At Masters Institute two options are offered. A degreed, three-year Christian Leadership Program and a new program called Crescendo.

By Julie Saffrin

Rev. Paul W. Anderson believes God gives us dreams but sometimes it takes awhile for them to become reality. As president of The Master's Institute, a seminary and ministry training school in Roseville, he's now made it his mission to act, as he puts it, as a “dream releaser” for students desiring to work in some form of leadership role within the Church.

As a Luther Seminary intern at Trinity Lutheran Church in San Pedro, California, Anderson served under the pastoral leadership of author, speaker and pastor, Larry Christianson. Upon graduation in 1970, Anderson returned to Trinity as assistant pastor.

In 1980 when Christianson became director of Lutheran Renewal in Minnesota, a group formed by evangelical Lutherans seeking to bring spiritual life and renewal within the denomination, Anderson stayed in the Golden State, pastoring twenty-five years at Trinity.

It is there Anderson tried to begin his own dream of starting a leadership training school but the time wasn't right. “This is often the case,” Anderson said, whose tall, easy-going manner and crackly voice bears a striking resemblance to the actor Jimmy Stewart. “A dream has to go underground and die. It's what happened to Joseph. He had a dream at 17. That dream was fulfilled at age 30. Dave was anointed king at age 17 but became king at age 30. The dream is ready. But we're not. It is while underground that God works on us, our character, our motives,” Anderson says.

Upon Christianson's retirement from Lutheran Renewal in 1995, Anderson was asked to become its director. He accepted and along with his wife Karen and six children, moved to Minnesota. “God had a lot of surprises for me when I arrived here,” Anderson says.

Moving from congregation to congregation leading mission weekend retreats and seminars as well as preaching on Sundays to promote spiritual renewal, Anderson yearned for a connectedness with the various churches and in 2000 went to the board of directors. “I think we should formalize our relationship with these churches and form some kind of network or association,” he said to them.

At the same meeting, Anderson also voiced his dream. “I shared that I'd had it in my heart for many years to start a graduate and leadership training school and would like to work toward that.” The board approved both ideas.

A team of pastors and business people was formed, and soon others shared in the vision of a new Lutheran seminary, one Anderson says, “that focuses more on equipping than educating, on forming more than informing.”

A year later, in 2001, Anderson's dream was fulfilled and The Master's Institute (MI) was started with nine seminary students in the Garden Room of North Heights Lutheran Church. The first class graduates in May 2004. “We want people who want to change their world. We're not looking for people who are trying to find themselves but people who have found themselves and are on a mission. We want to help them fulfill that vision, that dream.”

At MI two options are offered. A degreed, three-year Christian Leadership Program and a new program called Crescendo, a one-year Ministry Training School geared for people 55 years old or older who are retired and want, “to move from success to significance,” Anderson says. “Some of them have come to us with a dream of starting a church in a rural community in South Dakota. Others just want to help the body of Christ.” There are ten people in Crescendo who will receive their certificate in May. Both the seminary and leadership program are Lutheran in doctrine, evangelical in purpose.

Three types of learning are taught at MI: Biblical Teaching, Character Formation and Leadership Training. “We call it the three-legged stool,” Anderson says. Two all-day seminars are conducted each week, taught by professors and pastors. (Both seminary and seminar comes from the Latin word, seminarium , meaning ‘seed'.) “What we're doing at MI is planting seeds for cultivation in our students,” Anderson says. A required fifteen-hour weekly paid internship with area churches runs concurrent with seminary instruction.

At many mainline seminaries leadership training is given during a year of internship. At MI, the seminary is church-based—intentionally. Its leadership believes being in a church setting is not only cost-effective, it is the best way to raise leaders going into full-time Christian ministry.

Another component at MI is a one-on-one mentoring system. Anderson believes it is what is needed more than academics. “When Christian leaders default, it's not because they didn't get enough theology class. It's because of character issues or leadership issues.” Each seminarian is assigned a mentor who assists the student with personal growth issues.

The seminary had its first graduate in May 2003, Mary Bope, who, came to MI with two years of seminary instruction, and graduated before her class. Shortly after graduation Bope took an assistant pastor position with an ELCA church in Prescott, Arizona. “Mary's a trial lawyer and gifted on her feet. She's fun, she's creative, all gifts God had already given her,” Anderson says. “At MI, we encouraged the life of the Holy Spirit in her and she is going to be a wonderful asset to that church.”

The second result of Lutheran Renewal's board meeting in 2000, was the formation of the Alliance of Renewal Churches (ARC).

Launched in June 2002, the ARC, of which Anderson serves as the director, is a network of independent Lutheran churches relating together, to one another, and to encourage each other for Kingdom purposes, including congregational spiritual transformation and renewal, as well as raising up leaders, sending out missionaries and planting churches.

A perfect cultivating place for seminary grads.

And the field has broadened again with the recent coalition between MI and IMF. “Frank called me and said, ‘Let's work together in this.'” With the seminary and Crescendo programs and IMF's interdenominational association of laypersons and clergy in fields of Christian service from pastors to para-church organizations, the potential for furthering the Great Commission is tremendous.

Anderson concludes, “Jesus looked past peoples fault to their future. Here at MI, we're releasing dreams and when you get in an atmosphere like that, when a church develops an atmosphere of releasing dreams, you can't stop them. People are too excited to be critical because there are too many wonderful things going on.”