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Specific Ministry Pastor Proposal - FAQ's
This document addresses the background and the rationale for the Specific Ministry Pastor Proposal.
Specific Ministry Pastor Proposal — FAQs
1. For whom is the SMPP intended as a Pastoral Formation Program?
Men who are engaged in specific ministry settings may be nominated and apply for admission into the SMPP program. Such settings will determine whether an “in-ministry” program is to be preferred and whether ministry needs are better met by this program. It is not a question of individual preferences or personal needs of a student, but of the benefit to the specific ministry context. At the same time, the SMPP program contains significant residential components that will bring students to the campus.
2. What are the admission requirements including education, undergraduate degrees?
The SMPP requires personal background and academic admission standards that currently apply to DELTO and "other certificate/alternate route programs".
3. How does the SMPP program relate to the current DELTO program?
It is envisioned that the SMPP program will supersede DELTO. Like DELTO it offers contextual training for those already in ministry situations. But it moves beyond DELTO in that it offers courses that may be taken at the MDiv level and can become a part of an MDiv completion program. This will enable students to roll their SMPP courses into the MDiv program that they can complete by meeting additional course and residential requirements.
4. Is the SMPP a part of the Synod’s Ablaze! Program?
The SMPP program traces its roots back to the Assisting Pastor proposal that was sent by a task force to the 2001 convention. Thus it has been under discussion and in development for nearly seven years. Nevertheless, it does provide a way to prepare pastors in accord with AC XIV for goal of planting 2000 new congregations as adopted by the 2004 synodical convention.
5. Does the SMPP program lower the standards for becoming a pastor?
The biblical qualifications for the pastoral office are fundamental to certification for call and ordination. They apply to all candidates for call and ordination regardless of the program from which they graduate. At the same time, the Lutheran church has always recognized that these biblical qualifications may be met at different levels in terms of formal education (e.g., degree versus non-degree, knowledge and ability to utilize biblical languages), spiritual maturity, natural abilities, and personal skills. Only in the last forty years, have we come to think of a single degree standard (M.Div) as the prerequisite for meeting those biblical qualifications for pastoral ministry. The SMPP raises the level at which these qualifications are met beyond the current DELTO program.
6. Will the SMPP program be certifying a “second-class” pastor?
With regard to the theological definition of the pastoral office and its essential functions, there is no difference between a Specific Ministry Pastor and any other pastor. Both carry out the full ministry of word and sacrament that belongs to the pastoral office. But by human categories (de jure humano), the church may make distinctions with respect to human assignments of jurisdiction and responsibility. There is a long tradition for doing this within the history of the Christian church.
On the one hand, those who graduate from the SMPP will have less formal academic training than those who complete the residential MDiv program. On the other hand, many of them they will have more and better training for specific kinds of ministry within the church than others.
7. Is the SMPP a program with a “glass ceiling”?
The church should expect all pastors to grow in their theological understanding and in their ministerial skills. The immediate purpose of the SMPP program is to prepare men (in context) to serve the immediate mission needs of the church within a relatively brief period of time while being faithful to the AC XIV. It is anticipated (even expected) that those who complete the SMPP program will continue their formal theological education. Three growth paths for doing so have been identified (colloquy, certificate program, M.Div program).
Our policy at Concordia Seminary will be to admit students to our full distance education program that is the academic equivalent of our residential certificate program. The SMPP will provide an early exit point from the certificate program for those who need it. But the hope and intention will be for students to complete the entire program that leads to an unrestricted status as a pastor.
8. Will SMPP rescind Wichita 3-05b Licensed Laymen Resolution?
In its 1989 convention meeting in Wichita, The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod declared in resolution 3–05B that it had identified an emergency situation that called for extra-ordinary measures to secure the proclamation of the Gospel in certain situations. Emergency situations may arise again in the future in which a layman may have to be placed temporarily into the office of the public ministry. Nevertheless, the SMPP proposal will greatly reduce the need for licensing laymen to carry out pastoral responsibilities in mission settings by enabling men who regularly and publicly perform the functions of the Office of the Holy Ministry to do so from within that office (AC XIV) as has been the historic Lutheran practice.
9. What is the perceived effectiveness of distance education of pastors?
The fact that the SMPP assumes that the category of pastoral workers being proposed will be largely prepared in the context of the congregation that they are serving using distance education technologies reflects our acceptance of the value of such an educational approach in some circumstances. Educational technology continues to develop very rapidly and offers new opportunities that the church and her seminaries are already embracing. But every educational technology from the book to the on-line conference has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. The educational task is to understand the strengths and weakness of whatever technology is employed to deliver instruction and to find a way to leverage its strengths and to minimize its weaknesses to accomplish the overall goals of the educational program. Our stewardship of God’s gifts compels us to employ every gift to its best effect in accomplishing the mission of the Church.
10. Won’t a “contextualized” program limit pastoral candidates to an understanding of ministry only with the one context in which they are formed?
First, any program of pastoral formation is “contextualized.” The current residential program at both seminaries takes students out of a specific, local context for formation within a context rather unique to the seminary community. This processs has been and will continue to prove its value in providing a reflective community of learning intentionally distinct from any particular context, from which pastoral theology can be re-contextualized in the local, congregational context from the perspective of the larger ecclesial community. At the same time, our residential program engages significant contextualized, experiential learning through classroom application, residential field education (cross cultural immersion experiences, hospital and other institutional experiences, etc.), and a full year of vicarage. It is also recognized that the current form of education is followed by several years of initial pastoral ministry in which applied pastoral theology is learned in the context of the first call.
This new model combines the strengths of such a community of learning with the immediate application to the context within which learning takes place. This is a different model of learning bringing “classroom,” and “context” together that can prove also to be an effective learning environment. However, it is recognized that the contextual learning is, indeed, focused on the specific ministry in which this mode of pastoral formation takes place. Thus the SMP is certified for that specific ministry.
11. Will SMPP eliminate the need for residential training?
It is important not to oversimplify the issue of contextuality in theological education by ignoring the plural nature of the American cultural milieu. If a pastor were going to serve his entire career in the single micro-context of a given congregation, it might be most efficient to train him in and for that one context. This may have been the case in the past; it is, however, hardly ever the case today. The Church must train pastors who will serve in the America of the 21st century, not the America of the 1940s or 50s. To function efficiently today and in the future, pastors need to be able to evaluate the various contexts that they will encounter in their ministry based on a broad multi-cultural understanding and respond to these various contexts out of the riches of the experience of the Church across various cultures and historical periods. The preparation of effective pastors requires the broadening of their cultural and contextual experience, not the narrowing of it. For that reason the seminary strives to draw from and build upon not only the context of a student’s home congregation, but also to broaden both his experience and his cultural and contextual understanding through exposure to a variety of congregational contexts in his field work and vicarage experiences and in structured exposure to examples of the kinds of institutional and multi-cultural contexts in which, as pastor, he may one day be called to administer the Gospel.
12. Will SMPP eliminate the need for district lay training programs?
The SMPP program is designed to prepare men for certification, call, and ordination into the pastoral ministry. District programs will continue to play a vital role in the training of lay mission leaders for congregations. In addition, district programs will continue to be key partners in preparing men to meet the prerequisites of the SMPP program and may provide sites and courses for the pre-ordination and post-ordination courses of the SMPP program.
Written By: host
Date Posted: 5/11/2007
Number of Views: 1720
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