Another mainline Protestant seminary is beginning plans to move from its longtime campus in an effort to “remain sustainable over the long term.”
Luther Seminary, the flagship school educating students for ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), plans to relocate from its 120-year-old St. Paul, Minnesota campus.
A unanimous vote by the seminary’s board of directors moved “to begin the process to shift to a more nimble model and divest from its current physical campus in Saint Paul.” The vote was announced June 10 on the seminary’s website.
“Seeking new space … will allow us to steward our resources more effectively,” the announcement read.
Sale and move from the 8.5 acre urban campus will not be immediate, with the board expecting to remain at the current site through the 2026-2027 school year. According to county records cited by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, the campus has an estimated market value greater than $8.7 million.
The announcement notes “an ongoing commitment to strategic, periodic in-person learning” referencing hybrid models that have become more commonplace among formerly residential seminaries. Such models involve online programs paired with on-campus intensives at different points in the school year. Today, 70 percent of Luther students primarily engage online, Tuesday’s announcement states.
Since its formation in 1988 as the merger of three predecessor bodies, the ELCA has seen its membership decline from 5,288,048 to 2,793,899 baptized members in 2023. Two other Lutheran churches, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) broke away from the ELCA in 2001 and 2010, respectively. The denomination counted a total of 8,498 local churches in 2023.
The Episcopal Church’s General Theological Seminary is among those formerly large institutions that have rapidly scaled down and shifted to hybrid education, functionally sharing leadership with Virginia Theological Seminary, which retains a traditional residential model. Other seminaries have merged, such as Andover Newton Theological School, which in 2017 affiliated with Yale Divinity School and sold its Massachusetts campus.
Luther Seminary remains significantly larger than those institutions, however. According to data provided by the Association of Theological Schools, the main accrediting body for North American seminaries, Luther enrolls 371 students, with the full-time equivalent enrollment of 188.90 (two half-time students equal one FTE student). This is down from a headcount of 747 students in the 2003-2004 school year, which had an FTE of 568.2, or an enrollment decline of half of headcount and two-thirds of FTE.
The school has 21 faculty and has programs offering MDiv, MA, ThM, and PhD degrees. Additionally, Luther offers M.A., M.Div., and Graduate Certificate students a scholarship covering the entirety of the $19,343 annual tuition and fees, placing it in a peer group among even more heavily endowed mainline Protestant institutions such as Princeton Theological Seminary (the PTS enrollment is less than Luther at 291, but it has an endowment of nearly $1.4 billion). In the 2024-2025 school year, Luther reported long term investments totalling $136 million, ranking it among the moderately wealthy mainline Protestant seminaries. That financial largesse has not translated into growth, however.
Ranked by enrollment, six of the top 10 U.S. seminaries affiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention, with four of those six reporting a full-time equivalent enrollment of more than 1,000 students. Luther’s long-term investments exceed all but one of those schools. All of the top 10 seminaries ranked by enrollment are Evangelical.
“The way students learn and prepare for ministry has changed. Now is the right time to align our resources with that reality and evolve how we deliver on our mission,” Luther Seminary President Robin Steinke said in the school’s announcement.
More from IRD:
Seminary Endowments: Mainline Has Money, Southern Baptists Have Students
Ligon Duncan on U.S. Theological Education Today
America’s Largest Seminaries in 2023-24
Comment by Thomas on June 13, 2025 at 10:05 am
I don`t think this is a orthodox seminary, right? However, there are still some conservatives remaining in ELCA. To my knowledge, NALC is growing.
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on June 13, 2025 at 11:59 am
Luther is associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). There have been evangelicals on the faculty (Joy J. Moore was there until last year being named the new president of Northern Seminary), but it is a Mainline Protestant seminary. As for NALC, the denomination did modestly grow in baptized members and number of congregations from 2016-2018, but I haven’t seen post-COVID numbers. If you can find them, please direct me to them! NALC has its major gathering this coming August, so hopefully we’ll see a statistical release at that time.
Comment by Tom Magee on June 13, 2025 at 11:27 am
Seminary is so expensive. Few people have the money or want to incur the debt. So, these schools have to do something to survive.
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on June 13, 2025 at 11:56 am
Ironically, Luther Seminary is basically tuition-free, but I think there is also the issue of lost income to contend with. Placing a career on hold for three years is significant for many, especially those who already have families and spouses to support. This was less of a problem when most seminarians were in their early to mid 20s.
Comment by Thomas on June 13, 2025 at 7:07 pm
I have a lot of respect for NALC, they are the equivalent of ACNA in the sense they came from a now post-Christian denomination, but unfortunately they have women`s ordination. I don`t think its even a major question for them. Despite some theological differences, I still prefer the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Fortunately both the NALC and LCMS are ecumenical partners of ACNA. I certainly also would welcome ecumenical talks with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS).
Comment by Angelo on June 16, 2025 at 9:52 am
A group that sometimes go under the radar is the LCMC- Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Chris. It is a congregationalist association of traditional, evangelical and charismatic Lutherans and have more than 300, 000 members.
Comment by David on June 16, 2025 at 1:11 pm
I have some affection for Luther Seminary, because a purchase at their bookstore in the late 1970s ended up transforming my prayer life. I wish them the best.
Comment by James Wilson on June 17, 2025 at 4:58 pm
I graduated from Luther Seminary in 2003. It was thriving in terms of the number of students. The faculty was theologically diverse, including process and open theists such as Paul Sponheim and Terry Fretheim but also some orthodox folks like Skip Sundberg and Gracia Grindal. I graduated before a portion of the campus was sold to pay cost of tuition for MDiv students. Sadly, as there are fewer congregations calling pastors, even a tuition free degree isn’t enough inducement to spend the years necessary to complete a degree.
Comment by Thomas on June 19, 2025 at 9:40 pm
Jeffrey, I think you are right. I did some search and couldn`t find these numbers about NALC either. They will possibly be released this year. Angelo, you are right about the LCMC. However, they don`t describe themselves as a denomination, which helps to explain why this happens. There is still a reasonable number of conservatives remaining in the ELCA, they are Lutheran CORE. I think they would do better by leaving.
Comment by MJ on July 11, 2025 at 2:13 pm
My hope is that faithful Lutherans in the ELCA will outlast the current “progressive” zeitgeist. It’s likely to be a long, slow process of renewing the mainline if it happens at all. Too bad some of these once great institutions won’t make it to the hopeful recovery.
Comment by Thomas on August 26, 2025 at 7:15 pm
MJ, that would be great but I`m afraid its wishful thinking. Respect still for the Lutheran CORE conservatives remaining.