Re-cutting the seminary pie

I had a conversation with one of the recently laid off ELCA churchwide staff members. As we discussed the downsizing happening all over the church, I mentioned one of my pet peeves: the ELCA’s eight seminaries. “They just can’t do it,” this person said, referring to the need to somehow consolidate these institutions. Ultimately, we agreed, it’s going to be the rules of the marketplace that change things. Or as I put, eventually some of them just aren’t going to be able to write checks anymore.

I have been involved in different ways with several congregational mergers and consolidations. None of them were easy; some of them were a mess. After thinking they were the answer to declining memberships, synods and bishops have backed off from encouraging them. Some time ago the Alban Institute reported its findings that after merging two congregations, the size of the new congregation will not be A+B but usually only A, where A is the size of the larger congregation. In other words, in the transition you should plan on losing the equivalent of the smaller of the two congregations. My experience would affirm that.

Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill is famous for his adage, “All politics is local.” I think something similar could be said about religion. Local congregations get people’s loyalties. Local congregations have personalities and histories. Local congregations have egos—sometimes big ones. As a result congregations don’t die or merge with other congregations very easily or well.

Seminaries it seems are not any different. I went to the most “blended” Lutheran seminary: LSTC in Chicago. When I was a student there were still a fair number of faculty members from the predecessor schools. One way to identify them was where they ate lunch in the cafeteria. There was the Augustana table, the Maywood table, etc. Institutional memories are long and persistent.

It seems unlikely than any of the ELCA’s seminaries are going to voluntarily put themselves out of business. Yet that is what needs to happen, whether through merger or closure. The shrinking ELCA simply doesn’t need all of them and can’t support them. There needs to be fewer teachers, fewer deans, fewer support staff, fewer buildings, fewer light and heat bills.

The problem is that in the ELCA’s decentralized polity virtually all of its constituent institutions are functionally independent: congregations, camps, colleges, medical facilities, social service agencies, and seminaries. They all may have the name Lutheran in their titles, and even claim a specific connection with the ELCA, yet by-and-large they are all free to pretty much do whatever they please.

For most of these, that organizational independence is backed up by financial independence. Seminaries, however, receive significant subsidies from synods and the ELCA. They may be unwilling to consolidate but that doesn’t mean the church has to subsidize their inefficiency.

Talking about the ELCA’s latest budget cuts in his recent open letter, Bishop Hansen specifically said aid to seminary education was unaffected. Why not? If belt tightening is necessary, there’s no reason why seminaries should be exempted. If the pie has shrunk, rather than cut smaller slices why not cut fewer slices?

The seminaries’ inclination toward self-preservation is understandable but it’s time for the church they serve to provide a reality check. How about this memo: “We have eight seminaries but we are now only going to support four. Figure it out.”

Follow up: In the comments, a press release is mentioned about a recent joint meeting of the boards of three ELCA seminaries: LSTC, Trinity and Wartburg. You can read it here.