Concerned members of our congregations have been asking me with increasing frequency, “What does Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (CTSFW), think about the two online MDiv programs that some in our Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) have been promoting?”
Study in one of those programs, Luther House of Study (LHOS), has been promoted among LCMS members by Unite Leadership Collective (ULC), a parachurch organization focused on developing local, congregational leadership. Meanwhile, the Center, another parachurch organization focused on outreach, is inviting LCMS members to study at the Center for Missional and Pastoral Leadership (CMPL), a venture under the umbrella of the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT). Students in these programs can earn the Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree through online coursework and practicums in their home congregations. If you read no further, it’s important to know the following:
Graduates from neither of these programs may be ordained or installed in an LCMS congregation or ministry.
Neither of these seminaries is owned, operated, authorized, or governed by the LCMS.
Let me explain why that matters.
The Lord Christ has called His church to faithfulness in the things of God (John 8:31), to love toward one another (John 13:35), and to unity in His mystical Body, the Church (John 17:20-21, Ephesians 4:4-6). This unity is grounded in “continuing steadfast in the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42).
To foster that unity, the LCMS has from its inception owned and operated two seminaries, CTSFW and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis (CSL). They are the only two seminaries authorized by the LCMS to prepare and examine future pastors for the parishes and missions of our Synod. The Synod maintains—and the seminaries gladly accept—Synod governance so that they may be held to account for their fidelity to our shared doctrine and witness. In turn, our LCMS ordains into the ministry only those men whose doctrine and life have been formed and examined by them.
This arrangement has proven an inestimable blessing for the LCMS.
I’ve often put it this way:
If your pastor confesses and teaches and believes that the Son of God really was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of the Blessed Virgin, bore your sin and death, put them to death in His own death, and rose again bodily, and that bodily you will rise on the Last Day, thank God for our seminaries.
If your pastor believes, teaches, and confesses that you are justified by faith alone in Christ alone, without any decision on your part or merit or worthiness in you, thank God for our seminaries.
If your pastor believes, teaches, and confesses that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, thank God for our seminaries.
If your pastor believes, teaches, and confesses that the host is the Body and the wine the Blood of Christ, and that they should not be administered to those with whom we disagree in doctrine, thank God for our seminaries.
If your pastor pronounces the Absolution with the scriptural conviction that this Absolution forgives your sins, thank God for our seminaries.
Such things are hardly luxuries. They are eternal life and eternal salvation.
It is telling that both LHOS and CMPL stand and wish to stand outside of our long-established and beneficial Synod governance. They simply do not have the same responsibility or accountability to the Synod.
CMPL faculty and advocates of LHOS
voice concerns about the dearth of LCMS pastors yet steer potential pastors away from the two LCMS seminaries and gladly receive tuition from LCMS men for an MDiv that cannot lead to LCMS ordination;
decry the cost of seminary attendance, even as the two LCMS seminaries offer a tuition-free MDiv;
characterize moving to seminary as an insurmountable hurdle, even as “no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62), and movement is an inconvenience that a healthy ministerium must simply accept;
champion the effectiveness of online education, even as the experience of COVID exposed its weaknesses and limitations;
insist that they are only raising up “leaders,” not pastors, but steer students into a professional degree intended to lead to ordained pastoral ministry and, in the case of CMPL, present themselves as the Center for Missional and Pastoral Leadership;
maintain that the micro-context of a single parish, often the student’s only experience with Lutheranism, can provide the theological and pastoral depth that our seminaries’ students gain from experience in their own congregation, their fieldwork congregation, and their vicarage congregation, and from a CTSFW faculty with over 230 years of cumulative pastoral experience and over 500 cumulative years of forming pastors;
wish you to believe that their graduates’ Lutheran bona fides can be achieved by a liberal Lutheran faculty (LHOS) and an LCMS faculty that has willingly opted against LCMS governance (CMPL).
Some have suggested that the residential MDiv education and formation offered by CTSFW and CSL should be regarded as “the gold standard,” leaving the online MDiv programs as an acceptable—albeit silver or bronze—standard. The history of our LCMS tells a different story: residential MDiv education and formation is simply the standard—it always has been.
But because of that, it’s easy for the CMPL faculty and advocates for LHOS to claim otherwise. The fact is, the vast majority of LCMS Lutherans really know nothing but the teaching and sacramental administration of pastors residentially educated and formed at CTSFW and CSL. When CTSFW pastors “make it look easy” that’s exactly what they’re doing: making it look easy. Their deftness in handling the Word of God and applying it faithfully is based on hundreds of hours of formal study of God’s Word, our Lutheran Confessions, Christian dogma, the history of the Church, and pastoral theology. They’ve been steeped in Lutheran liturgy and hymns. During seminary they’ve taken in over 600 sermons. And they’ve learned from expert pastors at their home churches, fieldwork congregations, and vicarage congregations how to apply the Word of God to different situations in the same place and to the same situation in different places in faithfulness toward God and in love toward the people.
That’s because, by the grace of God, our LCMS seminaries know what we’re doing. We’ve been doing it—and doing it exceedingly well—for nearly 180 years. Our seminaries are a “luxury” our church can’t do without. So, if you’d like an LCMS pastor in your LCMS church today and twenty years down the road, support our seminaries with your prayers and financial resources. If you prize the unity of love and doctrine in our LCMS, treasure our seminaries. And if you’re moved to serve the church as a pastor, contact us at CTSFW. The fields are white for harvest (John 4:35).
I know that as I write all this, I echo the studied perspective of my good friend and colleague at CSL, President Tom Egger, and invite you to take a moment to read his statement on this matter.
Meanwhile, hold fast to Christ; and may the good and gracious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who raised Him from the dead, guard and keep you by the power of His Spirit in the one, true faith. Amen!
+ pax domini +
J. S. Bruss
President, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne
About Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne
Founded in 1846, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, forms servants of Jesus Christ in a vibrant, Christ-centered theological community that engages and resources the church and the world, domestically and internationally, with distinctively Lutheran teaching, practice, and worship. To learn more, visit ctsfw.edu.
