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 then 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 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 its
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—but 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. If knowledge tidbits from a foundational discipline can’t
be shown to be related to the work of a minister, it should be left for
another course 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 slow. Most pastors today in real churches admit
they go weeks 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
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 link 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,
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 to require the student to gather
five real people from their own real church and negotiate among them a new
approach to real 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 with 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. 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,
and all kinds of blended delivery programs. Luckily, seminaries are already
moving this way… slowly. However, the dirty little secret is 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 both go to seminary who wants to wok
part time in a church near the seminary while attend full time 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
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 kind 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 survving
seminaries will be different—and better. It will be exciting to watch!
So, what do you think?
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