The mission of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis (CSL) flows from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God has sent His own Son into the world to redeem sinners by His death and resurrection. The Good News of repentance, forgiveness, and eternal life in His name is being preached to the ends of the earth. Concordia Seminary is a part of Christ’s beautiful, life-giving mission. We are grateful heirs of the Reformation as we teach, preach, and confess in accord with the scriptural, Christ-centered witness of the Lutheran Confessions. We serve church and world by providing theological education and leadership centered in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ for the formation of pastors, missionaries, deaconesses, scholars, and leaders in the name of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Thanks be to God that, since our founding in 1839, more than 13,000 workers have gone forth from Concordia Seminary to bring to all nations the life and hope found only in Jesus. Concordia Seminary prepares and forms pastors through two residential programs (Master of Divinity and Residential Alternate
Route) and a number of distance programs tailored to those serving specific ministry contexts. We prepare deaconesses in both residential and distance programs. Concordia Seminary also trains scholars and leaders for the church through our Advanced Studies programs. As we carry out this mission, student recruitment is a key priority. We know that the Synod is looking to us to provide future pastors, deaconesses, and missionaries. While our overall enrollment remains strong, with about 600 full- and part-time students across all our programs, we recognize the need to encourage more people to offer themselves for full-time Gospel service. Toward that end, we have assembled an outstanding Enrollment team and are pursuing a number of new recruitment initiatives. The Lord of the harvest is answering our prayers and blessing our efforts: the applications for our Master of Divinity pastoral formation program for 2023–24 are up 40 percent over last year. The effort to identify and encourage prospective church workers must be a churchwide effort, and many throughout the church are joining hands toward this end. The Synod’s Set Apart to Serve initiative is leading the charge in developing practical resources for congregations, pastors, and parents to encourage church work vocations, both among young people and among second-career members. Concordia Seminary has been directly involved with and is enthusiastically supportive of and grateful for the Set Apart to Serve program. We are grateful to the LCMS districts for their strong appeal for future pastors and deaconesses at district conventions and for district-level recruitment initiatives. We are also partnering with our sister seminary in Fort Wayne in joint marketing and recruitment efforts to sound forth the call throughout the church that a life of ministry in Christ’s name is a beautiful, joyful, challenging, fulfilling calling. In 2021, Concordia Seminary and Concordia Theological Seminary received a $1 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to collaborate and establish our “Partnership for Pastoral Formation: Setting Our Course for Future Church Leadership,” coordinating our efforts to recruit future pastors and deaconesses. Significant milestones for Concordia Seminary since the last Synod convention include completion of a highly successful fundraising campaign, a transition in leadership, re-engagement with our worldwide partners, accreditation visits and the development of a new five-year strategic plan. Begun in 2012 and concluding in 2020, our Generations and Generations 20/20 campaigns raised $285 million for Concordia Seminary—$39 million more than the original goal. Such generosity on the part of the church funded Seminary endowments, annual expenses, the complete renovation of the Kristine Kay Hasse Memorial Library, renovation of on campus faculty houses (on what is now designated as Mc Call Terrace), and student scholarships. The most recent years have seen record annual gift support as the LCMS continues to value and fund the preparation of future church workers at her seminaries. Thank you! In February 2021, Dr. Thomas Egger was elected as the 11th president of Concordia Seminary and accepted the call to succeed Dr. Dale Meyer. Egger is a Concordia Seminary graduate and, after serving as a parish pastor in Storm Lake, Iowa, for five years, has served on the faculty since 2005. In March 2022, Dr. Ronald Mudge was called to serve as provost to carry on the able work of Dr. Douglas Rutt, who was retiring from that role. Mudge is also a Concordia Seminary alumnus and, after serving as a missionary and theological educator in French-speaking Africa for 10 years,
had served as professor of theology and pre-seminary director at Concordia University Wisconsin since 2007.
Priority #1: Faithful and Full-Person Formation
Like all schools, Concordia Seminary carried out its mission with numerous modifications and restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the great joys of our return to normal, along with a renewed sense of campus community, has been a vigorous re engagement with our worldwide partnerships and involvements. Confessional Lutheran churches and seminaries from around the world—seemingly from everywhere—are looking to our LCMS seminaries to provide graduate-level theological study on our campuses for their future professors and leaders and to provide faculty expertise and short-term courses for groups of pastors and deaconesses in their countries. During the pandemic, most of these partnerships had to be halted. With the resumption of world travel, existing partnerships have resumed and new partnerships have been initiated, including involvements in Taiwan, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Ethiopia, Norway, Finland, Latvia, and Europe and Africa more generally.
Priority #3: Strong Recruitment and Enrollment
Concordia Seminary is hosting visits this year from our two accrediting agencies, the Higher Learning Commission and the Association of Theological Schools. In preparation for these every-10-year reviews, we document our work and demonstrate our academic, institutional, and financial integrity to external ac creditors. The self-analysis and the external critique involved in the process lead to ongoing improvements in our seminary’s work. Accreditation confirms the confidence placed in Concordia Seminary not only by higher education peers but also by the people of the LCMS and, importantly, by worldwide partner churches and partner seminaries. In 2022, the Board of Regents adopted the Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Strategic Plan 2022–26. The plan was developed with input from a broad cross-section of our seminary’s constituencies within the LCMS. It lists nine guiding objectives that under gird the plan: 1.
Keep God’s written Word at the center of ministerial formation.
2. Continue to add quality faculty. It is the faculty who execute our mission and determine our impact.
3. Creatively strengthen our short-term and long-term efforts in student recruitment.
4. Instill in our students a fervent both-and commitment to Lutheran teaching and outreach to the lost.
5. Make the case to the broader church for the distinct value of residential theological formation in community, even as we seek to be realistic and responsive to the church’s varied situations and needs.
6. Cultivate shared forms of piety and form a praying ministerium through the centrality of daily chapel in our Seminary life.
7. Cultivate a community of learning, hospitality, and mutual service.
8. Maintain strong collaborative and respectful relationships within the LCMS at all levels.
9. Resource international Lutheranism with clear biblical and confessional Lutheran teaching.
The plan contains 42 specific initiatives supporting the following key priorities:
Priority #2: Commitment to Community and Collaboration Priority #4: Lutheran Resources and Worldwide Impact A copy of the plan is available at: csl.edu/about. We carry out our vocation at Concordia Seminary under our Lord’s mercy and in full confidence of His help and of the fruitfulness of His Word. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He loves the world still, and so we know that our work to share Christ’s Gospel pleases Him and will be blessed by Him. We gather each morning in our chapel to hear the voice of our Shepherd and receive His gifts and, in turn, to call upon Him in prayer and joyfully sing His praises. The chapel is the center of our life and work because Christ is the center of our life and work. His mercy. His forgiveness. His Word. His hope. From this crucial center, our life and work flow out to our classrooms, to our campus life together, to the broader church, and to the ends of the earth. On behalf of the students, faculty, and staff of Concordia Seminary, thank you to the people of the LCMS for the privilege of serving with you. Thank you for your enthusiastic financial support. Thank you for entrusting future church workers to us for instruction and formation. Thank you for your prayers, for your witness, and for your work in Jesus’ name.