Our Wisconsin Synod is blessed with perhaps the nation’s finest and most dependable educational system for training church workers. Beginning at the high school level, our two prep schools and area Lutheran high schools produce a steady supply of young people who will continue their training for the public ministry. We operate Martin Luther College, whose sole purpose is to train and equip candidates to serve as teachers and staff ministers and to provide a solid liberal arts education for young men who will continue their study for the pastoral ministry. Our Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary provides virtually all of the men who will serve as pastors in our congregations. All three levels are supported as a high priority in our work as a synod.

Over the years WELS has experienced times when the supply of called workers did not meet the demand for called workers. There have been other times when the number of workers exceeded the calls available. That pendulum has swung back and forth with some regularity over the last four decades. More recently, the number of candidates for the ministry has been almost perfectly matched to our needs.

Unlike other church bodies, it is a blessing of God that we are not facing a shortage of called workers in the next few years. But that does not mean that we should relax our efforts to recruit young people for ministry.

Think about this fact: An eighth-grade boy who decides to prepare for the ministry next fall will not be ordained as a pastor until the year 2021. An eighth-grade girl who plans to become a teacher will not enter a classroom until 2017 or 2018, depending on her course of study. Since we cannot predict with any kind of certainty what our needs for called workers will be eight or twelve years into the future, it seems clear that our efforts to encourage young people to study for the pastoral and teaching ministry should not be relaxed.

Some have noted that our synod has not grown in recent years and have wondered whether we might be training too many workers. The fact is that we never want to assume that the lack of growth in recent years will continue. We want to continue our efforts to plant the gospel in new locations, to open new congregations and mission fields, to open new schools, and to expand school enrollments. If we are serious about expanding our efforts to preach and teach the gospel to the entire world, then we will need to have an expanding number of workers to fill classrooms and pulpits.