LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 418

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418

Specific Ministry Pastor (SMP) Task Force

Gospel.4 Integrity and credibility of her pastors are most important,
for the proclamation of His Word without adulteration, dilution, or
boundary is of divine requirement. Pastors “play God,” that is, by
their faithful repetition of His Word, God kills and makes alive.5 The
conversation then of the faithful formation of the men preparing for
the Pastoral Office by God through His church is no small matter.
A severe threat to the faithful formation of the church’s ministerium is a compromised ecclesiology, whereby everyone does his
own thing. As the church is never the mere addition of individuals,
congregations, circuits, and districts but a totality of one,6 so she is
in her work—one work—for the faithful formation of some men to
be preachers of His cross. Her catholicity—or lack thereof—is put
on display for all to see in everything she does.
According to the Lord’s assessment, the fields are ever ripe for
harvest. Therefore, the church gladly goes forward in the confidence
of the Holy Spirit until He ushers in the Final Day.
It is the prayer of the task force that this document will benefit the
church as she engages in lively conversation regarding the faithful
formation of her pastors as applied to the SMP program.
Raymond Hartwig, Chairman
Timothy Mech, Secretary
Randall Golter

Endnotes
1. “Strong pastors make strong Christian families, and strong Christian
families make strong pastors. What is good for the family is good for the
church. Out of the fertile ground of the family arise budding pastors. What can
a church do to provide ministerial development and training for these ‘early
bloomers’? It is the God-given responsibility of the church to make them
into pastors.” (“Who Makes a Pastor? Concordia Journal 26 (2000), p. 291)
2. The task force extensively discussed the possibility of placing a certain percentage restriction of each year’s entering class, e.g. Ten percent, but
decided against such a recommendation. begin to address this, all for the sake
of a faithful ministerium for God’s use. But the task force has come to believe
that there is a need for one final recommendation:
3. Wilhelm Loehe writes: “For mission is nothing but the one church
of God in motion, the actualization of the one universal, catholic church.
Wherever mission enters in, the barriers which separate nation from nation
fall down. Wherever it comes it brings together what previously was far off
and widely separated...Mission is the life of the catholic church. Where it
stops, blood and breath stop; where it dies, the love which unites heaven and
earth also dies. The catholic church and mission—these two no one can separate without killing both, and that is impossible.” Wilhelm Lohe, Three Books
about the Church, trans. and ed. James L. Schaaf (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1969) p. 59. Reprinted by permission of Augsburg Fortress Press, Concordia
Seminary Press, Fort Wayne, IN, 1989).
4. “The early Church did not understand mission as merely human action
done in response to the good things God had done. Mission was perceived
christologically—as God acting for the salvation of fallen mankind, but God
acting only in union with mankind. The early Church understood mission to
be the very expression of the Lordship of Christ in the Holy Spirit.” William
C. Weinrich, “Evangelism in the Early Church,” Concordia Theological
Quarterly 45 (April 1981), p. 62.
5. “If it is God’s Word that accomplishes the death and resurrection of
the elect, the Word must be proclaimed so that it can do in the here and now
the killing and the resurrection, the electing, which God has determined. It
means that the biggest challenge for pastors is to play God, to kill and raise
people ahead of time, to make them Israel, God’s chosen people, in the present time. Through the promise of God’s Word, pastors are to resurrect God’s
chosen ones out of the deadness of their sin. They bring about the death and
resurrection of God’s children.” Timothy Saleska, “Pastors Who Play God,”
Concordia Journal 31 (2005) 24. The Confessions state: “Christ orders him to

2013 Convention Workbook

feed the flock, that is, to preach the Word or govern the church by the Word,”
(Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope. Book of Concord, 30).
6. See Bo Giertz: “The Church, too, appears as a totality, not a sum of individuals. She is one body, and Christ is the head, the will, the source of life,
and the power of all growth,” p. 22. See also pp. 70-73.

ADDENDUM A

To Establish Specific Ministry Pastor Program
RESOLUTION 5-01B
Overtures 5-01–10 (CW, pp. 205–216)
Background

Amidst today’s mission challenges, including the persistent need
to provide pastoral ministry in ways that go beyond the current residential models, we will do well to engage the best collaborative
thinking and creativity that we can muster to provide missional pastoral leadership driven by the depth of theological integrity that remains
a hallmark of our church and its ministerium. The mission focus
ignited by the Ablaze! movement has generated the need to identify laymen already in place in a local community to serve as church
planters and missionaries. This work will certainly entail Word and
Sacrament ministry. Historically, The Lutheran Church—Missouri
Synod and its antecedents have attempted to meet such needs by
preparing men as quickly as possible to be called and ordained in
order to meet the urgent mission needs of the church. Such men were
prepared to catechize, preach, and provide pastoral care. Within the
LCMS, the need for such a track to ordination was initially embodied in the seminary begun by F. C. D. Wyneken and Wilhelm Löhe
in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
However, developments in ministerial formation since World War
II have effectively eliminated this track altogether. Ministers of religion—ordained will have two designations. “General ministry pastor”
will serve as the designation for pastors graduated from a current
approved theological education program (e.g., M.Div., Certificate,
DELTO), and “specific ministry pastor” will be the designation for
those educated for a specific ministry context through distance education. The Specific Ministry Pastor Program seeks to address the
needs of the church by reinstituting a multiple-track approach and by
developing a program that combines a commitment to faithfulness
to a Lutheran theological confession with a missionary perspective
and that is tailored to the preparation of men for service in specific
kinds of ministries.
Such an effort must attempt in some measure to uphold two significant considerations in the service of our Lord’s mission and Great
Commission. On the one hand, we are committed to upholding the
Lutheran understanding of the pastor as theologian and insist on as
much education as possible for the good of the church. On the other
hand, emerging needs and economic pressures often make it impossible to call a pastor who has received a broad and thorough theological
education to every congregation or mission station where, nevertheless, people need to hear the Gospel. This proposal is offered as a
sincere and thoughtful attempt to address real-world needs with an
urgency for bringing the Gospel to a dying world and to do so with
theological integrity with respect to both the doctrine of the ministry and our commitment to high standards of pastoral education and
formation.
Theological Foundations Guiding the Proposal
1. All those who regularly and publicly perform the functions of the
Office of the Holy Ministry should do so as those called to and placed
into that office. “It is taught among us that nobody should publicly