LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2023, Page 354

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354

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

Establish a plan for restoring and retaining an LCMS identity
on CUS campuses.
Prioritize the training of rostered church workers of Synod with
our confession of faith.
Develop a plan to increase the percentage of LCMS rostered
faculty, with a goal of 100%.
Prepare a report on these tasks for the 2026 Synod convention.
Montana District
Ov. 7-08

To Reorganize the Synod’s Higher Education
(not including Seminaries)
Rationale
Soon after The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) was
organized in 1847, it received two institutions of higher education:
Wilhelm Loehe’s Seminary in Fort Wayne, Ind. and the gymnasium
and seminary founded by the Saxons in Perry County, Mo. As time
went by, the Synod either opened or acquired additional higher
education institutions whose primary, if not sole, purpose was to
teach future church workers. For almost its entire history, the Synod
has operated with the tacit understanding that no one else can train
its rostered church workers as well as it can.
A task force reporting to the 2023 Synod convention says that after
176 years, major change is needed. It holds that Lutheran identity
will be enhanced at institutions that provide undergraduate church
worker education if the Synod places them into a new and untried
category: “affiliates” of the Synod. The task force is basically telling
the Synod that church worker training will be improved at these
schools if the Synod does not own and operate them.
The task force’s proposal is remarkable and unprecedented. It
proposes to draw institutions closer to the Synod in mind and heart
by organizationally de-coupling them from the Synod. Delegates to
the 2023 Synod convention might do well to note this point and
ponder it.
A feature essential to the task force’s proposal is the Synod’s future
monitoring of the “affiliate” schools by regularly posing questions
to them. Yet this reliance on questions can itself be questioned. Why
are the contemplated questions not being asked at present? If these
questions are being asked at present, why has the Synod’s higher
education reached such a state that the drastic step is proposed of
taking institutions that are currently agencies of the Synod and
making them into “affiliates” instead? And if these questions are not
presently being asked of schools that are currently agencies of the
Synod, why should anyone think these questions will be posed more
effectively in the future if the schools turn into mere “affiliates”?
There is no similar proposal for the two seminaries to be rendered
“affiliates” of the Synod. Why not, though? If “affiliate” status
befits institutions that train both commissioned church workers who
are to assist pastors and pre-seminary students who will one day
become pastors, why should it not also encompass the institutions
where future pastors receive their final training? Why not? Because
we still understand that no one else can train pastors for the Synod
better than the Synod itself can! Should the quality of education for
our other church work students—as well as pre-seminary students
at a relatively early stage of pastoral formation—suffer by
comparison?

2023 Convention Workbook

The task force’s task has been unenviable. For some years, the
Synod’s colleges and universities have been proceeding on a
premise that is making it nearly impossible for the Synod to carry
out its historic determination to give church workers the best
possible preparation. The Synod must abandon this premise right
away. The premise is that we finance the education of our church
work students at least in part on the money of others. These “others”
could be non-church work students in a variety of disciplines and at
a number of academic levels, or government.
Giving up this premise will not be easy because it amounts to
relinquishing a great deal of financial support. It will likely require
significant sacrifice. Moreover, even if the Synod gives up this
premise today, it will take a while to implement the changes that
would necessarily follow. There is no time to waste.
Therefore be it
Resolved, That the Synod today declares certain bedrock
principles to guide its higher education efforts into the future:
1. The Synod will own and operate not only its seminaries but
also the undergraduate institutions that prepare its church
workers. It will subsidize the undergraduate institutions for
at least two-thirds of their total operating expenses, and it
will require that these institutions accept no money from
federal, state, or local governments.
2. This will require a massive shift in the Synod’s funding
priorities at the national level, quite possibly resulting in a
reduction of parish services Synod-wide. The 1.1.1 mission
funding model, one dollar per member per week, (2019
Resolution 8-02, “To Encourage a Synodwide 1.1.1
Funding Model for Defined Mission Outcomes”) may have
to be diverted from use at district level to the national level.
3. The colleges and “universities” that the Synod owns will
have it as their purpose to prepare church workers for the
Synod and perhaps its sister church bodies. Other students
may attend, on the understanding that they will content
themselves with the course offerings that are provided to
the Synod’s church work students. Undergraduate students
from LCMS congregations pursuing study in non-church
work programs would be encouraged to attend the Synod’s
schools especially for their first two years, to get a good
Christian liberal arts education in a safe environment before
they perhaps matriculate elsewhere to finish their
bachelors’ degrees.
4. This shift in emphasis will almost certainly necessitate a
reduction in the number of institutions that the Synod owns
as well as reduction in enrollment at such schools, possibly
also campus modifications at any schools that remain
agencies of the Synod.
5. The remaining institution or institutions may engage to a
limited extent in graduate-level teaching under the direction
of and with the approval of the Concordia University
System (CUS) Board of Directors. While under no
requirement to do so, they may offer masters’ degrees in
fields directly related to church work specialties—
specifically, education, family life, church music, and
theology. No more than one institution is to offer the
Doctorate in Education, or Ed.D., degree. This degree
program and any of its sub-specialties—curriculum,
leadership, counseling—would be designed especially for
LCMS church workers. No other doctoral programs will be
offered by the Synod’s colleges and “universities.”