LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 377

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X. REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS: 13-03 TASK FORCE
ered, most adeptly reaches the requirements set forth in Scripture
for those to whom oversight of the flocks is given. For the most
part, our modern world requires more education and training for a
wide variety of vocations, not less. As our society becomes postChristian, our pastors will also need an ever more solid grounding
of theological study in the Bible (including its original languages)
and the Confessions to meet the challenges of an anti-Christian
spirit of the times and to minister to their flocks who are buffeted
by them. All this calls for in-depth study to form our pastors for
future generations, not a quicker but less detailed route.
We also observe that our society is witnessing the breakdown
of person-to-person relationships. We are distracted by our digital devices, ignoring conversation and daily human interactions.
As the digital world also enables anonymized communication, it
is far easier to attack, denigrate, and divide, losing focus on the
Eighth Commandment direction to put the best construction on everything. Face-to-face residential pastoral formation creates pastors
in a community of faith—not lone rangers. They learn to interact,
discuss, and debate theological issues fraternally, and they work
with one another respectfully as real individuals, not as faceless
names behind a computer screen. Such interaction, experienced on
a daily basis on the seminary campus, can only help them with future churchmanship.

III. A Brief History of Theological Education and Pastoral Formation
The mode of pastoral formation has varied widely, both in philosophy and practice, over the course of the church’s history. One
way that the Early Church reflected Roman culture was in the establishment of theological schools. Here, of course, we also have the
example of the Early Church in its establishment of early schools
in Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch. Although we know little specifically about the curricula of these institutions, we do know that they
tended to emphasize catechetics, apologetics, and homiletics.
However, both before and after the fall of Rome, another
form of pastoral formation existed. “In various centers, under the
supervision of bishops, candidates for the pastoral office gave
themselves to meditation and prayer and appropriate study … . A
primary emphasis … was upon learning how to explicate Scripture
and parallel to this how to discharge the practical duties of the pastoral office.” In Gaul, Spain, and the Anglo-Saxon areas, “pastors
were urged to take ‘candidates’ into their homes and help them by
precept and example to become competent co-workers and their
eventual successors.”1
As time moved on, the monastery schools became important
centers of pastoral formation. During the reign of Charlemagne,
the Synod of Aachen (802) required candidates to know the Creed,
the Lord’s Prayer, and other ordinary parts of the Mass by heart.
Familiarity with the church year played a central role in candidacy
for the ministry. The Aachen Synod made mandatory the memorization of many psalms, the pericopes, and the church calendar, and
stipulated that priests sing the liturgy in the style of the church at
Rome. Later Carolingian additions included an emphasis on Latin
theological literature, especially literature that dealt with liturgical
matters. “If a priest could acceptably conduct the services, ceremonies, and ministerial acts that belonged to his office, it was considered sufficient preparation,” states Foelsch.2 In other words, there
was no examination required for the assumption of the ministry,
rather if one was competent in the matter of “running” or “doing”
the service, with some facility in understanding the shape of the
church year, then one was considered qualified for the ministerial

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office. One wonders whether this satisfactorily fulfilled the requirement to be “able to teach.”
Scholasticism and the rise of the universities also impacted
the shape of pastoral formation. If Aachen demonstrates an emphasis on the simple “practice” of ministry with the context of
the liturgy, scholasticism went too far in the other direction. The
Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and quadrivium (arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, music), plus specialized theological study,
placed a higher premium on the philosophical or purely rational
side of pastoral formation. The 12th and 13th centuries saw the rise
of the universities—which we might call the earliest forms of the
divinity school. Curricula stressed the Scriptures, doctrine, ethics,
and canon law. In a way, the universities allowed for an emerging
division in the clergy. The practical result was that parish priests
knew little of the faith and “theologians” had little interest in the
life of the church and its mission. Armin Siedlecki summarizes:
“While the 12th century movement of scholasticism and the rise
of universities as centers of learning witnessed the development of
theology as a distinct academic discipline, there remained a clear
distinction between a sacerdos simplex (a priest who is ordained for
celebrating the Mass and little else) and a theologos (theologian).”3
One was either a pastor or a theologian—one could not be both.
The Reformation’s emphasis on the centrality of the Scriptures—sola Scriptura—drove its program of pastoral formation,
though not without some challenges.
At the opening of the Reformation, Luther and Melanchthon
believed the church was in emergency conditions. The problem? A
lack of adequately trained clergy who were “able to teach.” Already
in the 1520s, both the Great Reformer and his foremost colleague
noted the deplorable character of the education of many of those
holding the pastoral office. Yet because of the pressing need for
clergy in the evangelical churches, they took the exceptional step of
allowing those with only the most rudimentary pastoral formation
to be ordained into the Office of the Ministry.
One of the early challenges facing the Lutheran tradition—
and one that Wittenberg struggled to meet—was of numbers. In
1521, when Luther was excommunicated, the student population
of Wittenberg declined precipitously. It took years to rebuild the
student body. In the midst of the rebuilding of the student population, Luther and Melanchthon revised the curriculum. Taken together, these two points—the need (1) to attract and (2) to form a
sufficient number of students—meant that there simply were not
enough pastors early on to move the work of Reformation forward,
which placed the future of the Reformation at risk. And this, then,
drove the question (which we touched on earlier): When is a man
sufficiently formed to be “able to teach”?
The result was that there were a number of Notprediger—
emergency preachers—ordained in early Lutheranism before they
had received the ideal education. A study of the Wittenberger Ordiniertenbuch reveals that when ordinations began in earnest in
Wittenberg in 1537, initially a large percentage of the ordinands
were Notprediger. From a modest eight ordinations in 1537, to 22
in 1538, by 1539 the number had climbed to 110. Of those 110 ordinations in 1539, fully a third were men who lacked full classical
training.
This, however, they saw as a temporary matter. Charles Foelsch writes: “In theory the reformers insisted on proper pre-theological and theological training and demanded that each minister
submit to an examination to prove that he was qualified. As early as
1527 rules to this effect were issued.” In 1545 this examination was
2019 Convention Workbook