Pastor Zach Zehnder published a video on YouTube today taking exception to the age requirements for the LCMS “Specific Ministry Pastor” program [SMP]. The SMP is a (mostly) non-residential program for pastoral formation that relies heavily on local mentoring and online classes. Advocates for the program (and its expansion) have typically focused on the need for certain “specific ministries” to have someone uniquely suited for a particular context, along with the inability to relocate to a seminary for classes and a one-year vicarage (pastoral internship).

Toward the end of his video (starting at about 9:18 in the video), however, Zehnder says something interesting:

“The large churches do not want to send candidates to the residential program right now - and this is what nobody is saying, that the data is saying - they don’t want to send them to the residential seminary program because they don’t believe that the pastor they will get in the end is a pastor that will work for their ministry. And so the only option is [SMP] - and now that’s not an option.”

The residential programs at Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) and Concordia Theological Seminary (Fort Wayne), Pastor Zehnder is saying, are forming pastors who will not “work for their ministry.” SMP is “the only option” for these churches, presumably because the formation these churches provide is qualitatively different. Is the real issue the mode of education (online vs residential)? Or is there something about the residential program that makes a man ill-suited for a certain kind of church? What is it about these pastors—or their formation—that “will not work”?