State of the Seminary Address 2001:
A Seminary in Mission
for a Church in Mission

The Rev. Dr. Philip D. W. Krey
President

A year ago at our Spring Convocation dinner I described the Seminary as being like a young lad who had grown so rapidly that his shoes and pants were too small and everything was pinching. We were out of space and time on our campus given the dramatic growth in number of students and program in the last decade of the 20th century.

Today I can report to you that things are still pinching all around even more so because we have had to moth ball the Old Dorm. The roof and much of the plumbing had fallen into disrepair, and we did not want to invest in repairs when the building was under review for a new incarnation as a classroom building and student center. We are maximizing our use of every space. And we now have a plan and a strategy to address what Robert Hughes likes to tell me is a good problem to have. Discomfort and challenge caused by growth. God's grace in our growth has also produced growing pains.

Thus, although lanky, we are adjusting to our moderate size. With our 400-450 students we are no longer a small Seminary. We have no intention of growing too large. But we have every intention under the careful guidance of our Director of Admissions, Rick Summy, in providing our share of first and second professional degree leaders and lay leaders for the ELCA. We also train leaders for the Churches with which we are in full communion and for the historic African American Churches that support our famous Urban Theological Institute. In short we are thriving and enjoying the results of the Philadelphia Renaissance that President Hughes helped to envision.

Our finances

As a veteran president of a seminary who looked at our financial picture recently pointed out to me, we have a "lively economy" at LTSP. We enjoy strong tuition income, faithful support from our synods (Thank you, Bishop Almquist, for representing the bishops in this your 35th class reunion). We are enjoying growing support from the ELCA, (Bishop Anderson, as you celebrate your 45th class reunion with your classmates, we owe you a debt of thanks.) The ELCA annual contribution to LTSP in two years will have grown from $29,000 to $200,000 per year. We are so grateful that seminaries have remained a high priority in the ELCA budget allocations during Bishop Anderson's administration.

We have a strong donor base. Thanks to all of you! Thanks to Laura Csellak and the Alum Board we enjoy a growing alumni/ae contribution rate. (As you know, alum and individual giving represent a significant portion of our budget.) Thanks to our Executive Director of the Foundation, Larry House, we have a stable endowment. Thanks be to God, he is assisted with wise counsel. We made it through the punishing Bear Market safely. (James Scott, Vice President of Dean Witter Morgan Stanley, and Earl Mummert, Chair of the Board of Pensions, advise us among others on the Foundation Board.) We stay very attentive to the budget. When the stock market soured, Curtis Haynes, our Chief Financial Officer, and the whole staff cut the budget proportionately. Even the number of flowers on the campus are less than last year and there are more clumps of onion weed.

Your faithfulness in giving to our common mission will insure that we draw the appropriate percentage from our endowment. In order to maintain a reasonable budget we need to raise about $1 million a year in individual giving. I am sure you have seen the recent PS edited by our Director of Communications and Public Information, Mark Staples. Seminaries are relatively new at the development enterprise, but our donor base is growing. We need to grow among the donors who give between $5,000 and $10,000 per year, but every gift great or small counts towards meeting our budget year after year. Due to the painstaking work of our development office and the good stewardship of our alums, Larry is frequently able to tell me that we have been remembered in a will, an annuity, or trust, or charitable remainder trust. We have a tall order, but we intend to be good stewards of the resources God entrusts to us through you.

Our students

A couple of weeks ago the Presidents of the eight ELCA Seminaries met with the Division for Ministry Staff in Atlanta where we looked at a number of statistics and factors identifying and affecting our seminaries. Again, it is important to know that LTSP continues to produce the most African American candidates for the ELCA, and we are second to the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in the number of Latino students. Our Latino program directed by Professor Nelson Rivera has begun to blossom. With the guidance of our Dean, Dr. Paul Rajashekar, and the help of an endowment from the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod called the Kelchner Fund, and the Division for Global Mission, there is a growing presence of Asian students on our campus. Thus God is enriching the multicultural mission of LTSP, the ELCA, and Region Seven. The 2000 Census results make it appropriate that multicultural mission will be a major focus for the ELCA.

Our Urban Program directed by faculty member Dr. Katie Day is second to none. This year we sent a host of students on immersions to Milwaukee and Chicago to observe how urban pastors there do ministry.

As our good friend and my classmate, President Michael Cooper-White of Gettysburg Seminary described us recently, our multicultural emphasis makes us "A school where tomorrow is today." As new immigrants change the face of this land, the face of our Seminary is changing so that there will be leaders equipped to do ministry in the changing contexts. We want to prepare leaders who are skilled at recognizing missional demographic changes when the time is right.

We are a seminary in mission for a Church in mission.

We continue to attract wonderful students who come from all over the Church, but two thirds of them take calls in the Northeast. It should not need saying but it is important to note that most of our growth in the last decade has been among Lutheran students.

As part of our present curriculum, we regularly have pastors come to do presentations to groups of our students. Not long ago, as he was leaving, a very senior pastor took me aside and said. "In recent years I have been afraid to retire not knowing if there were candidates who would come along who could carry on the work God has led me to do, but having met your students I can retire in peace knowing that the Church of God is in good hands."

Thanks for the students you send us. This may aggravate some of you, but they have never been better. Please do send us more of these students.

Our Faculty

Guided by our able Dean, our Faculty is really at the top of its form. Faculties are a bit like sports teams; they sometimes need to go through rebuilding phases due to retirements and other factors. I would like to report to you that our Faculty is at the top of its game. Earl Weaver, the winningest manager in baseball, used to say that a team needs deep depth. The LTSP Faculty has this with the recent additions of Professor Jon Pahl in Church History and Professor Nelson Rivera in Systematic Theology and Latino Ministry. For the first time in a number of years we actually have the full complement of the Faculty. With Associate Dean Margaret Krych's energetic leadership the D.Min. and STM programs have grown in leaps and bounds, and with her vision we have been carefully discussing reactivating the ancient agreements for cross registration with the Religion Department of the University of Pennsylvania. The Eastern Cluster of Lutheran Seminaries has approved an exchange program with Yale Divinity School as well.

Some notable Faculty achievements:

Professor Timothy Wengert is the third Philadelphia Faculty member in MT Airy's history to edit and translate the Confessions as they appear in the new edition of The Book of Concord. Mt Airy's focus on the Confessions continues.

Professor Elizabeth Huwiler, recent author of a Commentary on the Song of Songs will have a study guide in the Region Seven synodical assembly packets: MT Airy's biblical tradition is thriving.

Professor Katie Day has written a book called Difficult Conversations with Alban Institute. Pastor John Steinbruck has argued that he wished he had had this book for his ministry years ago. MT Airy's focus on context continues.

Professor Gordon Lathrop continues to publish and speak to the leadership of the ELCA and around the world. MT Airy's cultivation of the Church's liturgy continues.

Teaching, Worship, Learning, and Formation for ministry are at the heart of what we do.

We preach and teach Christ at MT Airy. The biblical, confessional, and liturgical focus remains strong while we recognize our new contexts as we prepare leaders for the church.

Bishop Manas Buthelezi is the St John's Summit Professor this year, and Dr.Gnana Robinson, retired principal of United Theological College in Bangalore, India, is with us teaching Bible through the auspices of the Kelchner Fund.

Pastor John Sabatelli of Christ Lutheran Church, Baltimore, will be on campus for a week next fall through the St. John's Summit professorship. His visit follows what we did with Dr. Franklin D. Fry in using this fund to bring a veteran pastor to campus to teach students how to organize a large congregation with complex staff and program. Students and Faculty will visit Christ Church in Baltimore as well.

In a special commencement ceremony the Faculty and Board of Trustees conferred an Honorary Doctorate on the Rev. Ralph Bagger for his distinguished service to the Seminary. At the Commencement in May we will confer the same degree on Dr. Robert Blanck for his 30 year service to the Board of Trustees.

Under George Keck's leadership our Lay Theological Education Program is thriving. You will be hearing more from us on this, especially the Theological Education with Youth Program.

We are thoroughly human and vulnerable to the same tragedies and heartbreak that affect all. Agnes Bornemann had emergency surgery over the Easter Weekend but is doing well. Barbara Wengert continues her battle with cancer. We have you in our prayers each week in Chapel and know that many of you suffer heartaches as well. We learned recently that the wife of Harold Albert, Eleanor, died of heart failure before Easter. Professor Erik Heen and his spouse, the Rev. Dianne Loufman, recently provided us with the joyful news of the birth of their third son.

Partnerships

The Eastern Lutheran Cluster has had a seminal year

With the capable coordination of our Director of the Library, David Wartluft, and the other librarians of our sister seminaries we received a grant of $360,000 from the Henry Luce Foundation for "One library under three roofs." There will be ten areas of cooperation especially through technological means and shared purchases. With the coordination of our grants coordinator, Natalie Hand, we are about to submit a major programmatic grant to a foundation to support the Cluster Doctor of Ministry program and Distance Learning Program, the Diaconal Ministry Program at Gettysburg and the Atlanta Center of Southern Seminary. This grant will be called "One Seminary system in the East in three locations." Part of this proposal at present is a joint faculty appointment with Gettysburg.

Similarly 34 Lutheran institutions are discussing forming the Pennsylvania Lutheran Network. (Our bishops have been leading on this). What is envisioned is a network of the institutions of the Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania that is flexible, responsive, and strategic in relationship to the public and its issues. We want to be the church catholic for all Pennsylvanians, and we want them to be served with justice by those in power. The plan is that various institutions-- synods, seminaries, colleges, Social Ministry Organizations and camps--will partner strategically around certain issues and developments to witness by serving. We are modeling this after other states and this may serve as a model for others.

The eight ELCA seminaries in the system continue to attract attention around the country, especially from foundations. In a recent report by the Association of Theological Schools we learned that in relation to our peers our staffs are among the leanest, our tuitions are among the lowest, our endowments are among the lowest, and our salaries are also low. Thus our cost for Seminary education is stunningly low for the quality we produce. This has been accomplished through efficiencies that have been noted, but we are always struggling with inadequate resources.

Our Physical Plant

Please visit the Library Entrance and the Amphitheater. I think you will like what you see. Together with the new construction of the Wiedemann Center, these changes are harbingers of our continuing campus renewal.

Thus at LTSP we are moving ahead with confidence, and we have great plans. As we have been informing you all along, we are compiling a master plan for the campus including the Old Dorm, The Library, and the Chapel. (Those of you who were at Easter Vespers last evening know how small the Chapel is and how desperately we need air conditioning--never mind handicapped accessibility.). An exciting master plan is beginning to take shape by our Architect George Yu of Philadelphia. Looking toward our sesquicentennial, President Hughes' dream will be fulfilled by God's grace, a renewed campus, superior Faculty, and vibrant student body serving the mission of the Church.

Larry House and I have been visiting with bishops and synod councils to discuss strategies for a series of traditional synod-wide campaigns for the Learning Center. The Board approved a precampaign study for this summer and fall towards a wider campaign for the three buildings, for endowment growth, especially Faculty chairs, and for student aid. Our prayers are to raise the funds for the learning center through traditional synodwide appeals and the Library and Chapel and Endowment through major gifts.

A Faculty endowed chair costs $1.5 million. (Of course, only 5 percent is used for salary, pension, and benefits. The corpus remains for future growth.) Larry House likes to say that we have 10 Faculty chairs but eight of them are honorific-only two have funds behind them. That means that we have to raise all of the Faculty salaries in the operating budget each year-for an institution of our age and stature that is unusual.

The H. George Anderson Chair in Mission and Cultures

To address a missional and Faculty need we are proud today to announce the launching the first piece of this wider campaign. It gives me great honor and pleasure to announce to you today that we have made significant enough progress in the silent phase to announce the H. George Anderson Chair in Mission and Cultures. This new Faculty position that we hope to fill in 2003 will prepare future leaders to relate to the new immigrant communities that are coming to this country in droves. The Faculty member will also direct a Multicultural Mission Resource Center for congregations, synods and other seminaries. We invite you to help us to be Leaders for Multicultural Mission, to help us prepare leaders for a Biblical Confessional Church in a new Millennium.

We have worked on the "silent phase" of this campaign for more than a year a year, asking pledges mostly from congregations. And we've made proposals and received pledges of support amounting to about one-half of the needed amount ($1.5 million). We now need our alums, congregations, and friends to help us to raise the second half. The Board and Faculty can think of no better way than to honor our dear alum and his distinguished service to the Church at his 45th Class Reunion. Bishop Anderson, the proposal has been greeted with such joy by all we have asked that I have every confidence that we will raise the appropriate amount for this lasting contribution to leadership for mission in the Church. Thank you.