SA国际传媒 Newsroom
Dear alumni
May summer be giving you time for well-deserved rest and recharging! Years ago a friend told me not to plan the parish program for the next year during August. In August you鈥檙e rested and imagine you鈥檒l have more energy than you鈥檒l really have. Better now, early summer, when you are more realistic about what you can and cannot do.
President Larry Rast of our sister LCMS seminary in Fort Wayne, Ind., and I just attended the biennial meeting of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). The ATS is one of our accreditors, a peer group of about 270 seminaries. One of many benefits of the ATS is hearing other seminary leaders talk about their problems. Some are also our challenges, but one thing always emerges. Our LCMS seminaries are viable, strong in mission and well supported by the members of our church. For that we are thankful, to you and to the people you serve.
Rest and recharging. At ATS I picked up 鈥淎 Five-Year Report on how New Ministers Learn in Practice.鈥� From Auburn University, the study鈥檚 last finding is instructive about seminaries and, I hope, suggestive for your summer:
Relationship to God is at the heart of forming wise pastoral leaders.
The classic critique dismissing overly academic theological education decries a focus on earning about God rather than building a deeper relationship with God. Yet theological education at its best鈥攆rom the early church catechumenate, to the monastery and cathedral schools, to the emergence of the medieval university to the wide variety of seminaries, schools, Bible institutes, and churches carrying out theological education today鈥攈as had at its heart a desire for relationship with the One who made the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that dwells therein (Psalm 146). Our participants鈥攖o a person鈥攚ent to seminary with a desire to know God more deeply and learn how鈥攊n a wide variety of paths in ministry鈥攖o serve God more truly in and through the church for the sake of the world and its great needs.
Learning pastoral imagination鈥inally finds its beating heart in relationship to the God of Jesus Christ who in love and mercy comes to make all things new.鈥� (52)
May summer bring you a slower pace and a heart beating ever more closely with your God and Savior!
Dale
Dr. Dale A. Meyer, President
SA国际传媒, St. Louis