Two new boards established by this year’s Synod convention — the Board for Pastoral Education (BPE) and the Board for University Education (BUE) — met for the first time last month in St. Louis.
They elected officers and chose as their interim executive directors former staff members of the now-defunct LCMS Board for Higher Education (BHE), which recommended that the two boards be formed to restructure higher education in the Synod.
The BPE, meeting Sept. 18-19, elected John Behrendt, an investment banker from Fort Wayne, Ind., as chairman and named Dr. L. Dean Hempelmann, director of pastoral education with the former BHE, as interim executive director of pastoral education.
Hempelmann said the new board also adopted its policies and those for “coordinating policies and procedures” with the two Synod seminaries and pre-seminary and post-seminary programs in the Synod, “affirmed its responsibility” for the Synod’s Joint Seminary Fund, and set its calendar for the triennium.
The next BPE meeting is set for Feb. 17-18 in Austin, Texas — a joint meeting with the BUE, which will take place annually.
Dr. William F. Meyer, BHE executive director at the time of the restructure and now interim executive director of university education for the BUE, said that members of that new board “met briefly” Sept. 18. He said the board’s first full meeting is set for Oct. 14-16 in Bronxville, N.Y., where the Concordia University System’s voting members are scheduled to elect three people to serve on the BUE.
The BUE elected Dr. Elmer Gooding, a retired economics professor from Tempe, Ariz., as its chairman pro tem.
Each of the two boards is to have nine voting members, including a representative of the Synod president. Among non-voting advisory members of each board are its executive director, a district president chosen by the Council of Presidents, the Synod’s vice president-finance/treasurer and a president of one of the seminaries or CUS schools.
Posted Oct. 4, 2004
