Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Page 249
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 249

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

HIGHER EDUCATION 249

The Ministry Today

Quite logically, no set of developments is more im-
portant to the education of pastoral and teaching minis-
ters than the developments and changes in the profes-
sion itself. Most people carry in their minds images of the
ministry and its incumbents. These images were often
formed in childhood and now represent inaccurate and
unfortunate stereotypes.

Only a few of the changes which have taken place can
be mentioned and then only briefly. Educational and
professional requirements have continued to rise. Pas-
tors and teachers are expected to take their place with
the other professionals of the community —the physi-
cians, lawyers, architects, and engineers —and to develop
life styles, professional habits, and forms of community
involvement of similar character. Pastors and teachers
are expected, by virtue of their professional education
or of continuing education, to be reasonably adept even
in specialized functions, such as counseling, social wel-
fare procedures, pastoral care of the physically and
mentally ill, and the utilization of group dynamics. They
are expected to be expert and even sophisticated in
administration and management.

Cultural changes have made their impact. With the
continued growth in the size of urban and suburban
congregations, staff ministries are becoming more com-
mon, an organizational issue seldom satisfactorily re-
solved in the Missouri Synod tradition. With the con-
tinued trend toward urbanization and the emphasis on
“the church in the city,” the question of how to maintain
a productive and happy ministry in small town and rural
situations is becoming a vexing one.

And these are but a few of the more general and ex-
ternally apparent developments. Even more distressing
are the internal struggles and agonies of both pastors
and teachers who need to establish their own vocational
legitimacy within a culture which has seriously demoted
them in public esteem during the past decades and has
awarded them roles of doubtful value.

The foregoing description of the changes and devel-
opments in the contemporary scene which will continue
to have a considerable effect on the nature of ministerial
education leads like some inexorable formula to certain
conclusions.

Change is Inevitable

If the church desires to hold constant its ultimate
purposes and objectives in ministerial education —and
we believe that it does—then, in a time of rapid and
radical change, the means utilized to achieve these ends
must themselves be allowed to change. If the means are
somehow forcibly held constant, the results will ulti-
mately show drastic and undesirable changes.

There is a great temptation for institutions to resist
all manner of change or, failing that, to attempt to fore-
tell and predict the nature of change so accurately as to
avoid all tension and conflict when it comes. This is the
philosophical origin of the 5- and 10- and 20-year plans
which have become so popular among nations, busi-

nesses, schools, churches, and many other institutions.

It seems so simple. Extend the trend lines; forecast
rates of growth or decline. construct from these elements
the precise situation which will obtain in 2 years or 10 or
20. Experience shows that to a certain degree this is
possible.

But we are chiefly persuaded that if we really take
change seriously, if we estimate adequately its rapidity
and depth, it is not only important to forecast it; it is
more important to learn to live with it. To see change as
the only constant other than God and His love is strong
motivation to find in faith the stance, as well as the
strength, to endure its agonies.

Change as Opportunity

The Board for Higher Education feels that even if it
were to stay in continuous session and employ all the
most distinguished consultants, it would not be able to
produce the glorious master plan which many of its
constituents seem to want. Instead, it counsels the kind
of openness and resilience, courage and trust which
sees all change as unfolding opportunity.

This approach is not to be confused with timidity or
lethargy or unwillingness to face facts. In fact, it places
a high premium on imagination and strategy and consul-
tation, to say nothing of sensitivity and perceptiveness.

Such an approach calls for certain specific forms of
openness which can be illustratively enumerated.

1. Openness to change in curriculum and modes of
instruction and learning. It is important to note that, to
the great surprise of many, curricular revision has gone
on in the past years and more is being planned for the
immediate future. Both seminaries are involved in major
curricular studies with a “no holds barred” rubric. The
Fort Wayne senior college is ready to implement a revi-
sion of its program which breaks the “lock-step” approach
to which many students react so negatively and pulls the
teeth of the old “foreign language monster” which
terrorized ministerial recruits for so many years.

The teachers colleges are ready to produce directors
of education and of music and of other parish functions
as soon as the church explicitly demonstrates its needs.
The junior college story is just as interesting. Experi-
mental courses, scheduling innovations, service oppor-
tunities which give the learning processes new interest
and validity —this is the stuff which makes contemporary
education exciting.

Parenthetically, it should be pointed out that change
and progress in these internal functions of a school—in
the classrooms, libraries, laboratories, studios, offices,
dormitories, gymnasiums —is ultimately much more
important than change in the external form or structure
or location. Interested constituents should be invited
to look inside to see where the action is.

2. Openness to change in the pattern of relationships
which constitute educational communities. This, under
various names, is what so much of the excitement and
struggle has been about on the nation’s campuses. Basic