Responding to Critics of the Institute of Lutheran Theology

It is always interesting to find people talking about the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) online.  I was directed by an ILT faculty member to something called "Degree Info" in which our nascent institution was indeed discussed in a thread beginning with a question on December 18 from "Russell" asking if anyone on the site had experience with us (https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/institute-of-lutheran-theology.56612/).  

My goodness what responses that brought out!  "Steve" wrote the following:

. . .when I examine ILT, my bullshit meter goes off the scale. Yes, I realize they are accredited by ABHE, which is generally credible (meaning, with some exceptions). But in reviewing their web site I see some significant red flags. No, I will not be specific. Why? Because that would be time consuming, and I don't want to be bothered. Suffice to say that if you decide to earn a degree from these folks, I will laugh at you. . . .  Bottom line - if you're looking to be credentialed, let alone ordained, by one of the major denominations, this school will be considered a joke. If you don't care about such things, cool - neither do I.

After talking about me and my life as a "rental apartment manager" this individual further asserts:

 By the way, if you'd like an even better low-down on the school's facility, go back the site of the property they picture on their site and check out the interior pictures - https://www.oldsanctuary.com/gallery. And check out their home page at https://www.oldsanctuary.com - this entire building is a banquet hall. Yet ILT portrays this churchy-looking building, which is located down the street from its actual office location, as its headquarters.

Can you spell s-l-e-a-z-y? This is looking more and more like a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movie - "Hey, kids, let's start a seminary!" 

To be fair, Steve and others on the site do respect our faculty, and most admit that it is likely one can receive a quality education at ILT.  They question, however, if we really have a campus or only "a small office in a one story streetside building," and if we are really academically credible because of our accreditation.  

The gauntlet having been thrown down, I had to join the site and write a response.  Here is that response.  It is possible, after all, that others might have similar questions as Steve and others who wrote in the Degree Info Forum.  
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Somebody I know saw the discussion here, and wanted me to check it out. I was happy to see that our young school is being noticed. However, there are several statements in the replies that are factually incorrect. As the President of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, I want to provide you accurate information.

Firstly, the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) owns its own campus in Brookings, SD. It is, in fact, the old Saint Thomas More Catholic Church campus. ILT thus owns the 13,200 sq. ft. church, a 9,800 square foot school annex, and a 4,500 square foot rectory building. The Church houses our library and our information services offices on the garden level -- we are now somewhere over 25,000 catalogued physical volumes plus great on-line resources! The Church itself is still being used as a banquet hall on occasions because of community demand, but we have plans to turn this all into a really stellar library complex. In addition to about 6,000 square foot of space in the church, ILT currently occupies another 2,100 square feet in the other two buildings. Far from being "one office," we are presently occupying over 8,500 square feet. We do currently have a number of tenants in our building because it helps our cash flow. Someday, however, all 17,500 square feet of our campus will be occupied by ILT. We have not grown to that point yet, but my hope is that we shall.

Secondly, ILT is accredited by ABHE for doctoral programs, and ABHE is recognized by CHEA for all of its graduate programming. Currently, the USDE only recognizes ABHE undergraduate programs for Title IV, but ABHE has before the Department of Education the requisite documents to have its graduate programming recognized as well. I believe that this will happen very soon.  Clearly, ILT wanted to make sure that all of its programming would be recognized both by CHEA and the USDE.

Thirdly, I am very pleased to see that most who had written recognize the strength of our faculty. They include Benne, Hillmer, Kilcrease, Lioy, Sorum and me on the faculty senate with Paul Hinlicky, Robert Kolb, Mark Mattes, David Nelson (Academic Book Editor of Baker Books) and more you might recognize also teaching in 2020. Paul Hinlicky has taught with us in the past, and he and Mark Mattes are joining us as Ph.D. Fellows. 

Fourthly, ILT is an independent Lutheran theological initiative that has participants at the Board, Faculty and Staff from the ELCA, LCMS, LCMC, NALC, CALC, and AFLC. In actuality, LCMC (Lutherans Congregations in Mission for Christ) totals over 800 congregations, and it, CALC (Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations) and the NALC (North American Lutheran Churches) have been the closest constituency to ILT. We are, however, very interested in providing quality graduate programming to interested parties within all the Lutheran church bodies and far beyond.

Fifthly, I will admit that it is somewhat odd to be both a business person and an academic. I confess to being CEO of Den-Wil Inc and related companies (www.den-wil.com) as well as President, CEO and CAO of ILT. Den-Wil does multi-family housing and commercial buildings, it is involved both in the lodging and hospitality industries as well as construction and real estate development. I did not set out to do this in life, but this is what has happened. ILT needed someone with entrepreneurial experience, however, to get it going because it had no funding from an established church body. Fortunately, I had some experience developing projects, and was not frightened by the considerable investments that had to be made to get us going.

Finally, all should realize that ILT is a fully-functioning seminary and graduate school with a self-governing faculty, and all the units needed to function, e.g., information services, enrollment services, donor services, congregational relations, international partnerships, publicity, and alumni connections. We believe that people proclaiming the Gospel today likely need more education rather than less, and thus we are always very interested in understanding the current cultural and intellectual horizon in which theology must now be done. We challenge our students intellectually.

ILT is very young and many of its programs are in the nascent stage. But we are developing. This project is not about me nor will it ever be about me. I am just the guy carrying the baton for this leg of the race. I am available to respond to any questions you all might have. Thank you!

To a further question about accreditation, I wrote this: 

It is nice to have a discussion with you!  From the start we were going to pursue HLC accreditation and began the process. When we began the process of establishing the Institute of Lutheran Theology, ATS was not so comfortable with delivery systems such as ours and would have required residency requirements that we did not want to put into place at the time. (Since then, I understand ATS is more open to synchronous online delivery.)

We started the HLC process, but knew we wanted to expand quite rapidly with new programs, and we realized that we could not easily do this with HLC. They told us that we needed to hold the programs we were in the process of accrediting for five years without continuing to develop new ones. We met the ABHE people, and it simply clicked for us. They are a bit more prescriptive than HLC, and as a new school struggling to put into place all proper assessment tools, handbooks, documentation and institutional algorithms, we were aided by them. After working with them in 2015, we received formal applicant status in 2016, candidacy status in 2017, and initial accreditation in 2018 -- the fastest any of their institutions had ever achieved this, I believe. Approximately 1/3 of their institutions have graduate programs and this list is growing, so they are very motivated to get Title IV from USDE for members' graduate programming.

I have always believed that ABHE is a floor not a ceiling for our accreditation efforts. In my opinion, we need to get the entire institution -- including Ph.D. program -- to the point where we can take this through the HLC accreditation process. I expect the demands of this to be a bit higher than taking ILT through ATS accreditation, especially with respect to a research library. I am confident that we can ultimately meet the financial conditions of HLC with respect to cash reserves, etc., but would like to have a couple more good years of financial operational history.

With respect to the last point, we are a GuideStar Platinum institution, and are completely transparent with our yearly audited financial information. We have raised about $7,000,000 in cash over the years in addition to tuition and other revenue streams -- mostly our rental operations. We need to keep developing financially to have the economic girth to survive into the next century and beyond.

Thanks for the conversation!
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We are very excited about the upcoming semester at the Institute of Lutheran Theology.  We have record early enrollment, and we expect to shatter all our previous records.  God is good!  ILT has never been about me or any of its early players.  We do it ad maiorem dei gloriam.   Check us out always at https://www.ilt.edu/.