Some of you ask about the future of the Institute of Lutheran Theology and what we are doing now to actualize that future.
The Institute of Lutheran Theology began in humility. We were without adequate funding, had no faculty, and very definitely unaccredited. We had decided to do education online, but online programs were often dismissed by the academy as not sufficiently rigorous. At best, we were thought about as a well-intentioned group dedicated to "training a few Lutheran pastors."
Slowly we have been changing people's perceptions of us. While we had acquired a very good faculty by the end of 2011, we still were "unaccredited." After getting ABHE accreditation, we were disparaged as being "online" and only accredited by an "undergraduate accrediting agency." After theological education moved towards online education after Covid and ABHE became recognized by the USDE for its graduate programs, we still were charged for not having "ATS accreditation -- the gold standard for theology."
After receiving ATS accreditation last March, successfully bringing new partners to the table, and further developing our PhD program, we are sometimes now charged with "creating scholars, not pastors." While our "Center for Congregational Revitalization" initiative clearly counts against this, people continue to wonder about us, and what we want to accomplish.
Here is what we want to accomplish:
- Working through the creation of strategic partnerships, we shall grow the Christ School of Theology five-fold in the next decade, making us one of the largest (or largest) Lutheran seminary in the English-speaking world.
- Grow our current PhD program of 35 students to 125 excellent PhD candidates by 2034, making the Christ School of Theology the de facto center of Reformation-based theological education in the English-speaking world.
- Grow our undergraduate Christ College in ways of excellence so that the conferral of a degree from Christ College is highly-valued in the academic world. We shall grow Christ College in ways consonant with the overall developmental trajectory of the Christ School of Theology.
- Develop ILT's Center for the Word by developing its "centers," e.g., the Center for Congregational Revitalization, a Center for Wesleyan Studies, a Center for Pastoral Leadership and Mission, a Center for Forde Studies, etc. Being Lutheran means connecting with others taking seriously the classical Christian tradition.
- Establish a true "Institute of Lutheran Theology" at our Center for the Word, an Institute that shall connect important Lutheran theological emphases to the three audiences of which Edward Farley spoke: The Church, the Public, and the Academy. Through the Institute we shall perform the research necessary to engage deeply the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon, seeking to disseminate the results of our research through journals, monographs, and podcasts.
We shall not ask our wonderful individual and congregational donors to bear all of the costs of this developmental trajectory. Instead, we shall apply for and procure appropriate grants to help make this possible. We just received one from ATS, and finished another grant application with Lilly that we believe shall be funded as part of the effort to apply for a major Lilly grant in late spring. We will be applying for InTrust and Templeton grants within the next couple of months as well.
We ask for your prayers along the way. God called ILT into being, and I think He has rather big plans for us. We have the right technology for our time and scholars who are now with us, or who soon will be with us, to make this possible.
At the end of the day, we simply want to get the Good News of Jesus Christ proclaimed with passion and creativity in pulpits throughout the world. To do this means we shall have to disrupt the industry some, and that we will have to create a cadre of theological teachers and researchers recognizing the centrality of preaching "not cleverly devised fables," but the universal significance of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Make no mistake: truth is at issue. We shall partner with any and all of those who are called to such preaching and for whom truth is at issue.
