I keep getting asked if I really mean it when I say that seminary training is a waste of time. Yes, I mean that, at least the way seminary is today. I also mean it because I see so many authentic ministries being accomplished without it. Here are some of my thoughts in rough draft form.

Many of the pastors in the emerging denominations receive much of their ministerial education in the large congregations instead of traditional seminaries. Thirty percent of the pastors in congregations with more than 2,000 members have no seminary degree. These teaching congregations see themselves as mentors for young pastors. Pastors are grown and often promoted from within. Promising pastors fill the role of associate pastor long enough to learn the value of hard work; experience the ministry of a large, growing community of faith; experience the leadership of a dynamic pastor; and become prepared to go out on their own to build another large growing community. Instead of being "gophers," they are trusted with vital areas of ministry and are personally helped to grow in their skills. When the young associates are ready, they are placed in a strategic area to grow another large community. Church Growth expert, Frank Tillipaugh says:

It's amazing that we continue to put so much emphasis on a formal education for people in vocational ministry...Allow the Body to determine what kind of staff the church needs. The church unleashed can't afford to take a set approach to hiring its staff. It shouldn't look for people on the basis of resumes and paper credentials.

The Community Church of Joy in Arizona is now serving as a teaching congregation for the Evangelical Church. Frazier Memorial United Methodist Church has become a training ground for many mainline congregations. Other congregations serving as large teaching churches include Saddleback Valley Community Church in Mission Niejo, California, Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, Skyline Wesleyan Church, in Lemon Grove, California, New Hope Community of Joy Church in Portland, Oregon, Prince of Peace Lutheran in Burnsville, Minnesota, and Wooddale Church in Wooddale, Minnesota.

Many of the congregations in North America are so small that the teaching ministries of the large congregations are often too overwhelming and complicated to be of help to the small congregation. Small strong small teaching congregations are essential to strengthening the many small weak dying churches among established denominations. Christ United Methodist Church is one of those small, dying churches that turned the corner and became one of the new small, strong teaching communities in North America. Established in the 1930s, Chirst UMC is located in the stable, mostly blue collar, community of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, population 4200. Six years ago an average of twenty people met for worship. Today, more than 300 people worship each Sunday. Today, Christ UMC is working with five small congregations. The pastor acts as a mentor for the lay pastors of these congregations. Each of these five congregations have turned the corner from dying to growing. This is an excellent model for denominations with many small dying churches.

<big>How Did Seminaries Go Wrong?</big>

A decision was made in the 1950s that paralyzed theological education for the 21st Century. During the 1950s seminaries began breaking down into specialized disciplines. Students were hand-fed piecemeal, non-connected bits of information. They were taught to absorb and retain pieces of information. Content took precedent over everything. Holistic ministry did not occur. Students were not challenged to become independent, life-long learners. But the world we live in requires people who can process large, complex amounts of information. Storing information is no longer as important as learning to process information. This fundamental change in teaching set off a chain reaction that has lead our seminaries to produce large numbers of ill-prepared pastors.

First, this specialization left many seminarians unprepared for the spiritual movement in our society. It thoroughly separated theology from spiritual formation. I will always remember one of my very first classes at Perkins School of Theology. The course was the Doctrine of God. The professor opened the class with the statement: My name is ....; The subject of this course is the doctrine of God, and you need to know that I am an agnostic." According to Paul Wilkes, "The beliefs and practices of seminary teachers are increasingly important in theological education now that it is becoming clear that a brilliant faculty of agnostics may produce some interesting scholars and scholarship but will do little to help shape men and women for life in the ministry."

Baby Boomers who attend church are looking for spiritual formation. They are on an inward journey to find the meaning of their lives. If our pastor's can not develop congregations that help them find their way or they attend elsewhere.

Next, the debate began as to the basic purpose of seminary training. Are they to train theologians or pastors? This debate between theory and practice will always be with us because the heart of a meaningful seminary education is a healthy tension between the two. But striking such a balance between the two disciplines seems to have eluded most of our seminaries. For the most part they do little more than turn out theologians similar to surgeons who graduate without ever having practiced surgery--pure theorist, not practitioners.

Some seminaries have tried to integrate practice with theory through intern programs where the students are required to spend various amounts of time in a local setting working under a pastor. But most of these programs fail for two reasons: one, because many students choose a seminary based on the amount of time and money they will have to spend getting the degree, some students select a seminary with little or no intern program; two, more often than not the student intern is taught management rather than leadership skills because many of places where they intern are smaller, declining churches that can not afford a full-time associate pastor.

Third, seminaries became confused theologically. Is the role of clergy to save, serve, or to empower. Is the world transformed through the individual or through society. Most seminaries have opted for the transformation of society, rather than the individual. Thus, preaching has not always been a required course and a concern for salvation has been replaced with the enrichment of individual.

Fourth, during the 1960s and 1970s the study of clinical pastoral education (CPE) became the rage. Pastors were better trained to counsel than to transform and proclaim. Soon a new description of the clergy emerged-- "professionals."

Fifth, seminaries confused their target audience. Instead of designing theological education solely for those who intend to become clergy courses were designed for a wide audience. The course subjects became to general and leaned more toward the great issues of our day rather than those that ground students in the basic disciplines from which they can draw inferences about the world issues.

In all fairness to our seminaries it must be said that our seminaries face several obstacles that make their task almost impossible. First, the educational, theological, biblical and commitment level of many of the students sent by our local congregations is disgraceful. Our congregations did not prepare them with the biblical background necessary for seminary. Today, our seminaries are forced to waste valuable time providing most students with remedial Bible courses.

During the 1950s many of our country's ablest citizens enrolled in seminaries to prepare for a life of service to their congregations. In 1947, ten percent of the college graduates nominated to Phi Beta Kappa went into the ministry. No longer. Our seminaries receive fewer candidates ranked in the top ten percent of their undergraduate classes." F. Thomas Trotter, former head of the Board of Higher Education for a major denomination said, "We still get some very bright students in our seminaries. But we also have a fair number of less attractive candidates, people who will just punch a clock. The sad fact is that the middle has dropped out: the journeyman-- and now journeywoman-- pastors who could be counted on for thirty or forty years of good and faithful service." Only the higher academic scores brought into the seminaries by the major influx of women keeps the graduate record exams from being embarrassing.

Second, many of the students during the 1960s and 1970s arrived without any sense of a call or idea of what they would do with their seminary training. They were on a journey to find their place in this world and had little desire to pastor churches. Less than one-half of today's seminarians are enrolled in a degree that will lead to ordination. Many are looking for ways to make sense our of their world; still others have failed in the secular world and are hoping to find success in the ministry.

Third, today the call to the ministry is responded to by a much more diverse array of people: a lesbian who wishes to minister with her lover; a former Roman Catholic black woman; a forty-five year old mother of three; a divorced woman who wants to advance the cause of women; an uneducated rural preacher in his late fifties; a retired CEO from one of the major corporations in America.

Fourth, the cultural changes in America are not understood nor experienced by the average seminary professor. Confined to the academic world for so long, few really understand the changing world. The curriculum is not driven by what congregations need but by what the professor is able to provide, or what the academic disciplines will approve.

Fifth, they are preparing pastors for a denomination that does not have a clear sense of vision and direction. "The United Methodist Church is eating itself alive with ideological strife."

William R. Cannon, former dean of Candler School of Theology, Emory University said: The sole test of the effectiveness of seminaries is the effectiveness in the church of the ministers they graduate." Whatever else can be said about our seminaries, it can certainly be said that they have not trained the kind of pastors needed in today's world. Our Seminaries need an overhaul. The following suggestions are made for those who insist on keeping the present seminary track to ordained ministry.

1. Provide a two-tract system. The shot-gun approach to theological education that exists today must end and definite choices in degrees offered. Students intending to work in the local congregation take Tract One. Those intending to teach or work at something other than a local congregation take Tract Two. Both tracks are of equal quality and receive the same degree.

2. Require both tracts to take two semesters of basic Bible courses before entering seminary. All other graduate fields have some requirements to be met before entering their course of study. In those areas where such courses are difficult to obtain, students could be allowed to take correspondence courses provided by the seminary.

3. Make one-half of Tract One practical. These practical courses are spread throughout years one, two, and four but the majority fall in the fourth year. Included in these courses are three years of Greek and preaching, two semesters in the basics of evangelism and Christian nurture, and one semester in worship, administration, fundraising, media, conflict management, spiritual formation teaching, processing information, and leadership skills (visioning, risk taking, and change agent)

4. Require one full year of internship the third year for both Tracts. Intern programs are essential to a holistic approach to theological training. The program should span the twelve months between the second and fourth year of theological training; be paid for by the student and/or the local church or denomination; be the basis for the fourth year of study; and be conducted in a church where a multiple staff already exists.

5. Require Track One professors to take a sabbatical every three to six years and work in a local church for one year. In addition to having to publish to tenure and promotion, faculty need to successfully complete eleven months in a local church setting in order to keep their jobs. The time can be taken all at once or in three or four stages. The professor can pick the area in which to work. The seminary and denomination can keep a list of churches wishing to participate in the sabbatical. The seminary and the local church pay the cost. This requirement assumes that all the faculty are practicing Christians involved in a church of their choice.

6. Eliminate tenure for all faculty. Tenure is worse than the guaranteed appointment. Tenured professors are prone to teach out of date theology; be much older than the rest of society; and be out of touch with the changing cultural waves that determine the best vehicle for spreading the Gospel. Such a requirement could be challenged on the basis of age discrimination.

7. The goal of seminary training in both tracts is to integrate theory and practice. Whether a student is going to teach or work in a local church, both disciplines are essential. The only difference in the two tracts is that emphasis is placed on which direction the student is going and choices offered.

Keith Pohl expressed it best: "...if a seminarian didn't understand the Trinity, more education would have been required, and graduation would have been postponed. However, if the seminarian understood the Trinity but couldn't explain it to an eighth grade confirmation class, more days of seminary training would be needed."

In order to successfully integrate theology and practice, seminaries need to develop theology within the framework of the Christian community. This can not happen when some faculty do not even attend any church. Theology does not exist apart from community. Neither can ministry be viewed as a science to be dissected. Theology and ministry have validity only within the context of community and commitment.

The seminaries that successfully produce pastors in the 21st Century will make a fundamental choice during the 1990s. They will implement the above suggestions and thereby honor quality and our Christian heritage instead of the demands made on them by many would-be seminarians and the changing fads of the time. Their decisions may hurt their enrollment at first. But in time quality will win out over the shot-gun approach offered today.

© 1992 by Bill Easum