Significant shifts. . .

Ten years ago the vacancy report of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod showed 312 calling sole pastors, 47 calling senior pastors, and 75 calling associate pastors.  Today there has been a nominal but noteworthy increase to 415 calling sole pastors, 56 calling senior pastors, and 63 calling associate pastors.  Overall, the number of calling congregations increased 100 over ten years or 10 per year -- a concerning but manageable increase one might think.  During that same time period, the Synod added the Specific Ministry Pastor program, at least in part because of concern for the need for more pastors.

All of that pales in comparison to the numbers of congregations calling part-time pastors.  In 2015 some 357 congregations were calling pastors to serve part-time and now, ten years later, that number is over 670 -- pretty close to doubling.  In the last five years, that number grew by more than 55%.  The post-pandemic situation is remarkably different and seems to have accelerated the number of congregations calling part-time clergy.

At this same point is the reality that the retirement of the big classes of the 1980s means that the situation at the seminaries is made more urgent by the prospect of those who are departing the full-time and even, perhaps, the part-time workforce.  In other words, things will get worse before they get better.  You do not need a crystal ball to come to that conclusion.

Some believe that this is itself a sign that we need to shake things up at the way we have been forming pastors and look to other models -- whether they be non-Synodical seminary routes or online courses of study or localized training programs.  While on the surface this might sound like the time to begin consideration of more alternative routes to ordination, there are other things going on.  As a Synod we are still not quite sure about SMPs.  Yes, they are pastors in the places where they serve but they require local supervision or oversight as well as the ordinary ecclesiastical supervision provided by the District President for every pastor.  Yes, they have been trained but an abbreviated amount of training in comparison to the residential seminary programs.  Yes, they have been nominally formed as pastors but this formation takes place far afield of the ordinary way we have formed pastors for their calling and has left us with a two-tiered ministerium and people with vastly different ways of preparing them for ordination.  Our official seminaries certainly oversee this training but within the limited parameters assigned this program by the Synod in Convention.  To add to this confusion by opening up the doors to those who attended other seminaries or came from other training routes to enter the LCMS is not the wisest choice for us and desperation can lead a person to make different choices than due consideration of all that is involved.

We have seen relative improvement through the Set Apart to Serve emphasis and even some numbers in the universities of the Synod are showing improvement in those pre-seminary students attending there.  All of these are rather slow options -- not that this is always bad.  When the Church moves like a herd of turtles it also prevents us from giving into whims and fads that later come to haunt.  But it does mean that perhaps we need to think through what we already have more carefully.  The invention of titles does not always solve a problem.  We saw how the change from assistant to associate created some of its own confusion -- this in a church body that once insisted there is only ever one pastor of a congregation even if he is assisted by other ordained men.  We have tinkered with the rules of candidate status in an effort to make it easier to return those from this often forgotten limbo back to the parish -- since we already trained them and know them -- but that has created its own confusion and fails to distinguish those who are seeking a call from those who cannot move (for whatever reason).   We are still parsing the bylaws and words applied to the SMP program and every year in Districts as well as Synod overall there are voices who want to remove all restrictions and treat SMPs the same as general pastors.  We once had a rather clearly laid out path to colloquy for those entering from outside Lutheranism and now we have left most of the details out of the handbook and into the hands of a committee.  Maybe it is time for a solid review and clarifying bylaws to make it plain before we go adding more routes or eliminating past distinctions.  

While wedded to CFW Walther's Church and Ministry, we also deal in a world with bishops and very different paths to ministry.  It is often a signal that we are not quite of one mind as we might think of the office of the ministry, the best means of forming those who fill that office, the changing circumstances of the call (tenured and non-tenured being merely one aspect), and what is the best path forward in a world so clearly different from the past.  While I am not sure a Synod Convention is the deliberative body in which such a discussion would best take place, deliberation is clearly what we need.  Can we take a breath before we launch into some of the options that would work against what we already have that is good?  This is my appeal for careful work at a time when urgency seems imperative and options are being offered that another generation would have rejected out of hand.