the nonprofit Stewardship of Life Institute (SOLI), based at Gettysburg Seminary. To work on stewardship education for future clergy, the institute coop- erated with the ELCA Blue Ribbon Commission on Mission Funding to bring together the resources of the churchwide office, seminaries, Board of Pensions, and synods and their bishops. They developed “Compe- tencies of a Well-Formed Steward- ship Leader,” an education strategy with financial coaching and training resources for rostered leaders. The Stewards of Abundance project will accelerate efforts with a three-point strategy over three years: • Financial and stewardship educa- tion at all eight ELCA seminaries. • Scholarships for seminarians. • Help in reducing the cost to students of seminary education. Stewards of Abundance is also
helping make the comparatively efficient ELCA theological educa- tion system more so. For example, perhaps more costs can be shared between schools, as in the case of Lutheran Theological Southern Sem- inary, Columbia, S.C., and Lenoir- Rhyne University, Hickory, N.C., which share a chief financial officer. “Clearly you can’t just keep
cranking costs up and expect schol- arships to keep up,” said Donald L. Huber, Stewards of Abundance project director and a retired dean of Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Colum- bus, Ohio. As costs have risen, some funding sources have dried up, lead- ing seminaries to raise tuition. Stewards of Abundance is giving
each seminary a matching grant of $12,500 to implement a stewardship education program. Most are adapt- ing the SOLI financial coaching model to their needs. At Pacific Lutheran Seminary, Berkeley, Calif., financial coaches and students use Skype and other
Internet tools to do long-distance stewardship education, said Tom Rogers, a homiletics professor who leads the school’s coaching program. “We don’t have, as Luther Seminary does, a thousand Lutheran churches within walking distance of the school,” Rogers joked. Distance coaching is incorporated into SOLI’s website, which allows coaches and students from all ELCA seminaries to log in, access docu- ments, participate in blogs and talk via Skype.
Stewardship leaders Financial coaches also try to help seminarians become better steward- ship leaders in the parish. “Most congregations talk about
money as an area of anxiety—high anxiety,” said Jerry Hoffman, former director of Luther’s Center for Stew- ardship Leaders and now a steward- ship consultant. Helping future lead- ers become comfortable with finance can bring congregations out of anxi- ety and into “the joy of what it means to be a steward,” he added. That approach worked for Christa Compton, a second-career seminarian at PLTS. “Money can be such a taboo subject, especially during these diffi- cult economic times, and it is so often a source of conflict in congregations,” she said. “My coaches helped me grow more comfortable talking about money ... and helped me to under- stand [it] as a gift that the church can use to live out the gospel.”
ELCA Fund for Leaders still premier vehicle B
eing a 2002 ELCA Fund for Leaders Scholarship recipient
still makes a big difference for Meredith Lovell Keseley. “The scholarship has brought to life for me what it means to be ‘surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,’ ” said the pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Abiding Presence in Burke, Va.
Keseley is grateful that she can focus on her ministry and family without the burden of debt. “I will never even know the names of the ‘witnesses’ who contributed to my scholarship, but I feel their pres- ence, their prayers and their sup- port,” she said.
The Fund for Leaders remains
the ELCA’s premier vehicle to ensure that the cost of theological education is not a hindrance to rais- ing up church leaders (www.elca. org/fundforleaders). Approved by 1997 Churchwide Assembly with the goal of creating a permanent $200 million fund, today it stands
at $30 million and growing. “If you include this year’s class of recipients, it’s about 800 scholarships awarded,” said Donald M. Hallberg, interim director of the fund. “About $7 million has been awarded since the inception. So we’re doing well.” The fund still has a long-term goal of raising $200 million to invest and provide scholarships that defray the cost of seminary as much as possible for as many people as possible, he said, adding, “This makes it possible for seminaries to recruit young peo- ple to be those courageous thinkers and leaders and pastors for the future of the church.”
Thanks to the Fund for Leaders,
Kerri Wadzita, a second-year student at the Lutheran Theological Semi- nary at Gettysburg (Pa.), can focus on her studies, not her debts. “It’s been a wonderful blessing to be supported financially through [the fund] schol- arship,” she said.
Robert C. Blezard November 2011 43
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