January 18th, 2012 by in Education, Leadership

Seminary Education is Not Enough

There’s been a buzz the last few months about the future of theological education. From a symposium of blog posts hosted by Patheos to public conversations hosted by Northern Seminary and 3DM to Fuller’s own Seminary of the Future project, a variety of voices and organizations have expressed challenging and constructive positions, opinions, agendas, frameworks for the next steps of theological education. As a recent seminary graduate, a seminary employee, and a local church pastor, it’s been a fascinating conversation to follow and has stirred up a number of thoughts about my own experience with seminary education and my own hopes for how pastors can be better trained and equipped for ministry in the church.

While there are divergent ideas and suggestions, the general theme of this conversation is that (a) seminaries have not done enough to provide the practical training necessary for effective ministry leadership and (b) seminaries should change to meet the shifting needs of the 21st century church.

I certainly believe that good seminaries must be innovative and flexible, with a grasp on the pulse of the church, but I struggle with the idea that the problem lies with seminaries, and suggest that both the problem and solution actually exists within the local church congregation.

The real questions center not on the actual teaching of theology, but on the teaching and training of practical skills needed to effectively lead and minister in today’s world. This is a task that churches have outsourced to seminaries, sending those “called to ministry” off to seminary with the expectation that in three years, a seasoned and skilled pastor will emerge. But it’s impractical to expect seminaries to be solely (or even mostly) responsible for the practical training pastors and leaders need to serve effectively in the church.

For those who are adamant that seminaries provide practical training to prepare pastors for ministry, I wonder whose ministry and which practices should they be trained for? A suburban megachurch? A house church? An international expression of church? A multiethnic urban church? A hipster church plant? A liturgically-driven denominational church? An aging rural congregation?

There are, of course, some general principles that are practical and true across the spectrum of churches, but general principles shouldn’t require an expensive three-year graduate degree to learn. It doesn’t make sense for the practical, on-the-ground training needed in a specific kind of church to take place anywhere but that specific kind of church. Watering down the teaching of those specific skills so they can be applicable to a broad array of churches can’t be the best answer unless our goal is watered-down pastors.

Churches taking responsibility for training and raising up leaders with the practical skills needed to minister effectively doesn’t let seminaries off the hook. I choose to go to seminary because I wanted to learn theology in a classroom with a professor – a kind of learning that couldn’t happen in the church I was serving at, but a kind of learning I decided, with counsel from my church, would be beneficial to my pastoral calling.

Even if it isn’t always immensely and directly practical, studying the history of the church, the development of theology, and the conjugation of ancient languages can be grounding, humbling, and patience-building exercises in discipleship that lead to healthier pastors and healthier churches. Seminaries who care about training pastors need to do everything they can to offer the best theological education geared towards the formation of pastors and for the benefit of the church.

Rethinking theological education is terribly important and it’s critical that churches – not just seminaries – be willing to take their share of responsibility for the formation of the next generation of leaders and pastors. It’s my hope that through this conversation churches step up to the plate, recognizing that the formation of pastors is too great a task, and one too integral to the mission of the church, to ignore or outsource to other organizations and institutions.

Subsequent posts will detail how I think the church can fill in the gaps of a traditional theological education. In the mean time, how would you like churches to train pastors?
 

  • 01-18-12
  • Education, Leadership
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  • Matthew Pittman

    My wife is in PA school while I’m at Fuller, and the contrast is interesting. She just spent 1/2 her schooling (1.5 years) in the classroom, and will now spend the year in various medical rotations. This includes ER, Family Practice, Pediatrician, Women’s Health, Neurologist, various surgical facilities, etc. 

    The students spend 5 weeks at each location to give them an overall grasp of the medical profession and help them figure out exactly what it is they WANT to do. I know Fuller is full of diverse people with diverse goals, but something like this format, with plenty of time in the field, seems like it would benefit future pastors.

  • http://kludt.wordpress.com/ /dave

    Matthew, yup, it’s interesting to compare other vocational training degrees with the standard seminary approach. I was lucky enough to have a church context that encouraged and stretched me to apply and ‘live out’ my studies at Fuller as a kind of back and forth between theory and praxis. It changes the experience, the questions you ask, the papers you write, etc.

    I would guess that people taking the exact same series of classes I did, but who were not actively connected/leading in a church, would report a pretty different experience. 

  • http://lifeasmission.com/ JR Rozko

    Dave, cool to see you taking this up here.  Sorry there wasn’t more on an opportunity to chat face-to-face while I was in town – would have loved the opportunity.

    I really like what you have to contribute in this post.  If I am reading you right, I am probably almost totally with you.  You do however seem to draw a distinction b/t churches and seminaries that I think might be less than helpful.  As I would understand them, seminaries are fundamentally ecclesial entities.  That is, better to see churches and seminaries as part of the same ecclesial package than church as one animal and seminaries a completely other animal.  As this reality has broken down, huge problems have emerged.  We might even be able to say that to a fair degree, the tail has begun to wag the dog as seminaries look to churches not as those they serve, but as those who serve them by funneling students in the door to keep them afloat. 

    In my estimation, and to be overly-simplistic about it, some of the fatal flaws of our current paradigms of theological education are 1) wholesale commitment to teaching individuals rather than teams/communities, 2) abstracting theological education from the practice of ministry, and 3) assessment that in the final estimation has nothing to do with ones character or competency.

    So, just checking my interpretation of your post her — if I take for granted that you, at least to some degree, finds these to be real problems as well, are you saying that seminaries ought not concern themselves with them and leave them to churches to address?  If so, then I guess the most natural question is, do we really need seminaries?  Why wouldn’t we just seek to overcome these issues (and a host of others) by moving exclusively to paradigms of Church-based theological education?  Don’t get me wrong, it probably wouldn’t take much for me to hop in that boat, but I’m not sure I am quite there yet, which is why I feel like we need to fight these battles on both fronts for the time being.  Specifically, by helping churches and seminaries alike rediscover their vital connection to one another so that they function more symbiotically.

  • Pingback: Seminary Education is Not Enough, Part Two « can't catch my breath

  • /dave

    Hey man, I posted a “Part 2″ today but have a few additional thoughts.

    First, thanks for the engagement and push back. I think we’re more or less in agreement – at least with the big picture – and then the fun part is figuring out details!

    I agree with you on the problems that have arisen between seminaries and churches, but am not sold on the root of that problem being that disconnect between “two kinds of institutions.” I think having seminaries separate from the church provides a place for dialogue that’s theologically and culturally diverse – more than could be possible in a church setting (or even a church network/denominational setting). Especially going forward, I think diverse spaces like this will be increasingly important to train pastors for an increasingly diverse world. 

    I would agree, pretty whole-heartedly, with the three issues you raise, and I don’t want the blame or solution can be placed entirely on the church. Seminaries should be changing as well, and the best seminaries will be changing in relationship and partnership with actual churches and ministries playing a huge role in that process. 

    I think where you and I might differ is in the amount of value we’d place on classical/traditional theological education. I think, from the thoughts you’ve posted on this topic, you’d prefer to see seminaries and churches together move towards missiological education. I’d push back on that a bit (not the importance of the contextual/missiological piece – totally with you there, though I think could happen best in a church setting) because, like I said in this post above, I think there’s a patience/discipleship piece in ‘trudging through’ church history, systematic theology, biblical studies, etc. that creates better and more balanced pastors.

    Let me know what you think!

  • http://lifeasmission.com/ JR Rozko

    Dave, left a more thorough response on the other post that might provide some clarification on where I’m coming from.  Yes, we’d probably need to dialogue further about what exactly counts as “classical/traditional theological education.”  I have no desire whatsoever to move away from deep theological reflection.  I have however come to believe that immersive study in the fields of church history, systematic theology, biblical studies, etc., when divorced from a life rooted in ecclesial community and the practice of mission and ministry almost always does more harm than good.  In other words, to use a medical metaphor, I’d be far more inclined to trust a doctor who spent one year learning medicine or surgery by studying about it while they practiced it under expert mentorship than I would a doctor who spent three years just reading and writing about it.  That make sense? 

    I’d also want to call us to reflect a bit more on the origins of what we have come to understand as the classic categories of theological study and consider whether or not those categories most befit adaptations to our theological and ecclesial visions since they came about, but that’s a whole other issue.  

  • http://kludt.wordpress.com/ /dave

    again, good thoughts man, and I really appreciate your engagement and thinking on this. It’d be fascinating to see the trajectory in theological education – how the “classic categories” came to be, and how the church played a role in that. If you (or anyone else!) know of any resources looking at that angle, let me know!

  • http://lifeasmission.com/ JR Rozko

    Theologia by Ed Farley is a key text on this.

 
 

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