Putting the Focus Back Upon Congregations

The Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) has embarked on a new venture called the Center for Congregational Revitalization (C CR). In some ways, of course, there is nothing new at all about ILT being concerned about congregational revitalization. Back in 2001-1008, I was a member of the WordAlone Network (WAN) Board of Directors, and we were deeply concerned about congregational revitalization.  In fact, one could argue that ILT was formed directly to deal with problems within congregations, because we were in those days very interested in theology, especially the "working theology" of denominational structures like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  

Many reading this blog probably recall these days prior to the epic collapse of the ELCA as a relevant and important denominational body in North America. Many of us wrote extensively for WordAlone. The WordAlone Network was formed, one might argue, to save the ELCA from itself. What we did was try to lift up again some of the important features of traditional Lutheran piety and practice in North America. 

The ELCA in those days was becoming more and more convinced that the transcongregational denominational entity to which individual Lutheran congregations belonged was itself the church, e.g., the then ELCA Secretary Lowell Almen famously quipped that this entity is the Church and that the congregation is "an outpost of the church." I argued that what needed to be lifted up in that time was that the church for Lutherans had historically been interpreted both in a high and low sense. While high ecclesiology emphasized the role of the Church as the means of grace, and spoke strongly of the identity of the church with the Body of Christ -- the Church in its divine nature --, low ecclesiology emphasized the Church as a fellowship of sinners gathered around the communion rail and accordingly thematized the human nature of the institution. What was needed at a time when the divine nature of the Church was being proclaimed was a reminder of the human nature of that selfsame Church: We are all simply sinners begging at the communion rail for the Word in Body and Blood delivered to each of us.  

Clearly, the Concordat and Called to Common Mission that sought a common understanding between the Episcopal Church USA and the ELCA of the historic episcopate were documents that presupposed a very high ecclesiology. Just as the Law must be preached in a context of complacency and the Gospel in a context of despair, so must the church be reminded of its very human nature when it is tempted to think that the Holy Spirit itself speaks through the votes of the baptized at a churchwide gathering.

But we within WordAlone were often misunderstood. Instead of understanding the criticism of high ecclesiology dialectically, people believed that low ecclesiology was the position of WordAlone and its minions itself. People thought that the WordAlone critique of high ecclesiology meant that we were non-dialectically committed to a low ecclesiology, and that, accordingly, we could not confess that the Church was the Body of Christ and itself the means of grace.  

But I could confess this and did on many occasions.  Accordingly, some people were upset that from the beginning I not only allowed but encouraged people from traditions other than a Fordean-style radical Lutheranism -- the genesio position -- to teach and study at ILT.  I reasoned that if ILT were to be true to is Lutheran roots, it must allow other Lutheran traditions to be present as well, e.g., Evangelical Catholics, pietists, neo-confessionalists, Grundtvigians, etc.  In fact, I thought ILT could not be deeply Lutheran if it were to choose one strand of Lutheranism and proceed as if the other strands were simply misunderstandings or mistakes with respect to that one true tradition. After all, Lutheran congregations in North America are not monolithic in their theological ethos. Thus, to serve actual existing congregations, ILT had to be a bigger tent. If ILT were to be the seminary of a group of committed congregations, it needed to be able to understand the ethos of those congregations, acknowledge their theological ethos as Lutheran in its roots, and actually help those congregations to be faithful and effective in the proclamation of the Word.  

We have traveled a great distance at the Institute of Lutheran Theology in the last 17 years. We now have over 160 active students and strong DMin. and PhD programs. We have had accreditation from the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE) since 2018 and are having our accreditation visit from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) in March 2024. We continue to gain respect as a theological institution, and our faculty is acknowledged as first-rate. As a school we have never been stronger. 

But I think that we are missing something, something that was present at the beginning. While we teach undergraduates, STM, DMin and PHD students well and see increasing numbers from these groups every year, we notice there is one key group of students where we are not seeing stellar growth: ministry students! Yes, you heard me correctly. While ILT is growing in its academic programs -- particularly its academic graduate programs -- it is underperforming on that for which it was called into being: getting faithful and effective pastors into congregations. This we must do better!  

But there is actually a very good excuse for not doing this. Everywhere in the North Atlantic countries we see lower numbers of people studying to become pastors. The reasons why this is so are apparent: Pastors no longer enjoy the respect of American society in general and they are poorly recompensed. Why would anyone want to be a pastor when they could do something that our society could value and understand? While we can excuse our performance in growing ministry students by pointing to the fact that pastors are under-compensated and under-appreciated, making an excuse does not solve the problem. We simply must work to get more people into congregational pulpits. 

Congregations in North America are increasingly aware of the difficulties in finding pastors. There are, or will soon be, extreme pastoral shortages in most all of the Lutheran denominations in the United States and Canada. Rural congregations are immediately affected, for their very survival is often at stake. If a rural congregation cannot find somebody to fill the pulpit, it likely will not able to remain open.  Closing congregations has, however, devastating consequences not only for the religious life of those within those congregations, but also for the rural communities in which these congregations reside. Often, the last institutions to close in a rural community are the bar and the church.  

We at ILT remember our beginnings. We were called into being in order to get pastors into congregations, and thus advancing congregational life is within our very DNA. Accordingly, to be ILT is to care about congregations and their challenges and difficulties. It is with this in mind that we announce our new venture of congregational revitalization. The time is upon us. How does congregational revitalization work at ILT? 

• We enter into formal and informal arrangements directly with congregations, pledging that we shall help them in their search for pastors and that we shall do everything possible to help them keep pastors in pulpits. What we want to create is an ILT league of Lutheran congregations.  
• We create a funding mechanism to help support the educational costs associated with the training of pastors. We want to make it as easy as possible for those with a passion for congregational ministry to attain it. No serious student should be stopped merely because he or she has insufficient funding.  
• We work with congregations to develop new ways to deliver theological pastoral candidates into congregations. Clearly, for small rural congregations hoping to find somebody willing to serve them, the completion of a full M.Div degree may not be needed. We have since our inception worked to grant pastoral certificates to those lacking the time, opportunity or means to attain a full M.Div degree. 
• We work with successful pastors already in the field to create new educational programs and structures that can produce pastors on an ad hoc basis for the ad hoc and dynamic ministry situations that shall increasingly obtain. This means that we design M.Div, MM, and MCM degrees that prepares students deeply to face the kind of situations they will likely face.  
• We partner with donors who have a passion actually to change Lutheran congregational life in North America. While we know much of what must be done, we don't presently have the requisite resources to address those things necessary to ameliorate Lutheran congregational life. Committed donors can change what we do, but they need to see what can actually be done to improve the situation before they can donate deeply. 
• We put people in touch with each other to address the issue at hand. We act as a Lutheran clearing house for the normative task of delivering proper theology to congregations. We don't allow the ILT focus to stray from the congregational horizon. Lutheran theology is incarnation, not excarnational.  We can never be primarily concerned with the theological rectitude of abstract theological propositions, but rather with the incarnation of these principles in congregational life, i.e., in the lives of concrete men and women leading the Christian life within their communities.  

Much more needs to be envisioned and developed as we consider the creation of the ILT Center for Congregational Revitalization (CCR), but this will be the subject of many papers and articles that will be written and evaluated within CCR over the coming months and years. I want here simply to alert everybody that ILT is coming home to its congregations. We intend to focus on you and your needs. We want to be friends with you and we want to learn from you how we can do what we do better. Blessings!  

What does it mean to be the Christ School of Theology?

As many readers might know, the Institute of Lutheran Theology's seminary and graduate school is called the Christ School of Theology, and we are all about the accreditation of this institution. 

When checking our accreditation with the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE) find us under The Institute of Lutheran Theology.  View our ABHE fact sheet here: https://app.weaveeducation.com/publicFiles/institutionprofilepdfs/Institute_of_Lutheran_Theology-ABHE_-_Association_for_Biblical_Higher_Education_Fact_Sheet.pdf.  We have been a full member of ABHE since initial accreditation in 2018.  We successfully achieved our first ten-year accreditation with ABHE at the 2023 February meeting of ABHE's Commission on Accreditation. 

When checking on us on the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) website, always look for Christ School of Theology. Christ School of Theology is the accreditable entity as for as ATS is concerned.  You can find us on the ATS website here: https://www.ats.edu/member-schools/christ-school-of-theology-of-the-institute-of-lutheran-theology.  While we have not been officially accredited by ATS's Commission on Accreditation yet, we are already Associate members of the ATS, and are engaged in many activities with them.  We are working hard to get our self-study complete this year, and anticipate an ATS visit in February of 2024.  

My thoughts in 2005-06 was that a new Lutheran House of Studies was needed that would serve all Lutherans -- especially ELCA Lutherans. This House of Studies, I argued, should be independent, autonomous and accredited, should assume the basic hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation on Scripture, and should be straightforwardly realist in its understanding of God and of theological language generally.  ILT, I thought, should be fully engaged with the question of truth, particularly the question of how to connect the truth of theology with the truths of the special sciences.   

ILT will begin its fifteenth year of offering classes in the fall of 2023 and, I must say, we are moving forward nicely. I always knew that ILT could produce pastors because we have from the beginning been blessed with great students and a renowned faculty. However, because we are not a LCMS, ELCA or Wisconsin Synod seminary, we don't have an already established market for students studying to be pastors. As our Wikepedia page says, we do prepare pastors for the Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations, the Augsburg Lutheran Churches, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).  We are happy to have such important work to do. 

However, other seminaries compete with us, particularly within the LCMC and the NALC.  While we believe we have the deepest program for students in these two church bodies, our program is quite traditional, with heavy doses of Biblical Theology, History of Theology, Systematic and Pastoral Theology.  It takes time to achieve an ILT education and not everybody wants to take the time, or perhaps has the time, to go through a program like ours. But I believe that our age demands more deeply prepared pastors than has perhaps been the case in the past.  Accordingly, we shall always serve these constituencies, and we shall always try to grow our ministry programs.  

To really effect change in the contour of Lutheran theology in North America, we would need to train perhaps 1,000 pastors over the next 10 years. 1,000 very well-educated pastor-theologians who would take very seriously the traditional truth claims of theology would likely alter the course of the church bodies we serve and the North American Lutheran traditions from which they were born.  ILT's Christ School of Theology will always take seriously the task of raising up the next generations of Lutheran pastors, and we hope to train 1,000 pastors -- though to do so in 10 years would demand that more markets become open to us. 

From the beginning, however, ILT has had another task, a task parallel to that of raising up the next generation of Lutheran pastors.  As I wrote already in 2007, we must raise up the next generations of Lutheran professors and teachers.  We must tend to our theological traditions theologically.  We need people involved in an effort that will issue in the making of a new class of theologians, theologians who know the the great Christian deeply as it has been understood by the Lutheran Confessions, people who have a profound grasp of the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon and who can adroitly relate this tradition to the contemporary horizon.  

From the beginning we have created opportunities in ILT for advanced study, but now we are experiencing something at ILT we could maybe not have expected 17 years ago.  Although I knew that ILT must train future theologians, I did not realize in 2005-06, the degree to which God would bless our efforts at building a real theological institute.  

The last three years have shown very strong growth in our post-M.Div programming: the STM, the Doctor of Ministry, and especially the PhD.  People are seeking us out to study because they trust us to allow them to encounter the great texts of the tradition in creative and fruitful ways.  We don't tell the students that the great texts of the tradition must be avoided because they are not sufficiently sensitive to issues of class, sex, race, orientation, etc.  We are not deeply suspicious of the western canon as some are.  Paraphrasing Barth, we believe that we should take the presuppositions of that canon at least as seriously as our own.  Since we trust the tradition, we encourage our students to engage it deeply. 

What does ILT's Christ School want to be when it grows up?  While I cannot predict exactly what the Christ School will look like in fifty years, I do hope that I know what it will mean to be the Christ School then.  To be the Christ School of theology is to take very seriously the Holy Scriptures and the traditions of interpreting those Scriptures.  To take these Scriptures seriously means that this texts are not something of the past, but living and breathing documents of today, documents which engage us and open for us possibilities of our being. God's grace is, after all, something he dispenses each and every day, even as we living within the paradigms of the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.  Simply put, the documents confront us with the very question of salvation, the question that separates human beings from the beasts below them and the angels above, the question that will always remain orthogonal to the concerns of AI and the "machining of our culture."  

The Christ School of Theology is growing rapidly, particularly at the D.Min and PhD levels.  How big might we be next year?  If the trends I am seeing continue, we will have between 30-35 PhD students studying in the fall of 2023,  20-25 D.Min students, and 10-15 STM students.  This means that 60-75 of our students next fall will likely be doing advanced work in theology.  

We celebrate this! It is a God thing! The students are coming from almost all of the Lutheran traditions and beyond these traditions as well.  Our ATS headcount of 96 in the fall of 2022 could see another 15% increase next fall.  We are building the Christ School of Theology not by watering down who we are, but by embracing it the more deeply.  We are not a divinity school, but a flesh-and-blood Lutheran seminary dedicated to taking seriously Lutheran truth claims.  In a time in which seminaries are shrinking, ours is growing.  

I have been discussing here our seminary and graduate school and have not addressed our undergraduate school, Christ College. Nor have I talked about ILT's library and all of the publishing planned to flow from it.  These demand separate posts.  Here I have simply wanted to remind all what it means to be the Christ School of Theology.  We live the commitment to our heritage while at the same time being wholly vulnerable to our intellectual and cultural horizon.  This way of living is, we think, what the theology of the Cross is all about.  

ILT Commencement Address June 2022

It was an honor to offer the first commencement address for the Institute of Lutheran Theology's graduates from Christ School of Theology and Christ College on Thursday, June 16, 2022.  There were 14 students who walked last week.  Congratulations all!  

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Grace and peace to you in the Name of the Risen Lord! 

 

You made it!  Some of you made it just this last semester, and some semesters long ago.  Regardless of when you completed your programs, we are proud of you!  

 

We just completed the ILT Board Meeting this morning. We talked about operations, policies, budgets and the future.  And we talked about you!  You are so very important to us, and I want you to remember this throughout what I shall say today. 

 

This summer some of my PhD students are reading two very important books from the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995): Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being.  Levinas in these texts does something bold and new. He claims, in fact, that most of the western intellectual tradition has simply missed what is completely obvious: There is much more to things than just our thinking about them, our categorizing, explaining and knowing of them. 

 

There is the Other, he argues, that which is truly not-I, but is irreducibly more than merely not being I. Levinas claims, in fact, that the Other is infinite; we can never think deeply enough or sense precisely enough to be able to grasp the Other as other than my grasping of it. We have an inexorable Desire for this Other, says Levinas. We want to escape our world and flee into it.   

 

This Other, declares Levinas, resists the Totality of the Same. It halts every effort to comprehend it. It confronts my life of freedom with demand.  I encounter the Other though the human Face. The Face and eyes of the Other place a demand upon me that limits the freedom of the world I have built and in which I dwell. According to Levinas, the Face of the Other is a trace of God. Accordingly, religion pertains to the irreducible, unbridgeable gap between my activity and my projects and the Face of the One whose meeting cannot be comprehended in and through my activity and my projects. 

 

The Other meets me as demand, but every fiber of my being wants to deny the pull of the Other and to make the Other into the Same, that is, into more of me. Accordingly, I who am drawn to the world of the Other, want a world without an Other, for I can dwell comfortably in such a world. I am quite at home in the sameness of my world until the Other’s nomadic sojourn, until this Stranger arrives. The Other announces itself to me in and through my discomfort. Now I, who am no longer at home, must have a face-to-face encounter with one who is not of my world. 

 

Levinas has a particular take on the philosophical notion of transcendence.  His teachers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger thought mightily on this topic. Husserl believed that the I transcends itself when it knows what is not it. Because consciousness is directed toward an object, conscious life is ecstatic.  To be conscious, to be self-conscious, is to be conscious of that which is not the self.  In Husserlian talk, every noetic act has noematic content, and all noematic content presuppose a noetic act.  

 

His student Heidegger too was concerned with transcendence.  Human being is that “being-there” which is being-always-already-in-a-world.  To be is to have a world in which to be.  Human existence for Heidegger is thus ecstatic.  To be is to be always already outside oneself. There is no bare identity to the self.  The self is the self in being other than a mere self. It is what it is in the world which it is not.  

 

Levinas thought that both Husserl and Heidegger were not bold enough in conceiving transcendence.  He argued that both philosophers ultimately tried to understand the Other on the basis of the same, and thus never really go to the Other at all. Instead Levinas opts for a real encounter with the Other, an Other that can be no part of the Same.  We live, dream, plan and execute in the Totality of the Same.  Our lives, dreams, plans and deeds are the deposits of our own freedom.  We are comfortable. Then comes the Other from a place outside the Same, an Other that pushes us beyond ourselves, beyond the boundaries of the Same. We transcend toward the Other.  

 

In the Face of the Other, in the vulnerability of his or her eyes, I am lifted beyond my own projects. I am no longer the one I seemingly inescapably am, no longer the one trapped in the freedom and comfort of my self-narrative. The Other grants me an ecstasis beyond being all I can be, beyond being who I authentically am, beyond being the one who in its being lives the possibility of no more being. The Other seizes me and all my dreams of self and Same are shattered.

 

So what does the relation between the Same and Other have to do with you who graduate from ILT?  Why have I started my commencement speaking by speaking in such a way? 

 

You have all been to graduations, and you know the drill. Graduation day is the day to talk about the graduates, their lives as students, their overcoming of adversity, their accomplishments, skills, dreams, and opportunities.  Graduation Day celebrates the student after years of emphasizing the professors.  Graduation day is pregnant with future possibilities.  

 

But the President of the Institute of Lutheran Theology cannot talk about you in this way. Why?

 

Because you are neither your possibilities nor your actualities. You are, in fact, not you. You are beings who in your being are ecstatically connected with something not of your world. Accordingly, you are beings who shall preach and teach without a career. You are beings who shall pray and serve in denial of searching for or finding yourselves.  You are beings who are not who you are, but are only in pushing beyond to what you are not.  

 

Let me make this clear. ILT has not prepared you to live fully, but rather to come and die. ILT has not offered you opportunities to get ahead in life, but has pushed you to the edge of life.  ILT has not given you courage to be yourself, but has robbed you of the illusion of self.  Why say such things on this day of days?  

 

When Christ calls a person, He calls that person to come and die. This death is the death of the self, the end of the Totality of the Same, the abnegation of the creaturely life of enjoyment within the Father’s creation. This Call from the Stranger, from the One who perpetually sojourns, is a call to live outside the self and upon the boundary, it is a call back from the monotony of being into the rupture of meta-physics, a call to that which is beyond physics and all its being. 

 

Let me make this even more clear. ILT is not about its students, its faculty, its curriculum, its staff, its Board, its alumni or its donors. ILT is not about ILT. ILT is not at all about the Totality of the Same, but rather about the ecstasy of the Other. ILT is about that which ruptures all of its own projects.  ILT is in the call toward what is not. ILT is about the Christ.  

 

Graduates of ILT, you have been called to extraordinary lives, because you are called to a life that ends your life. You have a serious task at hand, a task much more serious than your life. Your task is witness to that Other who displays His traces in the eyes and faces of those you encounter. The master lives in his own house, but the servant lives in another’s. You servants who face Faces of divine traces, have ultimately one and only one otherworldly task. You must listen!  

 

You, whose lives are not your own, you, who have no careers, you, who live the discomfort and displacement of all that makes you you, you must listen to a Word that cannot be your word, a Word that destroys your illusions to lead, a Word that  annihilates the deepest pleasures of Creation itself, a Word that seizes you,  strangles you, and suffocates the last vestiges of your own freedom, a Word otherly distant but proximately fascinating. 

 

What advice can I give graduates of ILT?  

 

Live in the ecstasy of this Word. Dwell not in the meadows of the Same, but rather in the desert of the Other. Listen to this Word from that place beyond being that calls you to a deep service of your neighbor, a call not built upon the reasonability of such service, but rather gifted by the absurdity of the call itself.  Live, hearing the Word that propels you to the ultimate boundary of this world, live the Word that demands, but loves in and through those demands.  

What advice can I give to graduates of ILT?  “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom.12:2), a renewing that can never be of this world, but can be only in being otherwise than being, can be only through the free grace of Jesus the Christ.  What I am saying should now be clear. Hear the Word that loves, graces, frees, transforms, and renews; hear this Word not as words about the Word but as the Word itself, as the Word that assumed flesh and dwelt among us.  Hear the Word whose doing in you drives you away from yourself and towards the Spirit, the Holy Spirit who will ultimately equip you for ministry.

 

Graduates, we have learned from you and have been changed by you.  Your faces among us have made us more than we are. Your time here was precious for us. We know that you are not ours, but His. We now wait, listening for the Word that words in and through your words. We wait as you preach, teach, and witness to that Other, an Other that sounds forth from where we ought to be, but can never find ourselves.  We wait as the Word that words in your words reclaims the Same for service of the Other, an Other who is wholly holy.  

 

We are created as nomads who profoundly prefer to wander in the labyrinths of the Other than settle in villages of the Same. But we have exchanged our birthright for a mass of pottage (Gen 25:29-34) and have become squatters upon the Same, thus erasing and defacing the Other. But then the Word spoken by your lips, graduates, speaks Truth. You are not your own, but His, so you need no longer worry about being you. 

So what ultimate good could come from the goodness of life when compared to wandering in the wilderness of the Holy? 

 

ATS Fall Headcount and FTE for Lutheran Institutions and an Update on Progress at Institute of Lutheran Theology

It is time for my yearly update on the growth of the Institute of Lutheran Theology with respect to Lutheran Seminaries in North America. 

ILT had a combined headcount of 101 in the F 2021 and a FTE of 81.26. The graduate school alone, Christ School of Theology, had a headcount of 79 with an FTE of 68.72.  This places ILT in ninth place in size among the 21 Lutheran seminaries. Below are the numbers for the fall of 2021, with the first number reporting headcount and the second in parenthesis giving the student FTE. ATS schools numbers are easiest to find, and I must confess to almost guessing on some of the other institutions.   

Of real interest is that the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary is now ATS accredited and claiming to have a FTE and headcount of 174. This would make it the sixth largest Lutheran institution in North America. 

ILT's Christ School of Theology is beginning the process of ATS accreditation, having had its first ATS visit in February. I am very optimistic the partnership we will have with ATS going forward. 

Concordia Seminary (LCMS) 603 (377)

Luther Seminary (ELCA): 476 (330)

Concordia Theological Seminary (LCMS): 307 (217)

Warburg Seminary (ELCA): 231 (198)

United Lutheran Seminary (ELCA): 342 (184)

Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (WELS): 174 (174) 

Martin Luther University (ELCIC): 134 (110)

Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago (ELCA): 129 (103) 

INSTITUTE OF LUTHERAN THEOLOGY: 101 (81.26), 79 (68.72) grad school alone

Trinity School of Ministry (where the NALS is housed): 152 (65)

Lutheran Theological Southern (ELCA): 57 (46.3)

Trinity Seminary (ELCA): 43 (35)

Bethany Theological Seminary (Brethren): 55?

Pacific Lutheran (ELCA): 49 (40)

Lutheran Brethren Seminary: 40?

Free Lutheran Bible College: 25?

ALTS (AALC): 25??

Bethany Lutheran Theological Sem (ELS): 16?

Concordia Lutheran Ontario (LCC): 19 (14)

LTS Saskatoon (ELCIC): 17 (11)

Concordia Lutheran Edmonton (LCC): 7 (7). 

Early Documents Pertaining to the Founding of the Institute of Lutheran Theology: "Why a Lutheran House of Studies?"

The following article of mine was published in The WordAlone News on the Day of Epiphany, 2006.  I was then Chair of the WordAlone Theological House of Studies Task Force.  In this article from over 15 years ago, one can discern early rationale for the new institution that later became the Institute of Lutheran Theology.  Maybe someone will find this interesting.  

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Why a Lutheran House of Studies? 

by Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt (Chair, WordAlone Lutheran Theological House of Studies Task Force)

January 6, 2006

 

A wise person once said that wisdom is the gift of understanding the obvious. I have talked with many Lutherans who are concerned about the future of theological education in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Congregations sense that newly ordained pastors often think quite differently than those joining the clergy rosters 40 years ago. But granting this is so, why is it so? What understanding of this problem is available to us?

 

I recall three recent conversations that exemplify the problem.

 

In the first, a woman was talking to me about the sexuality issue confronting the ELCA, "How can my pastor be for allowing someone engaged in homosexual behavior to be a pastor? Doesn't it say in the Bible that we aren't supposed to do that, and hasn't Christianity always taught that?" I remember trying to explain to her how it had come about that Bible and tradition were no longer thought clearly to decide the issue. She was not impressed with my reply.

 

In another conversation a man said to me, "Why is everyone coming out of the seminary these days so politically correct? It seems like they care more about fixing society than they do about preaching the faith." When I told him about the justice perspective of the prophetic Biblical faith, he responded, "I am not against talking some politics in church, I just want to make sure we also talk about church in church, because we don't talk about that anywhere else."

 

Finally, I recall the words of an older gentleman who remarked, "When I was young, the pastor definitely had authority in our congregation. It was not just his word against ours. But when pastors get all agitated about stuff they don't know about—our last pastor was convinced that large, multi-national agribusiness was the work of the devil—then it makes us think they maybe don't know as much about what we are paying them to know about." I didn't know what to say to that because I remembered my own synod's passing a resolution directed against Cargill even though members of the economics faculty at our state university claimed those voting hadn't a clue as to what they were voting about.

 

The three conversations clearly display the problem. As a church what is our authority? If it is no longer Scripture and tradition, then what is it? As a church what is the focus of our message? If it is not the crucified Christ, then what is it? As a church what is our competence? If it is not the proclamation of the revealed Word into the concrete situation, then what is it?

 

It is obvious that things have changed in Lutheran theological education in America. Precisely what have changed, I think, are the teachable assumptions about authority, message and competence. Underlying these is an even more fundamental presupposition that confessional theological statements cannot be true—at least not in the way we had previously believed.

 

WordAlone, along with many other Lutheran reform movements, perceives that the classical loci of the Lutheran tradition have been de-emphasized within ELCA seminaries over the past 40 years. The following are my speculations as to why it is that we find ourselves in the current situation. Hopefully, there will be some gift of wisdom in my attempt to understand what, to many, is obvious.

 

One cause of the problem is economic. We must recognize that ELCA funding for its seminaries is much lower than the funding of the previous Lutheran bodies towards their seminaries. This change in economic policy has had tremendous repercussions. In order to survive and prosper, the seminaries have had to become more autonomous in their self-understanding than previously had been so, and they have thus had to offer curricula that can appeal to a broad range of students seeking theological education. As the de facto mission of the seminaries changed from the "in house" task of preparing Lutheran students for Lutheran ministry to the more general task of providing academic theological education to a broader constituency, the explicitly confessional nature of theological education was accordingly de-emphasized. (I am not claiming that anyone set out intending to do this.) The result has been that the ethos of Lutheran identity and confession no longer prevails in the student body of the seminaries. Many students today neither know the Lutheran tradition nor wish to adopt and advocate for it. This state of affairs is simply an unarguable fact about our current context and the economic realities that underlie it.

 

Secondly, the decline in teaching classical Lutheran theology is attributable in part to a change in the theological direction of ELCA leadership and significant numbers of the ELCA rank-and-file.

 

We live in a time in which the "truth-conditions" for theological language are routinely considered to be problematic. In an age of cultural relativism that often breeds ethical relativism, there is a profound awareness of the multiplicity of religious options and a sincere desire on the part of many not to be ethnocentric with respect to their own fundamental beliefs and world views. This awareness has tended to conflict with the prima facie particularity of Christian confession. While in previous times one could say "confessional proposition x is true because the state of affairs denoted by x obtains external to human awareness, perception, conception and language," this option seems to many today to be provincial, parochial, naïve and misguided. How can one's own confessions be true in this way without saying at the same time that everyone else's are wrong?

 

The result of this has been a general movement away from understanding confessional assertions realistically, and instead understanding them as mere expressions of one's own cultural values. Thus, a "theological irrealism" has taken up residency within the ELCA. Of course, to claim that such an irrealism is the only alternative to the robust realism of earlier generations is itself to commit the fallacy of false dichotomy. The denial of one simply does not entail the truth of the other, even though it may often seem that way to people in the pews. (The problem bequeathed by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant was to try to give theological language truth-conditions without having to understand them realistically. The next 150 years of theological development tried to grant objectivity to theological propositions without making them about metaphysical objects. The problem today is that there has been a general loss of confidence in this entire project. Objectivity itself has become subjectivized, and normativity is customarily regarded as an expression of the self embedded in its immediate cultural context.)

 

Thirdly, with the loss of particular truth-conditions to theological language, there has resurfaced in our time the problem of authority.

 

While Lutherans once believed that Scripture itself could adjudicate conflicting claims, contemporary Biblical scholarship assumes that the sensus of Scripture is not easily located. Given the conflicting claims in Biblical scholarship about the real meaning of particular texts, a retreat to the letter and authority of the confessional documents has also seemed wrongheaded. Moreover, the real meanings of these documents are themselves open for scholarly debate. Given this present vacuum of authority, it is small wonder that voices have emerged urging a ratcheting up of the authority of the Church. When Scripture and Confession can no longer function to grant authority to the particularity of Lutheran theological affirmations, then something else is requisite, and that hoped for "something else" is identified by many as "the Church."

 

The paradox of the present ELCA participation in the ecumenical movement is this: Lutheranism began in the particularity of its theological affirmations over and against Catholic, Reformed and Anabaptist theology. Now, the ELCA is putatively, or supposedly, to "get over" these particularist affirmations in order to find unity with others within the Church catholic. Those holding to the particularity of these former affirmations are understood by many as undermining the unity of the Church. In a time when form prevails over substance, unity smells sweeter than truth.

 

There is a final point worth mentioning. There has been a widespread attenuation, or lessening, of emphasis on the scandal of the Cross in favor of a preoccupation with social justice issues.

 

The reason for this is not difficult to ascertain. Citizens of America generally embrace the traditional American values of individual rights and dignities. Advocating for social justice and individual dignity, while part of the Biblical prophetic tradition, is thus clearly consonant with the prevailing ethos of American culture. To speak for peace and justice is to state the deepest and noblest values of our civilization. But proclaiming the foolishness of the Cross is irreducibly counter-cultural. Advocating an ultimate eschatological, or end times, empowerment before God that does not entail immediate temporal empowerment is a position that has been, and will continue to be, criticized by enlightened, cultured despisers of religion. But Lutheranism must always find its center in the second article of the creeds, the scandal of the Cross.

 

The WordAlone Network's House of Studies project wishes to establish a structure for theological education that assumes the following:

 

·      The authority of Scripture and Confessions

·      The centrality of the scandal of the Cross

·      The truth and particularity of traditional Lutheran affirmations

·      The notion that the Church is primarily the hidden gathering of the faithful and not a visible means of divine grace

·      The value of theological competence and student mastery of Scripture and other primary texts of the Lutheran theological tradition

 

We are at a crossroads. The WordAlone Network wishes to establish and implement structures that can perpetuate Lutheran confessional teaching in the face of contemporary social, cultural and theological resistance. The structural shape of the Lutheran House of Studies has not been determined. We remain at the preliminary stage of seeking input and interest in such a project. While we do not now know the "hardware" particulars of the House of Studies, we do, however, have an idea of the "software" we wish to create. In creating the "software," we wish to begin with its critical component: good faculty willing to teach in the House of Studies and an attainable vision. Because we believe that good software can run in different hardware environments, we shall begin our efforts by identifying faculty and planning curriculum.

 

How Big is ILT?

The Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) is continuing to grow. In the fall of 2019, ILT had117 active students with a headcount of 82 and a full-time equivalency (FTE) of 58. Headcount was at 85 in the spring semester 2020 with FTE edging above 60. ILT defines "active students" as those taking courses in the last three semesters that have not withdrawn. Many of our students take courses only one semester a year, so our headcount over the year is slightly over 100. 

We should see headcount and FTE growth this fall (2020) of about 30%, much of which is coming from our PhD program and our new B.A. curriculum. So how does ILT compare in size with its competitors?  
ILT ranked in the Fall of 2019 as the 9th largest Lutheran seminary in North America. You might be interested in the sizes of Lutheran seminaries by headcount. I was and compiled the list below. It was difficult to find all of this information, and on a couple I had to do some guessing. I want to be accurate, so if anybody sees an error, please let me know. FTE comparisons show much the same as headcount comparisons as far as the ranking of institutional size. 
This fall (2020) ILT will almost certainly become the 8th largest Lutheran Seminary in North America. We have some lofty goals, one of which is to grow ILT 25% a year for the next 10 years. Whether this is achievable depends in large part on whether our undergraduate program grows. We won't be able to include that growth as seminary growth, of course, but we do plan on growing the seminary itself into the Top Five over the next few years. 
There are many reasons for our growth during the generally declining theological market. The fact that we have done online education rigorously since our inception means that students who are increasingly going online for their theological education -- some of this movement is driven by the covid-19 panic--are looking at us seriously and liking what they see. After all, we have a great faculty and some exciting programming. 
Here is a list of North American Lutheran seminaries by headcount in the fall of 2019.

• Concordia Seminary (LCMS) 592
• Luther Seminary (ELCA): 465
• United Lutheran Seminary (ELCA): 357
• Concordia Theological Seminary (LCMS): 314
• Warburg Seminary (ELCA): 218
• Trinity Episcopal School of Ministry (Anglican) 176 (I include because the North American Lutheran Seminary is a part of this seminary.)
• LSTC (ELCA): 164
• Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (WELS): 157
• Martin Luther University (ELCIC): 97
• INSTITUTE OF LUTHERAN THEOLOGY: 82 
• Lutheran Theological Southern (ELCA): 68
• Trinity Seminary (ECLC): 64
• Bethany Theological Seminary (Brethren): 58 
• Pacific Lutheran (ELCA): 49
• Lutheran Brethren Seminary: 40 (2016)
• Free Lutheran Bible College: 25
• ALTS (AALC): 25??
• LTS Saskatoon (ELCIC): 20
• Bethany Lutheran Theological Sem (ELS): 16
• Concordia Lutheran Ontario (LCC): 14
• Concordia Lutheran Edmonton (LCC): 9

We look to the future knowing that it is fully redeemed and complete. May God grant that we at ILT continue to live that future today in creativity and faithfulness!    

The Institute of Lutheran Theology: Second Decade

In the fall of 2009, the Institute of Lutheran Theology began offering graduate classes to future pastors.  It took a little over four years from the birth of the ILT idea to the offering of actual ILT courses within a curriculum issuing in a degree.

As I look at the course offerings in the fall of 2019, I am struck by how constant and stable our course of development has been over the last decade and more.  In the summer of 2007 in the basement of ILT's "Old Sanctuary" main building, I wrote our first ILT Business Plan that claimed the following as the five emphases of ILT:

• Educate the next generation of Lutheran pastors 
• Educate the next generation of Lutheran teachers and professors
• Provide quality educational opportunities for the laity
• Provide quality continuing educational opportunities for pastors and teachers
• Engage in a continuing research agenda that seeks to connect theologically to the semantic and ontological horizon of the Lutheran Reformation. 

This fall we shall be finally doing all of this, from our lay academy offerings, to our Ph.D. courses, with everything in between.  Interested in what we are teaching in the fall of 2019 at ILT? Here are just a few of the offerings:

• Biblical Hebrew II
• The Penteteuch and Histories
• Epistles and Formation of the New Testament
• A Secular World
• Proclamation in the 21st Century
• Ethics in Lutheran Perspective
• Faith, Knowledge and Reason
• Theology and World Religions
• Theological Methods
• The Lutheran Confessions
• The Theology of Karl Barth
• Pastoral Care I, II and III
• Theology and the Practice of Worship 

All of our courses are delivered via video-conferencing in order to recreate the experience of the residential classroom.

Some might say, "Well this is an awfully fast development.  Why do they try to do so much and do it so quickly."

The answer simply is that there is no time at all to waste.  The acceleration of the forces of secularity, particularly of what Charles Taylor calls "secularism as a social imaginary" makes it crucially important to teach the tradition so it again can be an active dialogue partner with the present.  Taylor asks, "Why is it that 500 years ago it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, while today believing in God is virtually impossible, even for those who profess such a belief?"

The limits of our language are the limits of our world, and if we no longer encounter texts which bespeak transcendence and authentic hope, we will begin to think that reveling in the myoptic day-to-day is, in fact, the good life.  Lamentably, to aim to live a life defined by superficial conventionality as if it were a life of value and purpose, is the only aim left when the thesaurus of the past is arbitrarily disconnected from the emptiness and desolation of our present.

So how do the course offerings address the five goals of ILT originally enunciated?

• Twenty-four courses offered this fall are courses within the following pastoral preparation programs: Pastoral Ministry Certificate, Youth and Family Certificate, Masters of Ministry, Masters of Divinity, and Masters of Military Chaplaincy.  
• Fifteen courses this fall directly prepare students to teach at the undergraduate level while six courses prepare students for graduate level instruction.  These serve our Masters of Arts, Masters of Sacred Theology, Doctor of Ministry and Ph.D. programs.
• Six courses provide continuing education experience for pastors and teachers already having masters of divinity.
• Three courses are designed for the general person not necessarily seeking a vocation of teaching or preaching.  
• Three courses grant students a unique opportunity to do in-depth research within the ILT research paradigm.  

I have been blessed to lead the Institute of Lutheran Theology from its inception to its present state of development.  It has been a meaningful and productive journey.  So what is left?

•  While the Ph.D. is up and running starting this fall, we will be developing emphases within this program over the next years.  Check back often to see the growth!
• Some of us have lately been dreaming about a Center for Religion and Science in Rural Life (CRSRL).  We believe that one of the unexplored areas of the religion and science discussion has been that of how the relationship between the two is drawn within rural contexts.  Scientific and technological revolutions have occurred that have transformed rural America, and we believe that some sustained discussion of the relationship between these changes and religious belief and practice needs to occur.  We are envisioning a robust research agenda within CRSRL. 
• Finally, we hope soon to be able to offer undergraduate credit for some of our programming.  Up and until this point, ILT has been strictly a graduate institution.  We believe that God might be calling us to a little broader mission.  More of this to come!

ILT has from its inception sought to be faithful to its original charge of faithfully preaching and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.  We seek to advance this mission in all that we do.    Visit us at www.ilt.edu.  We are accredited and credible!

Studying Classical Lutheran Theology with Vigor and Rigor

I am driving back from the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE) Annual Convention where the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) was just granted candidate status towards full institutional accreditation.  ILT is dedicating all the resources necessary to acquire initial accreditation extremely quickly.

ILT is known, of course, for its innovative pedagogical model that uses video conferencing resources in an on-line format that allows almost all of our M.A., M.Div., STM and D.Min. curricula to be delivered directly into student's own home.  I was a tenured professor for many years at a state university, and often tell people that the only difference between teaching at the university or with ILT is that with ILT I don't have to find a parking place before class.  We do distance education very well.

Just because ILT is innovative pedagogically, however, does not guarantee its long-term success or viability.  Many other schools, even state universities, are beginning to use the technologies we have used since inception.  Lutheran seminaries are getting into the act as well.  So when all the Lutheran seminaries learn to deliver on-line like ILT has done, what is left to be distinctive about ILT?

The answer is easy: ILT is much more rigorous than most Lutheran seminaries now are; we prepare much more deeply in the discipline of theology itself.  The following compares the Institute of Lutheran Theology's Master of Divinity program with that of Luther Seminary's in St. Paul.  Luther Seminary once had a very fine curriculum, but changes over the last decades in the trajectory of theological education in North America have profoundly affected that curriculum.  The ILT curriculum comes from the 2017-18 ILT academic catalog.  The Luther Seminary information can be found in the Luther Seminary 2016-17 academic catalog found at www.luthersem.edu.  Below are the classes that students must take at each institution.

Biblical Theology

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• Introduction to Greek
• Readings in NT Greek, Biblical Hebrew 
• Lutheran Evangelical Methods
• Lutheran Biblical Interpretation
• The Pentateuch
• Wisdom and the Histories
• The Gospels
• Paul and His Legacy
• Epistles and Formation of the NT
• OT or NT elective 

Luther Seminary

• Biblical Hebrew
• New Testament Greek
• Scripture & Witness I
• Scripture & Witness II
• Biblical Exegesis for Ministry 

Historical Theology

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• History of Christian Thought I: Origins to 1500
• History of Christian Thought II: The Reformation
• History of Christian Thought III: 1700 - 1900
• History of Christian Thought IV:  20th Century
• History of the Lutheran Church
• The Theology of Martin Luther
• The Lutheran Confessions 

Luther Seminary

• Reform and Expansion of Christianity
• Either History of Christianity since 1800 or Apostles to the Reformers
• Lutheran Confessional Writings or denominational option

Systematic Theology 

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• Creation and the Triune God
• Christology 
• Christ, Spirit and the Two Kingdoms
• Three from the following:  
• Theology and Science
• World Religions and Theology
• Christian Sexual Ethics
• Philosophy of Religion
• Religious Interpretation of Films 

Philosophy

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• Faith, Knowledge and Reason
• Critical Thinking for the Theologian (doctrinal track) 

Luther Seminary 

• None 

Pastoral Theology 

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• Pastoral Theology I
• Pastoral Theology II
• Pastoral Theology III
• Parish Administration
• The Teaching Shepherd
• Theology and the Practice of Worship
• Homiletics I 
• Homiletics II
• Homiletics III
• Pastoral Theology elective
• Internship (no credit) 

Luther Seminary 

• Christian Public Leader I & II (half courses) 
• Congregational Care and Formation
• Foundations of Biblical Preaching 
• Public Worship
• Clinical Pastoral Education
• Internship (counts as two courses) 

Electives 

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• Two courses (OT or NT elective and Pastoral Theology elective, as noted above) 

Luther Seminary 

• 12 courses 

Notice the difference in the emphasis between ILT and what Luther Seminary now offers.  We don't teach leadership as an end in itself, but believe that if our students humbly know Scripture and the theological tradition profoundly, they will be formed with servants' hearts so that they might preach, teach and lead boldly.  Evangelical leadership is a function of Evangelical servanthood; such servanthood is not a function of leadership.  

Given what I have just said, it might be useful as well to contrast the Institute of Lutheran Theology D. Min. program with that of Luther Seminary.  Here it is: 

Topic

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• Reaching the Unreached

Luther Seminary

• Congregational Mission and Leadership

Residency Requirement

Institute of Lutheran Theology

• None

Luther Seminary 

• Total of 38-42 days over four years

Method of Course Delivery

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• Live multi-feed video conferencing one evening per week for a total of 45 contact hours per semester

Luther Seminary 

• On-Campus one-week intensives, with work before and after

Required Courses

Institute of Lutheran Theology

• A Secular World
• Models of Engagement
• Proclamation in the 21st Century
• Catechesis
• Methodology and Approaches to Graduate Study 
• Two student-designed independent projects

Luther Seminary

• Integration of Theology and Ministry
• Pastoral Theology, Identity and Spiritual Life
• Missional Church
• Missional Leadership
• Congregational Practices 

Thesis/Project

Institute of Lutheran Theology 

• Work independently at own pace

Luther Seminary 

• Four visits to campus during fourth year for research and guidance

I have made a comparison with Luther Seminary simply because I take what has happened at Luther to exemplify general trends in theological education within North American Lutheran circles.  Please know that I have nothing against Luther Seminary; many of my good friends once received a very fine theological education there.   

Christ School of Theology News

The Institute of Lutheran Theology's graduate school, The Christ School of Theology, now has its own webpage at http://www.ilt-cst.org/.   We are looking forward to an exciting semester with new students and courses.   Are you interested in the Lutheran Confessions?   The Theology of Luther?  Nineteenth Century Theology?  Philosophy of Religion?   Biblical Hebrew?   Christian Sexual Ethics?   Patristics?   Courses in the Synoptics and Epistles?  The Pentateuch?   Theology and Science?  We have these courses and more beginning in two weeks!

Remember that the Christ School of Theology offers a Masters of Sacred Theology (STM) as well as Masters of Religion and Masters of Divinity degrees.   This fall we offer four selections, one taught by Professor Paul Hinlicky entitled "Jenson's Systematic Theology."   This will be a wonderfully in-depth treatment of one of the most creative American Lutheran theologians of the past fifty years.   If interested, please visit our webpages and enroll today!   The ILT webpage remains www.ilt.org.
 

The Christ School of Theology

As many of you know, I have been heading an effort these last six years to build an independent, autonomous, and fully-accredited graduate school of theology and seminary.   The name we have used since the very early days is 'The Institute of Lutheran Theology' (ILT).   Some of you know as well that over the last five years we have referred to the Institute of Lutheran Theology's graduate school specifically as the 'Christ School of Theology'.  

The Christ School of Theology (CST) has been growing nicely and I am happy to report that we easily shattered this semester our old enrollment records.  Many of you realize we have stellar names teaching at CST, e.g., Paul Hinlicky, Bob Benne, Jonathan Sorum, David Yeago, etc.   Since the beginning we have had on our Board Professor Hans Hillerbrand, one of the top names in Reformation scholarship and the former President of the American Academy of Religion.  Our Masters of Sacred Theology (STM) program is growing nicely and we look forward to announcing soon our course offerings for this fall. Stay tuned!      

Students and faculty of CST know that we deliver our courses in a fully interactive video platform that allows each student to see and interact with each other student as well as the professor.   This has worked very well these last five years, but we realize that we need to be able to deliver content in parts of the world where bandwidth does not exist for fully interactive video yet.  We also know that some students actually prefer asynchronous delivery of course content to the interactive approach we routinely employ.  Such asynchronous delivery works nicely for independent study options.  Because of these demands, ILT is beginning work to produce  usable video products that can be delivered by DVD or directly through satellite download.   While most of this content will be password-protected, we shall be broadcasting some on-demand content in the clear.

While we are in the first stages of this, some content is already available.  I am the guinea pig for this ILT "beta project."   If you are interested in lecture content from my "Faith, Knowledge and Reason" course about how philosophy connects to (and has connected with) philosophy, visit either our ILT Christ School of Theology Ustream or YouTube channels.   You can find the latest lecture on Ustream here or on YouTube here.   Four to five lectures are going up each week on these CST channels, as well as Word at Work content for congregations here, or our daily chapel archive here. We are also working to make available some of the last lectures from my "Doktor Vater," George Forell.   I will update you on this project as it progresses.  

What would it have been like to watch the lectures of Walther, Chemnitz, Luther, Thomas or Aristotle?   While we shall never know this, folks at the Christ School of Theology do hope someday to capture and archive quality content from significant Lutheran theological voices.  In doing this, ILT will be doing what it has always done: seek humbly to perpetuate the Lutheran tradition by connecting  the most able and curious of students with the most knowledgeable and experienced of professors.