Seminary response to financial challenges

WLS is the only synodical school able to maintain its current faculty strength for the next biennium. We are serving the same number of students since 2000 with the same number of professors. But we have also absorbed the Pastoral Studies Institute and the World Mission Seminary Professor into the scope of faculty responsibilities—an increase in work load of the equivalent of one full-time faculty member.

In effect we are trying to do more with less. Staffing at the seminary was already at very low levels because of previous rounds of budget cuts. Due to the current financial stringencies, we will be reducing staff by two more positions. We remain grateful for having men and women who serve the seminary and see what they do as a vocation and not merely as a job.

We expect we will need to support our budget in the next biennium by a more aggressive use of our unrestricted funds. According to our present and best estimates, these reserve funds will be largely depleted by the end of the biennium. After this our subsidy will either have to be substantially increased or we will have to make the kind of cuts that will adversely impact what we are currently doing to carry out our mission as well as curtail what we hope to do in the future.