SED President Diefenthaler is reporting to the district this morning that one-third of our new pastors are being trained “in the field” via the SMP program, among other alternate tacks to ordination. “This is a significant development,” he said. He meant it positively, but I think it is a sign of the end. Pastors of my generation (I include myself) are far less educated than in previous generations, especially in our ability to read the Biblical and Confessional languages. Without an understanding of the Word of God and the Church’s Symbols, our ability to preach the Gospel is impoverished.
Yet more significant than scholarly training, seminary life forms and shapes the spiritual and liturgical mind of the pastor. I learned more in the chapel, lunchroom, and Kantorei van than in any classroom. Yet despite four years of resident seminary education (for two degrees: M.Div. and S.T.M.), two years of fieldwork, a summer vicarage, and a full-year vicarage, I wasn’t at all prepared to be a pastor. Take away substantive theological grounding, and we will have a synod full of Joel Osteens – toothy smiles, good intentions, and moralisms.
And no one to read the Commendation of the Dying when I give up the ghost. Kyrie eleison.
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I was first made aware of this disastrous trend when after a few bible classes at a new (to us) church it became clear to me the pastor’s understanding of language was lacking.
I am very uncomfortable with the fact that it was necessary to explain to my pastor (at the time) why it is improper to change “This is the word of the Lord” after readings to “That was the word of the Lord.”
Identifying types, patterns, and knowledge of the ancient languages are necessary for pastors. I would include a healthy dose of logic as well. It is very distracting when I hear a sermon based on logical fallacies.
Here’s a question that may seem a side issue, but maybe it isn’t.
In the other two major religions that claim lineage from the promise to Abraham, Judaism and Islam, traditionally reading their respective sacred books in the original language is held to be something for all believers, not just the clergy. The idea being, God gave the book in the particular language he chose, and any translation, however helpful, will unavoidably be less than the original.
A clergy that can read the original, bases its authority to do so in large measure on being able to read the original, preaching to faithful who cannot does not happen. (Yes, I know not every Jew is fluent in Hebrew etc, the point is, what is the goal and intended norm.)
In this way, pastors who are not particularly trained in the original languages would not be the issue so much as why are the faithful not so trained and dependent on a clergy that is? Pastors who don’t know their sacred texts in the original would then be the final phase of the problem, not the beginning of it.
To my knowledge there has never been a push in Christianity to have “Greek School”, so to speak, and in fact, we pride ourselves on doing the reverse, getting translations into the local languages.
I am not arguing that we are wrong or should start Greek classes immediately. I am just observing that our attitude toward knowledge of the original texts and languages is different than the other “Abrahamic” faiths and wondering why that is and how that influences our ideas of appropriate training for pastors.
Amen. To your post, that is. I can’t believe this was touted by the sem. profs.
Here here! I’d like to see another year added to the M.Div. program. I found it odd that a lot of 2nd career guys opted to strike a year off of seminary training (called the “Alternative Route” which got them out of the absolutely essential course History of the Early Church!).
We, the “educated” pastors are, as a rule (using myself as an example), woefully under-educated – especially (as you point out) compared to our forbears.
This is an ominous trend, and I’m with Pr. Beisel in his amazement that the seminaries went along with this like sheep to the slaughter. They have just signed their own death warrants, though the execution protocol in this case will be “by a thousand paper cuts.” What in God’s holy name were they thinking? Were they blackmailed?
Because the districts have already been working end runs around the seminary, I’m already seeing a wedge between the educated guys (who resent the slackers) and the uneducated guys (who resent the “ivory tower” types). This is one more symptom in our synodical false dichotomy between orthodoxy and mission. As if our ministerium didn’t already have enough divisions.
And the notion that we need all these “90 day wonders” because of a clergy shortage is as laughable as the way this was sold to us: that this SMP program is for that extraordinary situation of a rural Eskimo congregation that meets in an igloo that would just melt into a puddle if the guy they want to be their pastor had to actually attend seminary. That was then. Now the DPs are pleased as punch that a third of our seminarians are now such “hard luck cases” and “exceptions.” This who thing was a damnable lie from day one. Someone ought to be defrocked for this.
Already, those who chose to go to seminary are openly mocked, and the curriculum ridiculed for not being “relevant.”
Furthermore, as you pointed out so well, the classroom is only one part of the seminary – and even in the classroom, the experience is far more than the acquisition of knowledge. I wouldn’t trade my time at the sem for anything. Pastors are formed, not trained. As the sainted Kurt Marquart said, “Pastors cannot be mass produced.” He said that they are formed in a painstaking process of interaction with the Holy Spirit through the crucible of the Scriptures.
You can’t get that in a handful of Sunday School classes via internet. I’d be willing to wager a week’s pay that I have several laymen in my congregation who know more theology and are better read than these “seminarians.”
How would you like to find out that you know more cardiology than the guy who is going to give you a triple bypass tomorrow?
I suppose the next step is ordination like the Universal Life Church – just send in your $25 and get ordained through the mail – no questions asked. And the seminaries will have representatives looking the convention in the face and saying that this would be just a great idea and will in no way lower the educational standards of our pastors.
Lord, have mercy!
I don’t get this at all. The only explanation I have is that this is a diabolical attack.
It’s really no more complicated than, oh say, packing a convention with your own delegates. Same deal.
At this rate, someone will have to write a little book setting out the basics, and put in the preface that the situation is so bad that your average guy is knows practically nothing of Christian doctrine and many pastors are nearly incompetent, unable to teach!
Terry: nicely put. This is exactly the problem. It is not so much about education as it is having a proper understanding of Christian doctrine. Luther’s precise point was that the priests didn’t even know the Lord’s Prayer, much less how to teach it to others. Larry, everyone has lost their freaking minds in this Synod, even the so-called “good guys.” What ticks me off the most is that the same guys who taught us to call a thing what it is, are now telling us to shut the hell up.
My grandfather, who was a pastor in the LCMS for 50 years, started his theological training in high school. At the time, boys of talent were groomed for the pastorate, and sent to boarding schools (like the one in Ft. Wayne that is now the Seminary) and trained up from an early age in theology, and the languages a man needed to better plumb that theology. Upon entering the Seminary in St. Louis in the 1930s my grandfather, who could already speak German fluently, moved about easily in Latin and Greek (Attic and Koine), and picked up Hebrew for good measure. He learned Spanish in his spare time. But he acquitted himself outside the ivory tower too: he started a mission church in Havana, Cuba, ministered to the Apache nation in Arizona, and founded churches (that still thrive) in two places in California. I like to think that the thorough training he received from a young age on was in some part responsible for his dedication to the Church and its mission of teaching. Is there any movement at all towards resurrecting the practice of identifying able young men and preparing them for the ministry well before seminary even begins?
I think the answer to Terry and Aaron’s questions is the same: the classical education movement in Lutheran grammar schools. If it can survive, that is. As I envision it, our students will learn Latin, and the advanced students begin learning Greek, before they leave the 8th grade. They will have read the Augsburg Confession and the Large Catechism, and much of the Bible. The real question is whether or not such a school can survive financially long enough for it to be built and thrive.
I serve on a district committee that interviews candidates for the respective seminaries, as well as the various alternative routes to ordination. Between the Ethnic Immigrant Institute, Hispanic Institute, DELTO, and Alternate Route, there are scores of future and current pastors who pursued ordination through the already existing channels and most, though not all, were from those types of rural or ethnic congregations which could not support a pastor.
To date, however, every one of the SMP candidates we have interviewed are economically viable, middle class Caucasians from metropolitan areas who worship at large church growth congregations. They have been advised by their pastors to forgo the traditional route and come on staff with their churches as ordained pastors in one fashion or another.
Pastoral shortage, I agree, is a chimera. SMP is an attempt to circumvent theological formation by those for whom theological reflection has no place in pastoral care, public worship, or private devotion.
Wow, Johnny–if that doesn’t just say it all. I hope you don’t mind, but I used your quote on my blog (http://lcmspastor.blogspot.com). I did not put your name on it, but if you would like me to I will.
Yes, it does say it all.
I’ve been through this once before, in the transformation of the RCC after the council. Our LCMS polity is different, but the idea is the same. I learned it from the guys who did it.
The guys in the liberal Catholic bee hive where I was were all watching Seminex, hoping the repressive, oppressive, supressive, depressive, and not to mention patriarchal, LCMS would finally get itself out of the late Middle Ages.
The idea is, the battle over this or that professor or seminary is not really where a church is changed. You change it by lex orandi lex credendi. Change what happens in the parish, most specifically in parish worhsip, and you’ve got change. New orders of service, new lectionaries, etc all cut the cord with and to the past. It does not matter if the people know that, the effect will be there. In fact the less they know the better, then they will think we’re really the same and better than ever! And the door is wide open to whatever. Within a generation, who will know?
Worship is doctrine in motion. Want to change doctrine? Change worship. That’s where more people are more of the time. Change that, and the classroom will follow suit or become irrelevant and die.
In our context, that means who won Seminex, for example, is rendered meaningless. First you change worship, then make the seminaries irrelevant. RCs didn’t have it quite so easy there, but the process is the same: you don’t first change the pastors who in turn change the environment into which they are sent, you change the environment and the pastors and their training wll follow.
This is why, and how, Johnny sees the candidates he does for SMP.
It’s how call committees manipulate things, and how call committes are manipulated..
It’s also how you win Seminex after all.
James Leistico had technical problems posting the following comment, which I received via email:
Aaron,
Your comment reminded me of a conversation I had with an ordained Lutheran missionary last week. He is greatly concerned over the lack of sending ordained missionaries to the field. These men are often involved with educating the first generation of native born pastors (or providing continuing education to the current generation). Lay missionaries have not been prepared for this task.
Larry,
Blackmail is not too far off from the truth a sem prof told me. If the sems opposed it, they knew that they would be falsely accused of being “ivory tower” types cut off from reality, whose saw their kingdom as being in danger. (Can’t you hear the accusation of, “This is like when the Pharisees were upset because people were going to Jesus and not them.”?) SMPP was the least bad proposal on the table – consider the proposal that pastoral education be at the LCMS mega-church in the region with one faculty professor in residence on its staff. He is responsible for the whole education program. I will agree that SMPP is playing out in the direction of the mega-church, but at least it is not that bad, yet.
By voicing their approval, the sems get to have a hand in what SMPP looks like. Though I agree with you, this is something akin to having a hand in building your own coffin. That only delays your execution as long as your executioners put up with how slow you are building it.
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