Vision for Mission

Within five years (2005), potential students and other seminaries will increasingly employ the following description.

Luther Seminary is

+ internationally respected as a confessional seminary

+ educating leaders for the church

+ to participate fully in God’s Mission

+ in a changing world.

Internationally Respected

We seek to do our work, with and on behalf of global and local partners, in such a manner that these partners will regard us highly for our academic quality and our faithful and effective preparation of missional leaders for the church around the world.

  • Our programs attract quality students from around the world.
  • Our programs prepare people to serve faithfully in a worldwide church in an interconnected world.
  • Our programs are esteemed and valued by students and other seminaries as being highly competent and effective in preparing persons to serve where called in the worldwide church.

Confessional

We are loyal to the common Christian tradition, represented by the ecumenical creeds and dogmas and by the Lutheran Confessions.These symbols are expositions of and witnesses to a faithful understanding of the Holy Scriptures and guides to the proclamation of the gospel. They free us to testify confidently to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in each new time and place, both living within and challenging cultural, religious, and civil institutions and pressures.

  • The Scriptures and our creeds and confessions inform us for confessing the faith in our own context.
  • We are committed to being informed by the 20 centuries of confessing that shape what we understand as the historic Christian faith.
  • Our changing world challenges us to find fresh and relevant ways to express the eternal and abiding truths of the historic Christian faith to those we seek to reach and serve.

Seminary

The seminary understands itself to be a specialized community of God’s people that is called and sent to educate leaders for the church.

  • We will live as a community that demonstrates the life and presence of Christ in our midst – seminary as Abbey.
  • We will engage in effective and high quality theological education – seminary as Academy.
  • We will serve in the world as a called and sent community – seminary as Apostolate.

Educating Leaders

We believe that theological education is a process of lifelong learning. Our purpose is to educate missional leaders who are able to minister effectively in providing theological leadership for Christian communities.

  • Graduates demonstrate the capacity to serve as missional leaders in Christian communities.
  • Christian communities are being led to become missional as a result of our graduates providing leadership within them.
  • Graduates engage in practices of lifelong learning.

Church

As a seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) we educate leaders for God’s mission. We also serve this same purpose within the church catholic.

  • We are committed to working with students from any and all Christian traditions who seek to serve the church catholic worldwide.
  • We seek to increase the number and participation of students from other Christian traditions.
  • We seek to increase the number of faculty from other Christian traditions.

Participate Fully in God’s Mission

God’s mission in the world is one. It is the Missio Dei, the mission of the triune God in all creation in light of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, as carried out through the power and presence of the Spirit. The mission of God makes all aspects of the church’s participation in it important and missional – whether worship, discipling, fellowship, service, witness, or justice.

  • All our theological educational processes are shaped by this understanding.
  • The whole of God’s mission is served by all the specific disciplines, even as they bring their special contributions to our understanding of it.
  • Graduates have a holistic understanding of mission as they provide leadership for Christian communities.

Changing World

We find that our world at large and the location of most of our congregations are changing dramatically. This is calling us to live into a fresh understanding of the apostolic (missionary) nature of the church.

  • Our students understand how to present the gospel as good news and form Christian communities in a global context that is religiously pluralistic.
  • Our students understand how to present the gospel as good news and form Christian communities in the midst of the complex changes in our postmodern and post-Christendom setting.
  • Our curriculum and pedagogy are always adapting to incorporate fresh and appropriate ways to educate persons to participate fully in God’s mission within our changing context and changing world.