My Sad Visit Today to My Shrinking Seminary

2/28/2015

By Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org. Follow Pastor Brock on Facebook (here) and twitter (here.)

Today I took another nostalgic walk through Luther Theological Seminary from which I graduated in 1979. Back then it was a mixed bag of liberal, moderate, and some conservative professors. Back then it was well attended, parking spots could be hard to find, and chapel was fairly full.

Things have changed. A person who worked there told me some years ago that now "much less than half" of the professors at Luther believe in the Virgin Birth of Christ. Then came the 2009 ELCA decision to affirm homosexual behavior for pastors and things really began to shrink in the ELCA and this seminary. Today, Luther Seminary brings in speakers like the popular ELCA Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, who uses the "f" word in her books and speaking. She also denies the substitutionary atonement of Christ, believing that for God the Father to punish Jesus for our sins would be divine child abuse. And not long ago, a practicing lesbian pastor spoke at Luther's chapel service.

So what did I find today? First thing I noticed was how easy it was to find a parking space. I also noticed the "pro-gay" bumper stickers. I attended chapel and counted 40 people. I walked around the halls and it kind of felt like a ghost town, very few people walking around.

I couldn't help but think of the Bible verse "You reap what you sow."

Pastor Tom Brock

4 Comments

Didaskalos link

2/28/2015 10:22:30 pm

Times are tough for the Bible-revising ELCA. Members have fled in droves, budgets have shrunk dramatically, and Luther Seminary is awash in red ink. Only the periodic warm fuzzies from Leftists, secularists and sexual libertines are keeping the ELCA’s dobber up.

Luther and other ELCA seminaries might be able to right themselves if they heeded the [Feb. 2013] advice of "Pastor Jack":

"I have an idea how the ELCA seminaries can save lots of money. Eliminate all seminary faculty members who reject the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, the Virgin birth, the resurrection, the Real Presence, the atonement, Law and Gospel, and the Theology of the Cross. Then eliminate all seminary profs who reject the traditional Biblical understanding of marriage and human sexuality. Then eliminate all the non-Lutheran faculty from ecumenical “full-communion” partners. This should reduce the seminary faculties by…let’s see…wow! 100%!

"The ELCA has set a course toward destruction–it was on the course well before the 2009 vote–and it will follow that course until the bitter end. Like the Episcopal Church, which it is hell-bent on imitating for some reason, the ELCA is fast disintegrating. The leftist, revisionist presiding bishop and most of the ELCA bishops along with the leftist non-theological ELCA church council are largely responsible for the death of the ELCA. A unitarian worship, full-communion agreements with those who reject the Real Presence, the acceptance of same-gender “marriage,” health insurance that pays for abortion up to five months of pregnancy, and bishops who care more about K Street lobbying than they do about the souls of the people they are called to shepherd–is it really any wonder that the ELCA is dying when it promotes the culture of the death?"

Robert Mueller

3/3/2015 12:44:51 am

All congregations around me are also shrinking. The Synod is blaming the membership, not the leadership. They have suggested that the membership of all our area churches agree to a common local constitution and leave management to an offsite Central Office made up of a Synod management team so that the local congregations can concentrate on worship and evangelism (wink, wink) because the locals have no idea on how to manage.

Chemnitz

3/3/2015 01:11:05 pm

Why aren't LGBTs joining the ELCA in droves, as was promised, now that the ELCA ordains homosexuals, blesses gay marriages, etc.? Maybe the LGBT community recognizes what the ELCA does not, namely, that the Bible condemns homosexuality, and therefore they want no part of Christianity no matter how much the ELCA panders to them. The ELCA promotes public, accountable, lifelong, monogamous relationships for its LGBT members. That is not the lifestyle most LGBT people desire, so the ELCA remains irrelevant to them, despite its attempts to please the LGBT community. The ELCA changed its theology to attract homosexuals, but homosexuals will not change their lifestyle to fit in with the ELCA. The ELCA will continue to collapse in on its self and look for survival by merging with the Episcopal Church USA, another floundering denomination, eventually.

Bradley Jenson

3/9/2015 12:21:14 pm

Is the Luther Seminary campus becoming a ghost town? I went to campus this morning (March 5).

Driving up to campus I was surprised by how few cars there were in the parking lot near the campus center. By contrast, when I was a student in the early 1980s, not only were the parking lots full at this time of day (slightly before 9:00 a.m.), but both sides of the nearby streets were parked-up as well. No cars were parked in the streets.

First, I went into the campus center and there was a friendly person greeting me from behind the kiosk to the right of the entrance. I was greeted warmly and went downstairs to what used to be the campus bookstore. Gone. It’s a lecture hall now. There are other such lecture spaces downstairs. Any lecturing going on? No. Not a soul in sight downstairs.

I went back upstairs and inquired from the friendly kiosk greeter if there was a bookstore on campus these days. Yes. She pointed to the
boutique-looking space where the information booth used to be. It would open in a couple of minutes. I thanked her but said I would head over to the library next.

I met not a single solitary soul on my journey from the campus center to the library. I walked up an empty stairwell to the library where there was a guy behind the check-out counter---as lonely as the Maytag repairman; nothing to do. I walked into the room where current journals are found. No one there. I walked into the large area on the main floor that used to bustle with activity. One solitary person sitting at a table. Next, I went over to the computer data base to look up a couple of books. One of the books required me to go all the way up to the 8th floor. I took the stairs. In the stacks, the lights were on; nobody “home.” There was not one other person in the stacks other than myself. On the 8th floor, I found the book I was looking for: Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion (BWV 245): A Theological Commentary by Andreas Loewe. I mention this text because it has a copyright date of 2014. I thought to myself, well, that’s a good sign: They are still buying some new books for the library.

After checking out my two books and paying for a copy of an article---giving the Maytag repair man something to do---I headed back to the campus center to check out the boutique bookstore. It’s about the size our great room at our home in Duluth. There are some Luther Seminary paraphernalia for sale as well as some spiritual greeting cards, some icons, and so forth. The woman manning the boutique looked up from her computer screen and asked me: “Can I help you?” “No thanks,” I said. “I’m just browsing.” I was the only potential customer in the boutique at that time. It didn’t take me long to browse. The actual area for the books in the bookstore was shockingly small. I have more titles on my book shelves at home than has the entire Luther Seminary bookstore. When I “retired” from the pastoral ministry in 2002, I either gave away or threw away more books than has the entire Luther Seminary bookstore. What about course text books? There used to be many shelves from floor to ceiling in the seminary bookstore when I was there in the 80s. Now, however, one grocery cart would be more than enough space for all of the course books in the Luther Seminary bookstore!

I should have walked over to the Northwestern building to see if there were any signs of human life in that building, but I didn’t.

So, back to my question: Is the Luther Seminary campus becoming a ghost town? The only thing missing today were tumbleweeds blowing through campus.

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

My Sad Visit Today to My Shrinking Seminary

Leave a Reply.

Dan Skogen

Categories

Archives

Home

Share

Exposed Blog

HELP

Contact