Is SMP the "Only Option" for Certain Kinds of Churches?

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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”?

St. Titus 2024

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We do not worship saints, nor pray to them. These things clearly contradict God’s Word. We do, however, remember the saints and give them honor. The Augsburg Confession says,

Concerning the cult of the saints our people teach that the saints are to be remembered so that we may strengthen our faith when we see how they experienced grace and how they were helped by faith. Moreover, it is taught that each person, according to his or her calling, should take the saints’ good works as an example….

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Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2022

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Our church stands in the line of the church catholic of the West. As the power of the papacy became tyrannical and heretical, and scholastic theology drifted further and further from Holy Scripture, a reformation was necessary. The temple needed to be cleansed. We are heirs of that reformation.

One of the major issues needing reform in the sixteenth century was the idea that Mass—what we call Divine Service—was a sacrifice. Go to any local Roman church and you will hear the priest invite the people to pray “that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.” This idea—that the mass is our sacrifice to and for God—is the heart of why we still must remain separated from our friends in the Roman church….

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