi-
cal, occupational, and cultural ghettos in which they
have so long been confined.

Dream or Myth?

Within the context of social change, the educational
enterprise has been both accelerator and brake. The
extension of free, or at least relatively inexpensive, edu-
cation to all segments of the population and through all
the years from kindergarten through graduate school
is certainly one of the massive accomplishments of mod-
ern times. There is reason to believe that, for various
social, economic, and political reasons, the upper level
of compulsory education may soon be raised, so that
theoretically almost every young American citizen will
have had some college experience. Already any young
person of at least average ability can, again theoretically,
make an occupational choice from a bewildering list of
possibilities from astrophysics to zoology and pursue his
interest to the limit of his ability in the tax-supported
sector of the American educational system. It has long
been a commonplace observation that public education
has been the chief factor and accelerator of cultural
change and social mobility in the American nation.

But every American citizen knows that this beautiful
picture has many blemishes and that the great dream
is in many respects a myth. It is simply not true that
every American child has access to the educational
advantages so widely advertised. Specific social or eco-
nomic limitations often prevent this, or perhaps the
educational process at one level simply does not prepare
him for acceptable work at the next.

Cooperation in Crisis

The whole American educational system is further-
more rushing into a fiscal crisis of the first magnitude.
Because the cost of education has for some years been
rapidly outstripping all existing methods of support, it is
now generally acknowledged that all private educational
institutions, including the largest and most prestigious,
are engaged in a dramatic struggle for sheer and out-
right survival! To the surprise of many, the malady has
spread to the public sector to the point that certain state
systems of higher education have reached the legal and
practical limits of their funding powers. We have even
seen municipal school systems close all schools for weeks
at a time out of absolute lack of funds.

Little wonder, then, that both private and public
institutions have been seeking means and devices both
to stretch the dollar and to improve and revitalize the
educational process, which in many ways had become
overgrown with archaic practices and paralyzing tradi-
tions. The result has been a whole new vocabulary of
cooperative endeavors through which schools hope to
assist each other toward greater educational and fiscal
strength and even viability. Colleges have joined to-
gether in consortia largely to avoid excessive duplications
in program. State schools have been welded into sys-

tems to allow a greater measure of intelligent centralized
control and to avoid an astronomical and impossible rise
in total budget.

The American Association of Theological Schools is
urging seminaries to join into clusters for both educa-
tional and economic reasons. New educational struc-
tures, seeking to avoid the restrictive forms of the past,
are calling themselves centers and institutes.

Through it all there still persists, apparently inevi-
tably, the factor of competition both for funds and for
competent students. Schools are still being judged by
their products, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and
ironically have been unable to meet the full demands
of society even while they are in danger of perishing from
overgrowth.

Ministerial Education

Perhaps the most intimate context in which minis-
terial education takes place is that of the church body
which sponsors it. As acommunity of human individuals,
it constitutes a social group as capable of change or re-
sistance to it, of function and dysfunction, of internal
cooperation and conflict, as any other group.

It is manifestly impossible to repeat here the entire
discussion of change in American church life, thought,
action, and organization which has resulted in a volumi-
nous literature. However, certain specific developments
need to be carefully observed and charted if the educa-
tional task is to be intelligently undertaken.

A major issue, the resolution of which will necessarily
have a substantial impact on certain aspects of minis-
terial education, is the matter of cooperation among
church bodies, especially the Lutheran church bodies
in the present instance. Certainly there is no need for
the church’s educational system to become a pressure
group in the discussion and resolution of these difficult
matters. However, the members of our educational com-
munities, both faculty members and students, are active
members of the church and as such should be, and want
to be, active participants in this vital conversation. The
Board for Higher Education needs to be sensitive to
ecclesiastical developments and carefully weigh their
effect on the organization and function of the Synod’s
program of higher education.

Another issue in contemporary church life which
necessarily affects the character and quality of ministe-
rial education is the degree of financial support which
the supporting church body receives from its constitu-
ents. It is probably true that no voluntary organization
which is essentially altruistic in character is able to main-
tain its level of support in a time of inflationary price
rises. Most people simply do not increase their contribu-
tions in adequate proportion. In recent years the educa-
tional system of The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod
has had to contend with the fact that its support has not
kept up with rising costs. However, this in turn is the
result of the fact that the Synod itself has not been able
to elicit the kind of concrete financial support to under-
write the kind of expanded program which, by common
consent, is called for by the crisis of our times.