Elsewhere we’ve taken note of BTS Board member John Armstrong’s post from June, 2006, "Becoming a New Kind of Seminary", which I’d like to bring up again because of recent developments. Here is a quote from that post:

We spent the afternoon interacting with David Tiede, former president for eighteen years, of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. David, a first-rate New Testament scholar, led Luther Seminary to understand the new world context that we face in the West and sought to develop a missional philosophy for an old mainline seminary (ELCA). I found David’s humble, engaging and clear presentation deeply impacting. He told us that his new journey toward the missional perspective began when he received a letter telling him that the seminary should "quit training pastors for a church that no longer exists."

That sentence jumped out at me powerfully. "Quit training pastors for a church that no longer exists." In other words, stop training chaplains for Christendom and start training missional pastors who know how to lead people to embrace the mission of Christ in a world that sees the church as completely foreign to its everyday life. Honestly, every seminary in America could stand to catch this same vision but few have at this point. Why? Institutions change only when forced to change. As David Tiede said, "Nobody changes until they are forced to change."

It’s hard to beat this for displaying so great a lack of discernment in so few sentences. Wouldn’t the reader concerned with theological education like to know: (1) is there a difference between "change" and "reformation according to the Scriptures"?; (2) why do you use the morally and theologically neutral word "missional" all the time? (weren’t the Nazis missional?); (3) what does "first-rate New Testament scholar" mean in "an old mainline [i.e., liberal] denomination"?; (4) how can you be so gullible to take a statement from someone in a liberal denomination ("quit training pastors for a church that no longer exists") and take it as a motto for change in the evangelical constituency that Biblical Seminary was founded to serve? I’m sure our readers could think up some more good questions.

So, the ELCA is becoming more "missional."  Is that good?

CHICAGO - Clergy members who are in homosexual relationships will be able to serve as pastors, the largest U.S. Lutheran body said Saturday.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America passed a resolution at its annual assembly urging bishops to refrain from disciplining pastors who are in "faithful committed same-gender relationships."

The resolution passed by a vote of 538-431.

"The Church ... has just said, ‘Do not do punishments,’" said Phil Soucy, spokesman for Lutherans Concerned, a gay-lesbian rights group within the church. "That is huge."

The ELCA, which has 4.8 million members, had previously allowed gays to serve as pastors so long as they abstained from sexual relations.

The conference also instructed a committee that is developing a social statement on sexuality to further investigate the issue. The committee is scheduled to release its report in 2009.

http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/5013/

And Biblical Seminary is becoming more "missional" with the help of the ELCA. Is that good?

Here is what PCA pastor Tim Bayly’s advises:

Dear brothers and sisters, leave Dr. John Armstrong alone--stay far away from him. He’s crashing and burning. And very sadly, the many many people who have tried to warn him have been spurned.

Meanwhile, there are many lost who will listen and believe, proudly taking their place in the great cloud of fools.

http://www.baylyblog.com/2007/08/is-the-rejectio.html

Incidentally, in looking again at Armstrong’s June 2006 post, I noticed that back then he described Biblical Seminary’s origin as "conservative, Independent, Reformed." This is accurate, of course. Contrast this with the way he described these origins a year later:

Begun in 1971 as a fundamentalist break-off seminary from the orbit of the late fundamentalist minister Carl MacIntyre Biblical has come a long way from those days, now engaging the world as a faithful, evangelical and orthodox interdenominational seminary with a missional philosophy.

I.e., BTS WAS fundamentalist, and is NOW faithful, evangelical, orthodox, interdenominational, and of course, above all things, MISSIONAL, like the liberal Lutherans.