Which Route Do I Go?

In James Smith’s book Desiring the Kingdom, he begins by saying, “What if education, including higher education, is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? (17-18). This is a helpful way to look at the way we educate in our Lutheran schools. Our education is not like the public system where teachers cram material into the minds of students through biased texts and videos (or worse, the teacher’s own political commentary) in order to pass a state test so that funding may continue. We, instead, use original sources and build on the learning of the ancients before us. We learn from them. We build from them. We see the world as God’s good creation that has order and structure. We live within that order and use our brains to think logically and to reason based on that. This is also the heart of classical education.

This is one of my growing issues with the SMP program and other alternate routes. Now, before this is taken as a hate post about SMP pastors, let it be known that I know many men who have gone through this program and took it seriously. They are competent proclaimers of the Word and compassionate in their pastoral care. But one thing was consistent with those men. They had good supervision who also viewed education as the formation of hearts and desires rather than cramming information into them so that they passed a few tests and could say what a board wanted to hear in an exit interview. They didn’t see the SMP program as the “easy way” into the Office. To add: it seems what the program was created to be is no longer what it is becoming—or better, how some men are using it.

What has happened in recent years? To begin, we’re continually peddled the idea that there is a pastoral shortage in the LCMS. Is this actually the case or might we have an excess of congregations—especially after the pandemic days? I remember my days at seminary and being told that the year of my graduation was the year that the shortage was going to take full effect. It didn’t happen. So the year was adjusted to about 5 years later and then 5 years more as if we’re Al Gore talking about the end of the world because of global warming or some charismatic predicting the return of Jesus to the very minute of the very day.

Could we use more pastors? Yes! Of course! Even our Lord Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38). But Jesus doesn’t go from town to town gathering the masses to be pastors. That isn’t even happening in the Acts of the Apostles. Even Paul wasn’t converted and thrown into his first journey. He was trained over a period of time and in a specific place. Education is about formation, after all.

What concerns me about the sudden explosion of making pastors by means of a thousand different routes (and God forbid, the sectarian routes being created) is that, while it appears we have an increase in numbers, formation isn’t happening. It can’t happen under the direction of one pastor, and it certainly can’t happen through a computer screen. Ask any pastor who was on either seminary campus. He will tell you that debates in the dorm lounge or with the Roman seminary students were as beneficial as some classes. We learned to love and rely on one another around the dinner table, shoveling snow, or having a beer between innings of an intramural softball game. Because we were in community, we were forced to have conversations with one another when we disagreed (even argued) rather than hitting Facebook or Twitter to talk about what a loser “that guy” is. These alternate routes threaten to keep an individual in an echo chamber of his own pastor’s thoughts and desires rather than those of God.

Now, let it be known that just because a person goes to seminary, that doesn’t mean that those ideas don’t follow him. For example, I was in class with a guy who had never opened a hymnal in his life. Another had never heard of the Confessions. Still one more told me that his “home pastor” sat in the office with him while he took the Hebrew qualifier and not only allowed him to use his textbook but also offered him answers along the way. Why? The student had never learned Hebrew. If this individual had gone through an alternate route, he would still have never opened a hymnal, the Confessions, or known any languages. Someone else would have done it for him.

One may say, “But all of these second career guys can’t just pack up and move to St. Louis or Ft. Wayne for training. They’d have to leave it all to move.” Did Jesus’ disciples not do the same?

Peter began to say to [Jesus], “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mark 10:28-31).

The Office of the Pastoral Ministry is not an easy office to assume. If we make it the easiest thing in the world to enter into, men will no longer have to face this struggle in the process. We will simply be training them to always take the easy road. They will never meet an alternative argument or opinion. Lutheranism as their congregation sees it will be all they know. And maybe that’s ultimately at the heart of the explosion of alternate routes (and alternate seminaries). The more confessional each seminary gets with zealous leadership, faculty, and boards, the less likely students are to graduate with charismatic tendencies. What will happen to the Gen Xer’s legacy of contemporary worship now? “It has to continue! If men won’t be trained to continue it at St. Louis or Ft. Wayne, what will we do?” “I know,” the pastor says, “Go through this program! You’ll never have to leave home or even your job! You can do both! I’ll give you all you need.” This assuredly is the only way the non-liturgical movement in our Synod lasts to the next generation.

There is a more excellent way. Get men to the seminaries. I was also in class with another man who was second career. He sold his house to pay tuition. He moved to campus with his wife and three school aged children. He learned the languages during the summer months and went through all four years. Was it a lot for him and his family to endure? I imagine it wasn’t easy. But when he arrived on campus, he arrived to a community of others like him and then those of us who knew nothing of that kind of sacrifice because we were single and had no other option could look to him and remember the seriousness of the vocation in which we were entering.

It is true. Shortage or not, we need more pastors. But there’s a right way to do it and a not so helpful way. While we wait for God to move the hearts and minds of men to become pastors, the ones of us in the Office need to be prepared. We need to discipline ourselves and grow ever stronger so that we may bear the weight of fewer men in pulpits. This is not an easy thing, but we are called to endure. If the days of sitting in one office and filling one pulpit are coming to an end, so be it. It won’t be easy, but this Office isn’t an easy one. Do not look to take the easy way out but look to the people and provide for their needs. We are called to faithfulness, and faithfulness comes from hearts and desires being formed and not from ideas being absorbed. If you are thinking about becoming a pastor, at least consider leaving all, as the disciples did, and following Him.