BHE Minutes Favor Third LCMS Seminary – Plus Observations
By Rev. Jack Cascione

The LCMS Board for Higher Education (BHE) met before Palm Sunday 2000 to bring the discussion of the Pastoral Leadership Institute's (PLI) application for Recognized Service Organization (RSO) status. PLI is a privately funded seminary that specializes in Leadership Training. If PLI receives RSO status, it will automatically become a third Seminary of the LCMS, without Convention approval or funding. However, PLI will be free to conduct fund raising throughout the Synod, with the Synod's approval, via the BHE.

The following are a part of the minutes from the BHE meeting:

"2.8. Pastoral Leadership Institute (PLI) RSO Request

"Resolved, that the BHE/CUS Board in a regularly scheduled meeting thanks the PLI Representatives for their candor in sharing the value and function of their Organization and encourages them to continue their effort to assist pastors in the Leadership role; and,

"The Board invites PLI to participate in a study group that will propose one or more Models for including PLI under the administrative umbrella of the BHE. This study Group will report to the October 2000 BHE/CUS Board meeting; and,

"The study group will be composed of the two seminary presidents, one district President (selected by the COP), two representatives of PLI (selected by PLI), and three members of the BHE (Lowell Schoer, Bev Yahnke, Ralph Reinke). The Chair is Ralph Reinke and staff support will be provided by Bill Meyer."

FROM BOARD CHAIRMAN'S QUARTERLY REPORT - (Ralph Reinke)

"PLI mail to all of us on the BHE continues to be a part of life. I've observed that the supporters of PLI tend to focus upon the benefits that they have personally observed from the organization. In contrast the critics tend to focus on either the suspicious theological practices of some of the leaders of the effort - or - the threat PLI poses to seminary education in the Synod. The orchestrated mail campaigns have provided very little light, but considerable heat.

"In fairness, it should be said the personal bias of someone who has received benefits is hardly a provider of objective information. Further, theological supervision of the practices of the ministers of the Synod is not a province of the BHE, rather, by Constitution and Bylaw the responsibility of the Synodical and District Presidents. Those who are asking the BHE to deny RSO status to PLI on the basis of theological concerns appear to have ascribed to the BHE responsibilities not assigned.

"I pray that we can find our way out of a difficult situation, which has almost placed us in a lose-lose situation."

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"2.9. Fort Wayne, Prior Approval: Peter Scaer, Naomichi Masaki

"The Board passed the following resolution.

"Resolved, that the BHE/CUS Board in a regularly scheduled meeting grants prior approval to Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, to call Peter Scaer as Assistant Professor Exegetical Theology (NT) and Naomichi Masaki as Assistant Professor Of Systematic Theology (Pastoral Ministry and Missions)."

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OBSERVATIONS

The reader should note that before granting RSO status to PLI, the minutes tell us the Board is already encouraging and thanking PLI: "and encourages them to continue their effort to assist pastors in their Leadership role."

The BHE is clearly over extending its authority here. Reinke say's, "Further, theological supervision of the practices of the ministers of the Synod is not a province of the BHE." However, the Board has already stated its bias in encouraging and thanking PLI before RSO status is even granted.

The "study group" that is to report back to the BHE in October is stacked 5 to 3 in favor of PLI with Reinke as the Chairman of the study group. The Executive Director of the BHE is Dr. William Meyer, who helped created PLI.

Reinke again shows his bias by claiming that mail opposed to PLI is "orchestrated." Orchestrated is not the question, but whether the BHE has the right to grant RSO status to another Seminary without the Convention. We congratulate Reinke for politicizing and marginalizing those who don't want the Convention to loose control of the Synod's Seminary education.

Reinke turns the entire processes of approval upside down when he says, "Those who are asking the BHE to deny RSO status to PLI on the basis of theological concerns appear to have ascribed to the BHE responsibilities not assigned." Don't Seminaries, that is LCMS Seminaries, teach theology? Reinke doesn't seem to think so, because he is encouraging the existence of the PLI Seminary, but objects to those who take their theological concerns to the BHE.

We are to understand that the BHE is only interested in approving a new Seminary for the LCMS, but the Council of District Presidents will consider the theological issues after the BHE grants RSO status in October.

Where in the "call document" does it say the Pastor should provide "leadership" apart from the preaching and teaching of God's Word and the administration of the Sacraments? Reinke and the BHE are redefining the pastoral office for the LCMS. "Leadership" is now supposed to cover for what is lacking in the administration of the Word and Sacrament.

Norbert Oesch is only proving this writer's issues. While the conservatives, such as the Fort Wayne faculty, the hyper-Euro Lutherans, "Balance" and Tom Baker keep telling us that theology is all that matters, they are inadvertently promoting the polity of hermits. This way every pastor would get his own cave where he would have his own church with stocked with Word and Sacrament and not have to deal with the membership.

These so called "conservatives" no longer support Walther's Voter Supremacy as the only polity for the LCMS but they have failed to tell us what will take Walther's place. Oesch has moved into the polity vacuum with "Leadership Training." Guess what ladies and gentlemen, whether they like it or not, Walther was right, polity really does matter!

What verses will you quote to the BHE, whose chairman tells us that theology is not its area of responsibility when it grants RSO status to a new LCMS Seminary?