In 2019, Katie DeMarais’ hometown congregation, Gary Lutheran Church, began the challenging process of searching for a pastor after its longtime leaders moved on to new calls.

Members of the small congregation in rural northwest Minnesota, including DeMarais, stepped up to find a creative solution to an issue increasingly faced by many Christian communities—the need for steady pastoral leadership amid a rapidly changing church landscape.

“We don’t necessarily have the resources to be able to call a pastor,” DeMarais said. So she and her congregation began to ask: “How can we connect with other churches in our area that are experiencing the same thing, that have been without a full-time pastor for many years?”

Though their work was slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gary Lutheran Church joined with other congregations in 2021 to form A New Journey Lutheran Parish. As part of that transition, DeMarais was commissioned as a synodically authorized minister (SAM). With synodical authorization and a supervising pastor, she is able to preach, baptize, preside over communion, and perform other ministerial duties for her parish.

As part of her training as a SAM, DeMarais decided to participate in Luther Seminary’s first-ever graduate certificate cohort receiving the Jubilee Scholarship—another creative solution that lifts up lay leaders amid clergy shortages. The cohort of students began classes in Fall 2023 alongside the seminary’s graduate degree students, with mentorship from Director of Rural Ministries Jon Anderson.

“As a SAM, you are commissioned, and then you are trained,” DeMarais said. “I hope to have enough of a theological understanding and basis to be able to preach authentically, steeped in the Lutheran tradition, so that I can feel more confident that what I am saying is actually what I should be teaching. Also, I hope I’m personally able to build connections through the program and relationships with people who are doing the same type of ministry.”

DeMarais’ goals as a graduate certificate student align with the seminary’s goals in revamping its certificate program with input from ELCA synod leaders. Following strong interest in the first experimental cohort that included DeMarais, Luther Seminary quickly developed a second graduate certificate cohort focused on children, youth, and family ministry, which began classes in January 2024.

From there, seminary leadership worked to refresh the graduate certificate curriculum, formally strengthening the program to best serve future lay leaders and the church. The new curriculum, approved by the faculty in late February, outlines five graduate certificate concentrations: Christian ministry; Bible, history of Christianity, and systematic theology; children, youth, and family; cultivating new Christian communities; and ELCA candidacy completion.

Going forward, the certificates are designed to provide a robust and flexible theological education in six courses—four required concentration courses and two electives. Certificate students typically take one course at a time over two years. “This is right in sync with our mission at Luther Seminary,” said Terri Elton ’98 M.A., ’07 Ph.D., dean of academic affairs. “As the church changes and not every congregation is going to be able to get a leader with a master’s degree, I think graduate certificates are a really good way of equipping another kind of leader.”

Addressing a need

The idea to enhance the certificate program—including expanding the Jubilee Scholarship to provide full tuition for certificate students—came out of conversations between leaders of the seminary and ELCA Region 3 in the spring of 2023.

“As we were listening,” Elton said, “one of the big shifts discussed was the church going from a professional model of leadership where everybody has a pastor with a master’s degree and then is supported by volunteers, to the master’s-level leaders supporting the lay people doing ministry—a lay-led, clergy-supported versus a clergy-led, lay-supported model of ministry.”

To help equip these lay ministers, Luther Seminary’s leaders realized they could turn to the graduate certificate program. At the time, certificate students did not qualify for the Jubilee Scholarship. The certificates “were underutilized in our curriculum” and had very low enrollment, Elton said.

The seminary swiftly put together a plan to scholarship the Fall 2023 cohort of graduate certificate students who each needed to be nominated by synod leaders in Region 3, which covers Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. This effort yielded 11 students, including DeMarais. Each student is pursuing the certificate concentration of their choice.

Building on this early success, the seminary recruited six students for the second cohort in partnership with the Minneapolis and St. Paul area synods. That group of students, who were required to already be working in ministry, is focused only on the Children, Youth, and Family Certificate and is mentored by Arlene Flancher, children, youth, and family coordinator and student advisor.

Learning and growing as leaders

Students from both cohorts say they’ve enjoyed the experience and are eager to continue learning in the seminary’s supportive community.

“It’s been cool to be in a more academic setting revolving around the things that I’m learning and working through at church,” said Will Weikle, a member of the second cohort who works as director of children, youth, and family at Grace Lutheran Church in Andover, Minnesota.

Weikle had been working at Grace Lutheran—his hometown church—for less than a year before starting the certificate program. Previously, he’d been an elementary school teacher. He said the Children, Youth, and Family Certificate is an accessible way for him to further his theological education as he begins a new career in ministry.

“A big part is that it’s covered by the Jubilee Scholarship,” Weikle said. “And it sounded very doable with one class at a time. That’s a big deal. With it being a two-year program, it feels less complicated [than a master’s degree program]. I’m doing this for the specific experience in what I’m doing already. Because I just want it for the actual knowledge, I don’t feel like I need anything more than a certificate.”

Kate Roettger, director of children, youth, and family ministry at Cambridge Lutheran Church in Cambridge, Minnesota, had similar reasons for starting the graduate certificate program this January. However, only one class into the program, she’s already thinking about potentially pursuing a master’s degree at Luther Seminary, too.

“I’m very interested in using my time right now as an on-ramp into going for a master’s,” Roettger said. “It’s just that sense of being within an environment where you’re really digging in, and you’re really wrestling with theological questions, and the colleagues that you’re with, hearing different perspectives and different ways of doing ministry—you’re like, ‘How can I not continue?’”

Roettger has worked in children, youth, and family ministry at various churches for over 10 years. She’s contemplated attending seminary in the past, but she never felt it would be the right fit until now. Like Weikle, she said the Jubilee Scholarship helped make Luther Seminary feel accessible. Being in an educational cohort of other ministry professionals was a draw for Roettger as well.

And if Roettger does decide to go for a master’s degree after or instead of the certificate, all of the classes that she’s already taken will transfer to the degree program. Elton explained, “This certificate program is unique in the sense that it’s graduate-level education—so it’s a high bar—but it also is scholarshipped and could go toward a degree program if you choose.”

Putting certificate students and degree students in classes together not only paves the way for a certificate student to go on for their master’s—it also diversifies the perspectives in the classroom as students with varied levels of academic or ministerial experience learn from each other.

“Because our classes have master’s students as well,” DeMarais said, “I feel like I’m getting the same quality of education that anybody at Luther is getting. It’s been great to be all together and to challenge each other.”

A wide-reaching impact

In addition to providing students with a rigorous and accessible theological education, the graduate certificate program aims to directly benefit the church. The first conversations about revamping the certificate program in partnership with Region 3 began just as Luther Seminary’s MDivX experiment—an accelerated Master of Divinity program—was concluding. Synod and seminary leaders have said these experiments are evidence that the seminary is willing to continue to innovate and be nimble in response to the changing needs of the church.

“I believe Luther Seminary’s enhanced graduate certificate program represents a crucial step in addressing the evolving landscape of Christian ministry professions within our cultural context,” said Kris Bjorke ’07 M.A., ’18 D.Min., assistant to First-Third Ministry for the Minneapolis Area Synod. “Seminary institutions must attentively heed the evolving needs of the church and collaborate closely to continually adapt and innovate. Luther Seminary has exemplified this commitment through this initiative.”

As the faculty mentor for the first cohort of certificate students and a former ELCA bishop, Anderson agreed.

“Experiments are profoundly important for the seminary as an institution as it tries to figure out how to serve a rapidly changing church and large areas where it’s very difficult to find an M.Div.-trained pastor to serve,” he said. “I think a lot of our assumptions about how to do church will become more fluid, and we’re going to have to run experiments like this to figure out how we are going to grow capable ministers, deacons, and pastors in a world that is less likely to have as much privilege for churches and where churches may have a lot less power.”

Both Anderson and Flancher said they’re eager for the seminary to continue to experiment for the benefit of future church leaders and the church overall.

“I think the seminary has learned a lot about how to provide a flexible education and how to do it well,” Flancher said. “I’m hoping that with these experiments, our reach will continue to broaden even more.”

Refresh and expansion

Although students for the first two experimental graduate certificate cohorts were recruited in partnership with ELCA synods, Elton said future cohorts will be open to students from all ministerial backgrounds as the program expands.

“We have already decided that next year we’re expanding the Jubilee Scholarship for certificates for anybody in ministry,” she said. “We’re still keeping the connection to synod or church leaders, but it’ll be more ecumenical, too. We really partnered with our ELCA network for the two experiments that we did, and the program will certainly be open to ELCA people throughout the whole church, but it’s not limited to ELCA.”

Elton said seminary leaders are still deciding how future cohorts will be organized. Students may be grouped by certificate—like the children, youth, and family cohort is—or they may be structured in another way. “It depends on who signs up and where the interest is,” she said, “but the idea would be that you would come in, get a cohort of students, and you would travel with that group through the program.”

Amid any change, it’s crucial for the seminary to continue listening to the needs of students and the church, Elton reiterated. “The fact that we were able to start something and learn quickly enough so that in a year we could open it up is kind of fun—but that’s all based on really good partnerships with the church,” she said. “For me, as a leader at Luther, I want people to know that we want to hear from you and we want to partner.”

As a rural ministry lay leader who has seen the power of partnerships within her parish, DeMarais said she’s deeply grateful for Luther Seminary’s collaborative effort through the certificate program.

“I think participating in this program has benefits to my entire church community, helping to connect us to the larger church, to Luther, to the larger Lutheran body in general,” she said. “We’re not feeling like we’re on our own. It’s like, ‘Hey, there are people who care about you, and look at all the cool stuff we can do when we work together.’