March 22, 2000

Theological education options
moving beyond the traditional
___By Pat Cole
___FaithWorks magazine
___Theological education in America, once largely the purview of classical seminaries, is taking on new forms and new life.
___Propelled by the shifting winds of culture and congregational life, a quiet revolution is taking place in ministerial training. At issue--who is learning, what is taught and how and where that education is delivered.
___For the churches that will employ these ministers in coming decades, the changes will affect not only the quality of leadership they receive but what those congregations believe and how they relate to the world.
___Here's what is happening:
___ Students now face a proliferation of options. New schools are opening. Specialized degrees are cropping up, including many for laity.
___ Training is taking place in non-traditional venues, such as mega-churches, making training more accessible.
___ User-friendly techniques, such as online classes and satellite seminars, are creeping into curricula.
___ The profile of the typical seminary student is changing--in part the cause and in part the effect of these new options. Students are older, as more pursue the ministry as a second career, and more laypeople are studying theology.
___ There is a new emphasis on leadership skills to go along with the classical theological disciplines, and at least some openness to the spiritual experience of postmodern Christians.
___ Partnerships between seminaries and churches are springing up, making theological training more practical and accessible.
___Despite these changes--and in some cases because of them --seminaries have continued to grow in recent years, even after the invasion and departure of the baby boomers.
___Nationwide, seminary enrollment grew by nearly 6 percent in the last five years and stood at 68,875 in the fall of 1998, said Nancy Merrill, a spokeswoman for the Association of Theological Schools. About two-thirds of that growth was in existing schools. The rest came from new schools admitted to the association's membership.
___One major factor in the increase is the jump in laypeople seeking theological training. Degree programs for laypeople are being added by all sorts of schools, Merrill said. "Laypeople are taking (the new degrees) for personal development or because of an academic interest in theology."
___This trend produces an unusual turning of the tables: At a time when some ministers are choosing local churches over seminaries for training, some laypeople are going to seminary for the in-depth education not available at most churches.
___Yet critics say seminaries suffer from two shortcomings.
___First, pragmatic church-growth advocates, after witnessing the remarkable growth of mega-churches, say seminaries fail to teach ministers how to lead congregations and interpret culture.
___Second, many Christians say classical seminary training is too beholden to systematic and rationalistic thinking, both products of the Enlightenment. Such dependence, they argue, leaves little room for the awe and mystery that ancient Christians valued and for which postmodern people yearn.
___For both reasons, some aspiring ministers now skip seminary and seek training through churches, professional groups or even secular universities.
___Brad Cecil, pastor of a self-described postmodern congregation in Arlington, dropped out of seminary after one year and has no regrets. Seminaries, he said, ignore the shift in the way people think and process information.
___"There's a return to belief beyond the empirical," Cecil asserted. "It is not premodern belief. But it has become an enlightened mysticism. We understand the world better than we did 500 years ago, but we are still intrigued by the mystery of the whole thing."
___Cecil has turned to short-term training events to find the tools to build a ministry to Gen-Xers. He has found help and like-minded individuals within the young leader's group of Leadership Network, a Dallas-based organization for equipping congregational leaders.
___"Ministry has defaulted not to professionals but to people who are leaders," he said. "A credential or a diploma doesn't qualify you to do ministry ."
___Cecil's congregation, called Axxess, draws about 120 Sunday-evening worshipers and is part of a much larger traditional congregation, Pantego Bible Church.
___Dave Travis, a Leadership Network consultant, concurs with Cecil that the formal educational background of pastors is not a concern for many congregations. "There is a growing number of churches that see a seminary education as irrelevant to whether they call somebody as pastor or a staff member," he said.
___Pastors who seek training outside normal seminary channels do not necessarily disparage traditional theological education.
___Bob Mulkey, pastor of First Baptist Church of DeLand, Fla., is a case in point. Mulkey values the seminary training he received at the master's and doctoral levels. However, his efforts to lead new initiatives in his congregation have been aided greatly by the resources of Willow Creek Community Church, a major teaching church in suburban Chicago.
___The Florida church leaned heavily on Willow Creek materials to begin a contemporary worship service in 1993, Mulkey said. He and others from the congregation have attended conferences there.
___Mulkey still refers to his former seminary professors in glowing terms, and he continues to read serious theological works. Nevertheless, he believes ministerial education is more than cerebral. "I think the weakness of my seminary training was that I didn't get enough practical teaching about how to be a leader."
___A focus on practical teaching attracted 65,000 ministers and laypeople to training events offered in 1999 by Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif., said Andrew Accardy, Saddleback's director of church leader training.
___Saddleback conferences are held on-site and around the world via satellite simulcast. Accardy acknowledged some ministers might attend conferences in lieu of seminary. But he said the church never has considered its events to be in competition with seminaries.
___"We support seminaries, but there is some information you get directly from a church, a church that God appears to be blessing, that tends to create some energy," Accardy said. "It tends to be viewed more as something that can be used."
___Yet ministry cannot be reduced to a set of skills such as preaching, leadership and conflict management, said Wayne Stacy, dean of the Christopher White Divinity School at Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina.
___"While all of those things are important, ministry is fundamentally about calling, and without a solid theological substructure, then all of our skills simply become a bag of tricks," Stacy said.
___Stacy and other theological educators believe both classical studies and practical preparation are needed. But there is no consensus on how that should take place and what is the proper mix.
___Meanwhile, studies have shown pastors feel inadequately trained for today's ministry realities, said Carol Childress, a Leadership Network researcher.
___"At the five-year point, seminary grads understand that the subjects they were taught in seminary, while valuable for creating sermons, exegeting Scripture and so forth, have not equipped them to deal with leadership and the other issues facing pastors," she reported.
___Part of that pastoral frustration might stem from trying to manage the smorgasbord of programs offered by "full service churches," suggested Larry Parsley, pastor of Valley Ranch Baptist Church near Dallas.
___"Some of the new skills required in the new ministry milieu include marketing, public relations, volunteer recruitment, project management, change management, facilities management, financial forecasting and re-engineering savvy," Parsley said. These skills, he added, are more likely to be possessed by a mid-level corporate manager than a seminary-trained pastor.
___In an attempt to place more emphasis on leadership, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary has overhauled its curriculum, said Don Simmons, director of continuing education at the Southern Baptist Convention school in Mill Valley, Calif.
___The change includes more than simply requiring courses in managerial theory. Rather, Golden Gate attempts to lace every course with a focus on leadership, Simmons said.
___"The process of leadership is engineered and organic," he explained. "We ask how do we intone that through lifestyles and in the classroom. We tell students: 'You are not just going to be a pastor or a minister of education. You are going to be a leader.'"
___Some church leaders foresee more partnerships between seminaries and churches, not competition.
___Rather than usurp the role of seminaries, Saddleback Community Church has joined forces with Golden Gate to offer courses at the church. About 35-40 Saddleback members are studying for a master of arts degree in theological studies.

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