The Trouble with Seminaries
Let’s get
one thing straight—I am pro-seminary, I’m always encouraging students and
pastors to go to seminary. I think it should be required for full life-long ordination
in the modern world. We no longer get doctors and lawyers from college, and we
should quit be satisfied with college kids as pastors. However, that
does not mean I think seminaries are doing ministerial education right. I think
there’s a lot wrong with seminary education that ought to be addressed in the
coming years. Here is some of what I
think is “the trouble with seminaries:”
1. Focus
on the disciplines instead of pastoring.
In most
seminaries the disciplines reign supreme—Bible, Theology, Church History or
Practical Theology—instead of pastoring being at the center. A Bible scholar,
for instance, eventually forgets what pastors need from the Bible and
places their discipline central. Students are challenged to study to
know rather than study to use. Eventually knowing is its own
objective. The fact that knowing some things has little use in the actual work
of ministry is not even addressed. When this happens, the professors are most
proud of those graduates who go on for their PhDs and become effective
professors. The grads who became effective pastors are overlooked or considered
second-tier students. Seminaries eventually forget they are supposed to be
educating pastors not making professors. The ideal seminary in my opinion would
make pastoring central to everything it did. When an occasional student
slipped through, got get their PhD and came to replace existing seminary
professors it would not be front page news, but buried on page 6. In the ideal
seminary, the cover stories would all be reserved for graduates who were
effective pastors.
2.
Fragmented study of the disciplines.
Seminaries
divide study into the disciplines and assume the students will integrate stuff
from the different disciplines. This lets professors off the integration hook. While the four major disciplines of study are
important to pastoring, why have so few seminaries figured out how to integrate
them at the teaching level? One seminary prof says,
“I teach Greek—it is your job to figure out why it’s relevant.” Really? Look
it from the student’s perspective. He or she studies Greek in one course, pre-second
temple Judaism in another, theology of Augustine in a third and pastoral
counseling in the fourth. None of these professors attempts to integrate their
content with the other courses (or the actual work of pastoring). Seminary
professors simply assume the students will integrate all these separate
courses into a comprehensive approach to pastoral work. The seminary professors
don’t (or can’t?) do it—yet they expect students to do it? Assuming students do the integration lets the
professors off the hook and they continually bury themselves deeper and deeper
in their isolated discipline, “knowing more and more about less and less until
they know almost everything about almost nothing.” Something’s wrong here. In the ideal world, I
think every seminary course would focus on the actual work of ministry
(preaching, discipleship, leading, outreach, worship etc.) then integrate into that
course all the necessary foundational elements from Bible, Theology, Church
History or whatever else is foundational to accomplishing the actual work of a
minister. Such a curriculum would have
to be integrated by its very design and taught by an “integrated professor.” If
knowledge tidbits from a foundational discipline can’t be shown to be related
to the work of a minister, it should be left to specialized courses or for a
few introductory survey courses. Most of
the learning in an ideal seminary should not be learning for learning’s sake
but learning for the ministry’s sake.
3.
Marginally relevant courses.
Most
seminaries have a core curriculum designed before automobiles were invented,
let alone before the advent of the Internet. While some practical courses have
been updated, the foundational courses are almost identical to our grandfather’s. The argument goes, “an educated pastor needs
to know these things.” Since the seminary cartel is controlled by people
committed to their discipline, and this cartel virtually controls the standing
of all other seminaries, innovation comes slowly. Most pastors today in real
churches admit they go weeks (years?) without writing an exegesis paper
or parsing Greek verbs in their actual work. They are glad they know these
things, like a math student who knows how to use a slide rule, but they
complain that much was left out of their seminary curriculum. That’s the problem. It is not that every
course a professor can think up can’t be shown to be worthwhile; it is just
that the “opportunity cost” of including this course means other more relevant
courses are left out. In an ideal
seminary, a person who was actually pastoring while attending seminary would
see the direct integrated relevance of every course to their pastoral work. Few
courses would focus on esoteric subjects that were marginally relevant to
actual work in the ministry.
4.
Isolation from the local church.
While most
seminaries require some sort of practicum or internship experiences these are
often the weakest links in the learning chain. In fact, for years “going to
seminary” meant “leaving the local church.” In an ideal world, I think a
seminary student wouldn’t leave the seminary each week to do practical work in
a church; they’d leave the church each week to give time to seminary.
Seminaries are good at educating ministers, but only local churches can train
them. When a student works 20 hours a week or so in an actual local church
they have a place to try out their learning. It gives them a “malarkey meter”
to use in measuring which assignments are marginally relevant and which are
actually relevant to the actual work of a minister. In an ideal seminary, I
think the assignments would often involve the whole church, not just academic “pretend
work” done in the student’s mind. A seminary should require the student to
gather five real people from their own real church and negotiate among them a
new approach to worship (rather than invent their own dream plan for a church
that doesn’t exist). In such a seminary the student would “take their church to
seminary” with them. The whole church would experience many of the assignments,
and the entire church would be better for it. Seminary students often say in their
first church after school, “I learned more in the first month than all three
years in seminary.” What they mean is they got more training in their
first month. Seminaries are good at education, only local churches can
do training. In an ideal seminary the students would be required to work
maybe 20 hours a week in a real local church while they were studying—that way
they’d get both their education and their training all at once.
5. Only
one way to attend.
To go to
seminary in the past you had to pack up and move to campus for three years,
usually exchanging your active job in a church for a less serious “practicum”
assignment. That’s how I went to seminary—I packed up, left my church, and
moved into monastery life for a while. I still prefer the idea of studying in community
and still heavily favor a resident seminary over other models for people
in their 20s. But I also am a realist and know that won’t work for most pastors
already out there over 30. My denomination (The Wesleyan Church) doesn’t
require seminary—we ordain people after only four years of college (or even
less!). If you go to seminary in my denomination, you are going “above and
beyond the minimum” requirements. This is why less than 20% of our ministers
are seminary-trained. I was satisfied with a college-student trained ministry
when most of the members were only high school graduates. Now, many of my
denomination’s churches are packed with college graduates and even plenty of
members who attended grad school. Such members expect their surgeon to be more
than a chiropractor and they expect their pastor to be more than a college
grad. If my denomination is going to increase the number of seminary-educated
ministers there will have to be more than one way to attend seminary—live in,
online, drive-in, one-week modules, plus all kinds of blended delivery
programs. Luckily, seminaries are already moving this way… slowly. However, the
dirty little secret is that these seminaries usually don’t give their best
professors to these innovative programs but toss them off to adjuncts. I think
the ideal seminary would be designed so everyone could attend and get exposed
to all the best profs—a 22 year old freshly graduated unmarried college student
with no church experience should be able to move on campus, a 26 year old
married couple who have been working in the church for five years and now wants
to go to seminary while still working in a church should be able to attend. And
a 51 year old pastor who realizes his Bible school degree from 35 years ago
needs updated who lives 1700 miles away should be able to attend. And a pastor
in Sudan who finished college and wants advanced training should be able to
attend. In an ideal seminary all of these could find a delivery option
suitable for them to get their seminary education. Is that too much to ask? The
biggest market for seminary in the future won’t be for 20something college
graduates but middle aged pastors who realize their training form 30 years ago
needs freshened.
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Will it
happen? Maybe. It
would be best if the traditional seminaries could reinvent themselves to meet
the changing needs of seminary education. I’ve have been hoping that for two
decades. Some have started. But change comes slowly in education (and slower
yet in seminaries). How can you change a faculty member’s approach who has been
teaching the same foundational content for 30 years? How can you negotiate through the “turf
battles” at seminaries which so jealously guard against any attempt to change
requirements as they scrap with each other with Alamo tenacity? This is why seminaries often give up
reforming the core and just fiddle with new delivery systems (online, modules) using
the same old curriculum. Addressing the core problems of the seminary
curriculum is a complicated business.
Some progress is occurring, but it is coming as slowly as drums and
guitars to retirement center worship.
I suspect
the sort of changes above will more likely come through newly founded
seminaries in the coming decade that will start from blank paper designing a
new seminary—a “nexsem” approach (see Leonard Sweet in current issue
of REV. Magazine).
These nextsem designers can’t be just “professors
protecting turf” but will have to be people who really care about the local
church and the ongoing work of a minister—people who want to marshal seminary
education to make stronger pastors and local churches, not just build their own
scholarly kingdoms. Will they be scholars? You bet! In fact, this sort of seminary will require a
new kind of scholar, one able to integrate their own discipline with
the others and most of all, to integrate learning with the practical work of a
minister, showing why it is relevant to pastoring, not just forcing learning
with a grading club. They will have to love pastoring so much that their
greatest joy is producing pastors not reproducing professors. I suspect some of
these nexsem institutions will rise in the coming
decade. Maybe a few traditional seminaries will reinvent themselves like this
too, but I bet these changes will only be seen fully when a handful of brand
new seminaries get founded in the coming decade. If local church boards,
District Superintendents, senior pastors and current and recent seminary
students really prefer what they say they want, then students will flock to
these new kinds of seminaries and they will flourish. That will rattle the
entire seminary world, and probably will trigger all kinds of catch-up changes
in the more traditional approaches. IN 20 years all surviving seminaries will
be different—and better. It will be exciting to watch!
So, what do you think?
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