The elephant in the room. . . .

Across the discussion of seminary vs online, non-LCMS vs official seminary, SMP vs "general" pastors, there is almost a mantra of talk about the shortage of pastors in congregations with 50 or less on Sunday morning.  It is as if the whole conversation is being driven by this one particular situation.  But is it?  According to the stats provided to us by the Synod, the vast majority of these small congregations are being served not by SMP clergy but by retired pastors who are serving part-time or pastors who have another income source who are also serving a small congregation on the side.  Indeed, the big dust up over rule changes to the SMP seems to imply that it is these smaller congregations who will be forced to go without a pastor because the requirements for the program are being changed.  Is that the case?

It would seem that much of the growth in the SMP and much of the impetus in the desire to find a go around for the Synodical seminaries residential path is to raise up local pastors within congregations which are not small and struggling but large enough to look for and fund additional part-time or full-time clergy for their own staff.  It has less to do with a concern for the small parish in the Dakotas or Montana that cannot find a retired pastor or another pastor living close enough to serve them part-time than it does a congregation with a couple of hundred in worship that wants to expand its own staff and is utilizing the SMP for that purpose.  While that was not the intended scope or place for the SMP program when it was sold to the Synod, it is nonetheless technically allowed by the rather broad bylaws and requirements of the program.  There has arisen a deep desire to have local clergy, formed locally and raised up and formed for a specific local setting and although this could include that small and isolated parish somewhere on the plains, it is more likely a suburban parish trying to grow its staff (and, I might add, on the cheap).  I get it and understand the desire but I do think we need to separate the need for pastors for these smaller congregations from the desire of these other parishes to have locally grown pastors serving them part-time or even full-time.

It would also be helpful to separate the training debate from the SMP program.  The SMP is about the establishment of a particular path for a particular need and the hubbub over online and non-Synodical seminary routes is less about that specific situation than it is about pastoral formation overall.  While there are things in common in both perspectives, there are also differences.  Those who advocate for the online option to be normative along side the residential seminary route and who believe that other seminaries besides the official ones should be allowed to train our clergy are talking about general pastors and how they are raised up and how they are formed -- not SMP.  It is helpful if we distinguish the smaller points of the debate while having this conversation in Synod.  

Lastly it is also true that the desire of some to simply regularize SMP with a stroke of a pen and remove all current restrictions on their placement, call, and arena of service have another issue which is related to the two above but not quite the same.  In their minds, these voices are insisting that if a pastor is ordained and conferred with the authority of the Word and Sacraments, there can be no further restriction upon him or any limitation of his jurisdiction.  That is another line of debate and one which we ought to have but it is not quite the same as online, non-LCMS seminary, SMP in small congregations, and localized pastoral formation.  In other words, we have a lot of conversations going on in the Synod and while some of them are related, they are not exactly the same.  From time to time we need to admit this and make the necessary distinctions.