For more than a century, luther seminary has occupied its campus in St. Paul, Minnesota. Generations studied, worshiped, formed friendships, and prepared for ministry there.
So when the seminary’s board voted unanimously in 2025 to leave the campus, the decision carried more than financial consequences. It meant letting go of a place filled with institutional memory.
For the Rev. Robin Steinke, Ph.D., president of Luther Seminary since 2014, the fundamental question was not whether the campus mattered. It was whether keeping it best served the seminary’s mission. In an episode of the Good Governance podcast, Steinke outlined the reasons for moving. In Trust has broken it into four lessons.
Keep the mission fixed – not the methods
The seminary’s mission has remained largely unchanged for decades: educating leaders for Christian communities who are called and sent. But almost everything surrounding that mission has changed.
Students increasingly remain employed and rooted in their communities while studying. Hybrid education has expanded. Congregations have changed. Theological education has changed. Buildings constructed for an earlier model no longer necessarily serve the way education happens today. That required leaders to distinguish between the mission and the structures built to accomplish it.
Listen until the real problem is clear
Steinke repeatedly returns to one word: listen. Luther surveyed constituents, studied changes in congregations and theological education, conducted a climate survey and publicly released uncomfortable results.
That listening sometimes challenged easy explanations. Declining enrollment, for example, might appear to be an admissions problem solved by hiring more recruiters. Deeper research suggested that the challenges facing theological education were connected to much larger changes in congregations, Christian formation and vocational patterns. Leaders cannot make a missional decision until they understand the problem they are actually trying to solve.
Let data challenge assumptions
Listening led Luther to data, and data led to experimentation. The seminary tested new educational models, including an accelerated M.Div. program, and discovered that theological education could be delivered differently. After COVID, hybrid and intensive courses further demonstrated that students did not always need to relocate to campus to receive a theological education.
Then came the campus itself. An outside assessment estimated nearly $40 million in deferred maintenance. The seminary could afford to make those investments, Steinke said, but the board asked whether spending that on buildings built for a different era was the best use of resources.
Build governance able to make hard
The unanimous campus vote did not come from a board that was always of one mind.
Years earlier, Luther had deliberately rebuilt its shared governance practices, clarifying the responsibilities of faculty, president, and board. For the campus decision, leaders established the process beforehand: Faculty and staff would be consulted, communication would be transparent, and the board would retain the final decision.
That groundwork created room for disagreement without derailing the process. At the meeting where trustees voted, the grandson of one of Luther’s founders – whose family name is on a campus building – stood with tears running down his face and explained why he would vote to sell the campus.
