Must be Lutheran. . .

Although some decry that our Missouri Synod colleges and universities some time ago ceased to be places where the majority of students were members of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  Although some are worried about this, I am not.  It is not the diminished numbers of LCMS or even Lutheran students at our institutions of higher learning that is the problem.  It is that those institutions struggle to know what it means to be Lutheran and therefore teeter on the edge of Lutheran identity.  This is not a new problem and has been going on for a very long time -- although masked by the fact that enough LCMS students were on campus to maintain a semblance of that Lutheran identity.  No more.  There are simply not enough LCMS students entering college to fill all our campuses and those LCMS students are not assured of having a solid Lutheran identity and worldview before they get to the schools.

Not every student at a Lutheran college or university needs to be a faithful LCMS or Lutheran, but the institution itself absolutely must be Lutheran or it has no reason to exist -- except self-interest.  If there are students from other religious traditions or strains of Christianity or have no faith at all, and I expect there will be, the identity of the institution does not and cannot rest on the polled preferences or religious backgrounds of the student body.  It can and must reside with the college or university itself.  This is the problem that killed Portland and Bronxville and has always been the problem with Selma.  It is a growing problem for the rest of the Lutheran colleges and universities that are doing better than those which closed.  The same, by the way, could be said of the Lutheran preschool, elementary school, and high school.  It is not the faith or lack of faith on the part of the students that defines an institution as Lutheran.  It is the character and commitment of that school to be Lutheran -- Lutheran in doctrine and practice.

Existing to explore the wonder of God's mystery or to exist to glorify God is not a sufficient idea of Lutheran identity.  It goes to the heart and core of Scripture -- the message of Jesus Christ.  What must permeate the campus in classroom and chapel is the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen.  What is required of a Lutheran institution is that they have a Lutheran worldview -- even if their students do not. . . at least not yet!  The trite and trivial mission statements that speak of Lutheran heritage or even speak of Lutheran identity without fleshing this out remain the fog that confuses the folks on the inside of that school (faculty) and the folks on the outside (prospective students and the church folk whose $ support that school).

The reality is that the government has influenced who we are in the Lutheran school because we have pandered to the money trail.  Whether it is in student loan guarantees or aid in a direct or indirect form, the government never gives without strings.  For too long we have been willing to or consigned to accepting the strings with the money and what we have surrendered in the bargain is the very identity of the institution as an expression of our Lutheran faith and an extension of our Lutheran parish and mission.  Part of this involves the conclusion on our part that no one would want to come to a Lutheran school unless that school was but minimally Lutheran.  We have lost confidence in our identity and it is reflected in the institutions that extend out from the central life of the Lutheran parish at font, altar, and pulpit.  We don't believe an institution can be credibly Lutheran anymore and therefore we have styled our preschools, elementary schools, high schools, and colleges/universities as legacy institutions who honor the past but are not defined by it.

Let me restate the obvious.  Not every student at a Lutheran college or university needs to be a faithful LCMS or Lutheran, but the institution itself absolutely -- without shame or embarrassment -- must be Lutheran or it has no reason to exist -- except self-interest.  There are many who think I know nothing about such things and perhaps they are correct.  But the track record of accommodation and the surrender of our distinctives have not exactly filled the institutions with students or shaped those institutions for the faith.  Maybe the only path left is to give up being generic and start being particular -- giving up our vague Christian identity to be fully Lutheran as institutions.  Then let us see if those schools survive and attract students.  If they do not survive and did not attract students, then at least let us fail because we were true to our confession and not because we abandoned it.