Today my alma mater, Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, is holding its commencement exercises. I love a good commencement exercise. I enjoy the pomp and circumstance, the academic regalia, the nods to the institution and traditions of which those graduates become an everlasting part. At the seminary in particular my heart warms hearing “Thy Strong Word” the most famous of hymns written by my father in the faith Martin Franzmann while he was on the faculty there as processional hymn, adding stanzas along the way as they needed to fill more time with all the students processing. He taught during the seminary’s heyday, when class sizes were big and getting bigger. 

My class wasn’t massive, nor was it particularly small, but more than numbers, I’m not really sure I could call it my class. Technically it always will be, but that doesn’t mean I always felt a part of it. I’ve been out eleven years now and whenever I chat with some other fellow alum the question of when we attended always comes up because undoubtedly paths often cross. “Oh you were a first year when I was a fourth.” “Oh I was on vicarage then, so technically we were in school together but I never knew you.” So on and so forth. Yes, guys often have their paths cross, but that doesn’t mean everyone experiences the same level or kind of community by virtue of the fact that they attended residential seminary.

The story of my time at seminary is, like my father in the faith, unique. He used to joke that he was the only man who completed the three prescribed years of seminary in two years, with a gap year in between, single in the first, married in the second. He went through the Wisconsin Synod System, but his journey was anything but typical. The same is true for me. I arrived in the fall of 2008 to the campus. I had never been there before but I chose that seminary over Fort Wayne (another place I hadn’t visited) because the recruiter from St. Louis, Wally Becker, remembered my name. That may not sound like a big deal but to me it was. You see, while at Concordia University—Chicago recruiters from both seminaries would come up and spend time with students. I spent hours with the guy from Fort Wayne (whose name I wont share but do remember). I met Wally for maybe 2 minutes. On their next visit, the guy from Fort Wayne had no idea who I was, Wally remembered my name, that’s all I needed. CSL was the place for me. 

Or, at least I thought it was. Those who know me know that my life has never been easy. My parents were separated long before I was born, divorced officially soon after. I grew up with financial hardships, homeless a couple of times, abuse of all sorts touched my household for any number of reasons. The story is one I’m always willing to share but don’t want to burden anyone with right now. I’m invoking it not for sympathy but because of what I am about to say next. Given all the hardship of my youth I can say undoubtedly that the Fall of 2008 until the Spring of 2010, my first two years at seminary, were the hardest of my young adult life. I had more dark nights of the soul, more anguish and angst, more anger and frustration, than I knew what to do with. 

Take for example the course work itself. Top notch faculty, second to none, then or now. But at the lunch table, and even in some of the class rooms, theology was abstracted from reality. It never had a face. It was never people it was always ideas, always concepts, always truth over the people truth was supposed to touch. It became too much for me to stomach, so I’d steal away to a coffee shop, hang out with the barista who I knew was gay but, unlike the guys who’d berate the LGBTQ community at lunch and buy coffee from him in the afternoon, I saw a person for whom Christ died, someone who provided more space for genuine human interaction and community than most of the guys in my class. 

That wasn’t the only issue, though, because I also had field work at a place that just wasn’t a fit. I’m not going to name it or my supervisor but I can tell you that if I never darken the door there again it would be too soon. I still get feelings of angst in my stomach hearing the name of the road the congregation is on because it still, to this day, draws up the feelings from the past. My supervisor was TYPE A, capitalization intended, and I am not like that. It was a performance for him, and as someone who then weighed close to, and at times over, 500lbs, I didn’t deliver the right aesthetics for him. He also delivered a report about me that simply wasn’t true, he admitted it to over the phone after I had been called in to be held accountable for “not showing up” and “not being known.” It turned out he had someone else fill it out who didn’t know me at all and he just signed it. I got in trouble, he still received field workers year after year. 

That report, just before I was supposed to go on vicarage, was the last straw. Take those two daily realities and combine with my best friend quitting after the first year and another dear friend being asked to leave because of a stutter, and I decided I had enough. I quit the gold standard because I thought the standard wasn’t worth pursuing anymore. There was no community for me. I felt alone. I felt broken. I couldn’t do it anymore. 

To be sure, some of the problem was me. I was given terrible advice before I arrived. “Don’t let seminary change you.” It will, whether you want it to or not. I shoulder my end of the blame for the first two years willingly but I’m not the only one who should. The seminary did live up to what it was supposed to be my first two years. All the hallowed stories of community, of education that is practical, all the stuff you put in brochures and on websites seemed, in my first two years, just to be the thing that people need to hear in order to try and enroll.

I spent time away from the seminary, got a job at Apple, and lived with my new in-laws for a time. I knew I wanted to finish my master’s work but didn’t know where so I ended up at a place in my hometown called Northern Seminary (since moved to a different suburb of Chicago) and it was there, among baptists, anabaptists, anglicans, self-avowed arians, and everyone else under the sun, professor and student, that I came to embrace the Lutheran heritage of my youth. I eventually graduated from there with an MA because it was more advantageous, once I knew I was really a Lutheran of the Missouri Synod variety, to finish there with an MA and then go back to CSL to finish my MDiv. My wife and I moved, spent a quarter at seminary in the fall of 2012, we moved again for vicarage in November, spent a year with them, moved back, spent two more quarters at seminary, and graduated in May of 2014 with that MDiv. 

The second time around was better, but it wasn’t great. I still had issues with professors who came at me for my weight, even threatened to withhold my certification for it despite the reviews I got from my vicarage. I still heard the same abstracted theological conversations. I still failed to find the community and stuff I had heard so much about. I found friends, don’t get me wrong, but the way I hear residential seminary education spoken about these days, you’d think it was all roses and sunshine and everybody drinking and laughing together. For me, it was never that. It was lonely, it was difficult, and it is something I understand people not wanting to go through. 

I’ve actually been a student at three different seminaries. Concordia, where I earned my MDiv, Northern, where I earned an MA, and United Lutheran Seminary (Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg when I started) where I earned an STM. All of them showed me that seminaries have good and bad to them, residential programs all have highs and lows, none are a gold standard that cannot be improved. I’ve also done a PhD at what was, when I graduated, considered to be top 35 in the world for Theology and Religion. I did that PhD via distance. I’ve taken classes, earned degrees, using a variety of modalities, at a plethora of places, with different goals in mind each time. I speak from experience when I say that education depends as much on the student as it does the institution. Every institution has flaws and weaknesses, as does every single program. 

There’s a lot of talk right now in the LCMS about educational endeavors and who should start them, what the gold standard should be. What is missing in those is the recognition that things change over time. The synod’s founder, CFW Walther, was beloved, sure, but students used to say that studying under him was “slaving away at Baier” because he just dictated sentences. In fact, it wasn’t until the early 20th century that dictation was eliminated as the primary pedagogical methodology at CSL. Curriculums change. Students change. The one that doesn’t is the Christ who calls people to carry his message into the world.

Why wouldn’t we want as many people equipped as possible? Why wouldn’t we expend every effort to give people everything we can so that they too can carry this word of promise and hope? You never know what kid from a broken home is listening. You never know what his life will turn out to be. And while I was able to go through a residential education, I came through at the worst time, I’ll be in debt until I die. It costs me more than it ever cost the seminary or the church body. It effects my family, my ability to provide for them and what kind of life I will give my kids. Spare me the “count the cost” rhetoric because I count it every month. 

I’m not of the mindset that because I moved you should be willing to as well. I suffered, I put up with it, I sacrificed, you should too. No, if you don’t have to suffer the way I did, I’m actually glad. The thing is, we are all called to pick up our crosses and follow, we are not told that we, or anyone else, gets to pick what that cross is, save Christ our Lord. The tenor of the conversation is so convoluted right now because we have made this about institutions. It reminds of the lunch table, concerned with truth, with whats right, and not with the people to whom the truth needs to go out. And yet, it will go out, by trained or untrained people, the word will be spread because the work isn’t mine, it isn’t yours, it is the work of the Spirit. He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies. God himself chose all the people no one expected, women at the tomb, the first preachers of the most important message ever told. The guys who had the true gold standard education, who sat at the feet of Christ, didn’t believe it at first, nevertheless, the gospel is still heard today because God will do what God will do. 

I hope no one ever has the kind of journey I had through seminary. I hope that the guys graduating from my alma mater today had a better experience and will show the world the benefits of coming from a place like that. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones who can or should be equipped to do so. The church is bigger than the synod that was formed after either seminary it now uses. That church exists and trains and equips people to carry the word of the Lord to the world. It has done so in a variety of ways, using a variety of modalities, connecting to an unknown number of people. It works, not because of the standards we set but because of the one who rose from the dead. To quote a beloved professor, “it’s the word stupid, not you.” For that word, for those who share it, and for those who equip people to do so, I am, and always will be, grateful.