Tag Archive - seminary

Missional Institutions?

January 13, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 6 Comments

An idea has been rumbling around, if ill-formed, in my mind for the past couple of months.

There we were, seminary professors, church pastors, and Christian leader types, having some pretty awesome and fun and challenging conversation about the missional calling of the church. And something about the setting, the gathering of folks I was truly honored to be on stage with, made me wonder if we were the group of people whom folks should be listening to about the church in mission.

Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.

Yesterday’s stop on the blog tour raised questions about how definitive cruciformity is of our Christian calling. The fact of the matter is (moving on from yesterday’s conversations) that my attempts at fidelity to Jesus very rarely, if ever, look like the cross. Many folks have influential positions and large followings–they have power. Well… I guess I might say, we have power, to a certain extent.

And as I reflected on this yesterday, I wrestled with the impossible possibility of cruciformity being institutionalized. Self-giving, self-sacrifice, death–these are not the principles of faithful administration of a large organization.

Let’s see if we can put these things together.

During the Newbigin conversation, N. T. Wright brought up the need for the church to speak truth to power, to which Pamela Wilhelms replied, “We can’t do that because we are power–or at least, dependent on it.” Our churches, our denominations, our seminaries are funded by the very power dollars that everyone complains about getting the free ride during the financial crisis; the 1% underwrite the very possibility of our having such a meeting, of churches sustained to the extent that we can have large buildings, multiple persons on staff, heavy educational requirements, and the like.

So here’s where I was sitting somewhat uncomfortably, and would love some discussion with you: to what extent can those of us who work within, depend upon, and serve through large Christian organizations speak meaningfully about “the mission of God”?

Are we free enough from the needs of self-preservation to tell the church that the mission of God is a holistic, cosmic mission of reconciliation that the church is too small to contain?

Are we free enough from the power of wealth to speak the prophetic word that, at times, needs to be spoken when an economic system becomes a source of injustice? or a hindrance to justice more generally?

Does the fact that are already filled, already rich, already kings (to paraphrase Paul’s mockery of the non-cruciform Corinthians in 1 Cor 4) render our voice mute when it comes to awakening people to the call of the mission of God?

Spiritual Floundering in Seminary

December 16, 2011 in Academia, Church, Spirituality & Prayer with 35 Comments

The Duke Chronicle ran an article this past week on the struggles of Divinity School students. I confess, When I saw the title, “Students Flounder at Divinity School,” I was expecting something about the academic challenges being faced afresh by so many students who had pastoral ministry, rather than academics, as their vocation.

But I was wrong. (See? You didn’t think I could ever admit to such a thing–but there it is!)

The article was about the students’ perception that they were withering up spiritually. Their souls are being sucked dry by the intense academic environment that does not provide nourishment for the whole person.

I have a couple of responses to this, and would love to hear your take as well.

First, I have a great deal of sympathy for the students. I have known, far too often, the disappointment from experiencing a void in pastoral leadership in my own life. I can very much relate to the sense that I need more direction and pastoral care than I am receiving.

The students are right to be aware of this dynamic and it is good that they recognize the needs they have that aren’t being met. These feelings of not having spiritual needs met can create a great deal of frustration in a seminary environment where, if anything, there seems to be a plethora of wise, godly persons with pastoral inklings all around–none of whom are serving as your pastor.

My second, thought, however, is this: if you are going to be a pastor, you are embarking on a lifetime in which nobody is going to pastor you.

For the rest of your life, it will be your responsibility to find wise mentors to pastor and challenge you; for the rest of your life, and spiritual accountability and encouragement you receive from a peer group will come only from any group of your own making.

Is it good for div school students and pastors to be alone? No. And that is why, as a preparation for a lifetime of ministry, I encourage all such students and pastors to go out of your way to create the relationships you need for long term spiritual health.

It may very well be that the school should be doing a bit more for you than it currently is. But if this is the case, the best course of action you can take is probably not a campaign to change the system of the school, but one to change the relational systems in your own life so that they start helping prop you up for a lifetime of ministry that will otherwise likely unfold without anyone being in charge of pastoring you.

Church and Seminary

August 4, 2011 in Academia, Church with 17 Comments

Over at the Call and Response Blog, Carol Howard Merritt has a post reflecting on seminary-church relations. Specifically, what does someone in the church see form outside, looking into seminary-land, that gives pause when it comes to donating money?

She raises three points:

  1. Seminary organizational structures appear bloated to church professionals who often make due with very little in the way of staffing resources.
  2. Pastors are concerned with seminary student loan debt–are seminaries?
  3. Seminary profs should be encouraged to publish more for broad audiences

What do you think of these assessments of the seminary from “outside”?

Here are my thoughts:

(1) The first one is tricky. Quite often, schools that act like small schools that cannot afford top-notch staffing end up acting like second-rate schools as part of their culture. They end up not being able to recruit top-tier faculty or students. And, due to their inability to offer the same services (directly tied to administrative overhead) or caliber of scholarship (indirectly tied through a culture of being second rate), they can neither recruit students well nor convince people to give them the money that might enable them to act like a top-tier school.

Putting it somewhat differently, sometimes the very things that make an institution look like it’s too bloated for a donator on a tight budget are the very things that make an institution attractive to folks with large budgets and large organizations.

(2) Absolutely. I think that the reality of student loan debt is one that we as seminary faculty and administrators have to start taking much more seriously. There is, perhaps, a catch-22 here as well. A couple of the things that need to happen in order for cost burden to go down have to do with what’s worth giving money to. It seems it’s easier to raise money for buildings than student scholarships. And it seems that people are often drawn to schools with greater facilities that create significant infrastructure costs.

But I agree, and think that in raising money there should be a couple of focuses that might translate into gradual, long-term tuition reductions. First, commit to reducing overhead through faculty endowment. Endow a chair to pay for the faculty who is already present. (Is that possible? Do people give money if it doesn’t come with the promise of recruiting some new hot-shot?) Second, commit to reducing student burden through scholarship endowment.

Of course, this ties the costs of education more directly into the markets. And, as many schools can tell you in the wake of 2008, this is no sure way to alleviate student debt load. However, judging by the difference in what (for example) Princeton Seminary students were bearing in debt load and what my fellow classmates were bearing when I graduated from Westminster (Machen, couldn’t you have brought a few million over with you when you left, for crying out loud?!), this is an important facet of reducing debt that people will not earn enough to pay off in the fields for which we are preparing them.

(3) For some reason it does feel like we have to figure out what one audience we are going to write for. It’s tough to move back and forth between technical scholarly articles and broadly accessible books. I think CHM is right that we need to create seminary cultures in which producing for both worlds is the norm rather than the exception.

I see all three as great challenges for the seminary to do some serious soul-searching in terms of our calling to work for the church.

What do you think of her questions?

Tools in Hand, No Skill Required!

June 7, 2011 in Academia, Humor with 12 Comments

I want to tell you a little bit about how awesome I am. I’m usually not this direct, though many of you have suspected that this is how I see myself. Here are a few more things about my awesomeness you should know:

I have a circular saw. This means, of course, that I can build anything I want to. I can sit down and lay out plans for a tree house, buy the wood, fit the joints, and make the whole thing level, safe, and sturdy.

I have a baseball bat. This means, of course, that at any given moment I could jump onto the local softball team and become their ringer. Every time I step up to the plate I can get on base, and I usually get a hit. I have a bat, after all.

I also have an encyclopedia at my fingertips. This means, of course, that I know a little bit about almost everything in the world. I know about all the presidents, all the countries, and all the bacteria that cause diseases.

I also have a smart phone. This means, of course, that anytime I wanted to I could create a spaceship to put people on the moon. My EVO4G is more powerful than any mainframe they had way back in the ’60s. I’m amazing. I have power untold at my fingertips.

I also have access to Accordance and Bibleworks. This means, of course, that I know everything I need to know about the Greek language. I can translate and parse and investigate what words really mean. I can preach from the Greek and Hebrew. And I can probably write a grammar.

I’m so awesome because I have awesome tools. And once you have tools, what further need do you have for knowledge or skills?

One Word…

April 3, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Spirituality & Prayer with 21 Comments

Theological education is difficult.

Well, let me rephrase.

Good theological education raises challenges–especially if you’re paying attention in your Bible courses.

Studying scripture opens up new worlds, which is simultaneously exhilarating and maddening. All of the sudden we see things new–and all of a sudden the old visions fade or even crumble.

So where’s the problem?

In part, of course, it’s in our own life and understanding. The “gospel” as I would recite it has nothing to do with the gospel that Jesus proclaims–where does that leave me? The “Christ” I know from my theology is not the Jesus I meet on the pages of Mark–where does that leave me?

In these cases, as challenging as they are, I see mostly opportunity, opportunity for an exciting newness of life that comes from meeting the Word of God afresh.

But there’s another difficulty as well. We are not isolated persons but Christians in community. We are usually persons in community listening to the teaching and preaching of people who have not taken these journeys of awakening with us.

In short, we have to listen to sermons and talks that read out of scripture notions that we now know aren’t “there” to be drawn out at all. Eisegesis reigns supreme!

So what do we do with that?

My advice to seminarians (and self-educated theologians) is this: cultivate the spiritual discipline of applying and growing from lessons that you would never teach yourself, from “exegesis” that you would never get yourself, from true ideas that are nowhere to be found in the texts from which they allegedly come.

You are part of a community and placed there to thrive and grow. Killing the pastor and cutting yourself off from the community’s teaching are each, in their own way, a denial of the story you are called to narrate in your life. We are the one body of Christ, made manifest in lots of little bodies all over the world, to learn from each other and grow together.

If you do not cultivate the discipline of being challenged to grow from teachings you disagree with to some extent, you will cease to grow, and eventually wither and die.

Reimagining Education

January 25, 2011 in Academia, Culture with 18 Comments

Last night at a parents’ open house, I was exposed to the work of Ken Robinson for the first time.

Robinson is attempting to lead the charge to entirely reconceptualize what we’re doing in education. The current model has as its impetus the preparing of people to serve an industrialized world, and it has as its goal the production of university professors.

But how do we prepare people to join in a different world, a different economy, and to capitalize on other sorts of gifts that are not professorial in nature?

Here is a nice, animated intro to the sorts of things he’s pushing us to consider:

He also gave a 2006 talk at TED that has become rather legendary:


These talks resonated with me for a couple of reasons.

One chord they struck is associated with the persistent nagging feeling I have that seminary is a really weird way to prepare people for pastoral ministry. This has long seemed to me predicated on an idea of “preparedness for ministry” that is strangely university-like in its understanding of education, and perhaps too much a child of the enlightenment in its anticipation that the educated mind will produce an enlightened actor.

The other reason I listened with interest is that Fuller is in the middle of an MDiv curriculum review. Here we are wrestling, in the narrower context of theological education, not only with the particular questions of what sorts of classes we want to teach, but also with the larger concerns of how to fit our product into the 21-century world.

What does it mean to be a school that does not exist for the perpetuation of school, but some other purpose outside itself–in our case, women and men equipped for the manifold (and boy do we ever mean “manifold” these days!) ministries of Christ and his church?

What do you think? [How] Does Seminary education need to change to take better account of not only the changing world but also who we are as people?

Ideas & Neighbors

June 28, 2010 in Academia with 5 Comments

I had coffee with a student this afternoon. It helped crystallize for me one way in which seminary education can be dangerous. Note well: dangerous does not equal bad. But like many good and helpful things, it can be dangerous as well.

The danger is simply this: seminary can teach us that people are ideas to be argued with rather than neighbors to be loved.

Best Pre-PhD Degree for Seminarians?

May 10, 2010 in Academia with 63 Comments

I thought a little light fare for a Monday morning might be in order. The question is this: for students in a theological seminary who want to go on to a Ph.D. program in a biblical or theological field, what is the best degree for them to pursue?

The two main options I’m thinking about are the MA or the M.Div.

At several schools I’ve been associated with, the MA has been promoted as the best pre-Ph.D. degree. But I tend to advocate the M.Div. Here are a couple reasons why:

  1. Most seminaries have developed their faculty and curriculum around the M.Div., from which the M.A. is trimmed. In general, this means that M.Div. students are maximizing their seminary’s educational offerings in a way that M.A. students aren’t.
  2. As long as there are a few electives and a robust curriculum in place, M.Div. students tend to get better exposure to multiple disciplines within the theological fields, better preparing them for all of the factors that go into understanding the history of and influences on biblical and theological studies.
  3. Most students who come out of a seminary context are going to be looking for ecclesiastically oriented jobs when they’re done with their Ph.D.s; that is, they will be teaching in seminary or christian college contexts if they land a job. Some seminaries prefer and/or require an M.Div. for all their teaching faculty; and, going back to the M.Div. as the core of most seminary curricula, a faculty member with an M.Div. comes in with a better grasp of what a seminary is all about beyond his or her specific field of study.
  4. Related to point 3, many seminaries will want professors who have some handle on how their academic field of study is ministerially and/or spiritually formative. The M.Div. gives students some tools for thinking through  various areas of “on the ground” practice (individual, church, missional) that an M.A. might leave aside.
  5. Also related to point 3, many folks who end up in theologically oriented or religiously committed educational institutions will want or need to be ordained. Some denominations will require an M.Div. for this.
  6. Many people who get Ph.D.s end up not securing academic employment. The M.Div. leaves more options open for securing a “teaching pastor” type job, especially if a student is part of a denomination with seminary requirements for ordination.

What are your thoughts? What’s the best way for a seminary student to prepare for a Ph.D. and why?

(Note that this is assuming a seminary context with some general seminary “tracks” toward theological education. I think that “religious studies” with a track toward a university post is a different animal altogether.)