Did you have a favorite professor at the Seminary?

I loved my teachers. When I look back on my student days at Concordia Seminary in the 1990s, I am grateful for my classmates and the lifelong friendships that we forged here. I am grateful for the loving and encouraging staff who supported our time at the Seminary in countless ways. But when I think back, it’s especially our teachers who come to mind. Professors who taught the faith and taught the Scriptures with deep insight, with zeal, with a love for Christ and His mission and His church — and for us students. I know that you feel the same way.

The president of our current fourth-year class, Joshua Kintz, recently presented the Seminary with a check for $2,000 as a class gift for chapel renovations being planned in the next few years. As he explained the gift, he said the students viewed this gift as a token of their great esteem and appreciation for their professors, and for all that they had gained from their professors during their years of Seminary formation. Our students love their teachers.

Our Seminary forms pastors, deaconesses and missionaries who will serve with joy and faithfulness on the front lines of Christ’s mission. As we do so, it is our faculty who serve on the front lines of student formation. Concordia Seminary has an outstanding faculty, and I thank God for them and pray regularly for them, for their families and for their work. I hope you will join me in such prayer.

And because a strong faculty is so central to our mission, “Intentional Cultivation of Future Faculty” is the third of 12 focus areas addressed in our Seminary’s new five-year strategic plan. Toward this end, we plan to:

• Develop a five-year staffing plan to prepare proactively for future faculty and administrative needs.
• Prioritize student formation in decisions regarding future faculty, seeking bright, personable, productive, pastoral, collegial, solidly scriptural and Lutheran faculty.
• Inspire gifted students to consider career paths preparing them to become future scholars and leaders of the church through opportunities including faculty mentoring, student worker service with faculty and conferences for LCMS graduate students.
• Establish a regular program of funding for select students who show promise for future faculty roles to pursue Ph.D. studies with our Graduate School or other appropriate graduate schools.

We pray that the Lord will continue to raise up more workers for His harvest. And we pray that the Lord will continue to raise up professors who will teach and form such workers for His harvest. All this so that the name of Jesus might be known and glorified. All this so that the full comfort and hope of Jesus’ saving work might reach more and more sinners.

In Christ’s love,

Dr. Thomas J. Egger
President