Strategic Plan Update:
Preparing Missional Pastors

We believe God is calling and sending the church of Jesus Christ into apostolic mission in the 21st century world of many cultures and religions.

See article from The Story, vol. 20, no. 2: Sending Missional Pastors Prepared for Today's World

Missional Pastor Leadership

The Master of Divinity stewards those preparing to serve as “missional pastors” to pursue their learning needs, goals and objectives. “Missional pastors” are ordained pastors who are “apt teachers” (1 Timothy 3:2) within the “priesthood of all believers.” The leadership that missional pastors offer equips and empowers all the baptized for their vocation to bear witness to God’s creating and redeeming work in all the world.

Goals

Goal 3.1: By 2005, Luther Seminary’s M.Div. graduates will be prepared to serve as missional pastors in the church, empowering the faithful for lives of witness and service.

Goal 3.2: By 2005, the M.Div. program at Luther Seminary will be known for excellence in its preparation of leaders in the two areas of biblical preaching and worship, and congregational mission and leadership, with these emphases aimed at empowering the church for mission.

Goal 3.3: By 2005, Luther Seminary will have fully integrated practices of contextual teaching and learning into the M.Div. Program focused on preparing missional pastors as leaders for a missional church.

Goal 3.4: By 2005, Luther Seminary will attract students from a wide range of church affiliations who are seeking a confessional and missional theological education that educates leaders to serve in a missional church.

Context and Vision for Goals

Discipleship and Spiritual Formation

  • We affirm the importance of discipleship and spiritual formation in shaping the life and character of pastors.

  • Our vision is to develop and implement an intentional process of discipleship and spiritual formation that is integrated into the entire process of theological education.

Excellence

  • We affirm the importance of excellence in the classic theological disciplines.

  • Our vision is to maintain and enhance this excellence in serving the promise of our mission through nurturing a community of scholars who have sufficient time and resources to engage in research, writing, and course development.

Congregational Life and Mission

  • We affirm the importance of biblical preaching and worship, and congregational mission and leadership in shaping the life and mission of congregations.

  • Our vision is to excel in the areas of biblical preaching and worship, and congregational mission and leadership in preparing a new generation of “missional pastors.” These pastors will be able to strengthen the lives of congregations and lead them to engage their contexts in witness and service.

Leaders for New Mission

  • We recognize that there are large populations of those who have either never heard the gospel, or who have not believed or been baptized, or have wandered from the church in the nation we primarily serve, many of whom are part of a variety of different cultures.

  • Our vision is to educate a substantial number of missional pastors who are committed to developing new missional congregations through equipping these persons with the necessary skills to do so. Particular attention will be paid to developing a strategy to address Hispanic populations.

A Worldwide Church

  • We recognize that we participate in a worldwide community of faith and that we are enriched and instructed by its witness to us.

  • Our vision is to strengthen our commitment to grow together in our common life and witness in service to the mission of God.

World of Many Religions

  • We are committed to a ministry of hospitality regarding our neighbors of different religious convictions in our society and the world. While seeking conversation that leads to their hearing the gospel, we also seek to hear and learn from them.

  • Our vision is to find mutual life giving ways to carry out our religious convictions, including the possibility of conversion, with these valued children of God.

Public Life

  • We affirm that leadership for mission also requires participation in the public life of communities beyond what occurs within the life of the congregation. This includes a commitment to seek justice on behalf of all our neighbors.

  • Our vision is for M.Div graduates to have the skills to recognize and give effective voice to where and how God is at work in the world.

The Ministry of All Disciples

  • We affirm that there is a great need in the church for mobilizing the laity in ministry.

  • Our vision is to build on the foundations already laid as we seek to strengthen within our M.Div. education the theological perspective and skills required for motivating and empowering the laity to share in the ministry of the church to itself and in the world.

Contextual Learning

  • We recognize that much about theological leadership can and should be learned contextually.

  • Our vision is to integrate fully learning pastoral leadership in the context of missional congregations and other Christian communities in such a way that it becomes a complementary part of the whole theological education of M.Div. students.

Biblical and Confessional Heritage

  • We believe that God continues to be up to something new in the midst of the great challenges facing us in the world and in the church.

  • Our vision is to develop all missional pastors as leaders whose theological imagination is shaped by the biblical, historical, confessional, doctrinal, and ethical heritage of Christianity and is attuned to the challenges and opportunities of our new era of mission.

High Caliber Students

  • We believe that the church deserves the best leaders that are available.

  • Our vision is to hone a clear set of missional criteria for selecting future students, and to become a desirable place of choice as we seek out, attract, and select high caliber leaders from throughout our church and churches throughout the world who want a confessional theological education.