Last April, Dr. Ronnie Floyd wrote a blog post entitled, “Change Must Happen in the Southern Baptist Convention.” Pastor Floyd’s article has resonated in my heart since he posted it seven months ago. The posting he released was surely a risky one for him. He knew he would probably offend some people who were comfortable with the way things are, but Pastor Floyd saw that our current denominational set-up is resulting in decline. I know with this blog post, it may frustrate some of my friends in the academic world, but I think it needs to be stated.
Lately, I have been increasingly thinking about how change must happen in the American seminary educational process. This topic is one I have pondered for some time. As I reflect upon this topic, there are just a few points, in particular, that I wonder about: clinical training, pastoral training from non-pastors, lengthiness, and a lack of change.
Clinical Training
My wife, Charity, is a Registered Nurse with a Bachelor of Science from Union University in Jackson, TN. As Charity was an RN student, she engaged in clinical training. She trained as a nurse at all different types of hospitals. One semester she was trained at St. Jude’s children’s hospital in Memphis. This is one of the biggest and most well-respected hospitals in the country with some famous doctors, and is in the heart of the downtown region of a large city. She also trained at a mental hospital in Bolivar, TN. This mental hospital is in the middle of nowhere, but is doing great work in healing mentally diseased people. Then, she had the opportunity to be trained at a general hospital in Jackson, TN.
As Charity was clinically trained, she was learning in a hands-on way about how to care for patients. She learned in a hands-on environment at all different types of hospitals. I am so thankful she had these opportunities. As I think about this, I also think of other jobs that require significant hands-on training: doctors, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, and the list goes on ad infinitum.
There is no way I would allow a surgeon to cut me open had he or she not been clinically trained in a surgical unit. However, that is exactly what is done to young pastors. We’re taught in a classroom, merely encouraged to get a position on staff at a church during academic training, and then we sit in a classroom for 97 credit hours (more on the lengthiness later). Do you realize how little sense this makes? I was taught in a classroom about the theological aspects of communion, but never served it until my second week as a pastor. I was taught about preaching, but was only required to deliver one sermon in a classroom in my entire Master of Divinity program. I was taught about counseling, but never counseled a single person until I was full-time in the pastorate. It just blows my mind that clinical training is required for a medical professional, but for a vocational minister, it is largely theoretical and minutely practical.
Pastoral Training from Non-Pastors
Another area I find to be of significant interest is that a majority of the pastoral training I received in the seminary classroom came from people who have never been pastors, haven’t been pastors in multiple decades, or who pastored declining churches. Can you imagine a Medical Doctor being taught by someone who had never been a Medical Doctor in a practice? Can you imagine paying a plumber hundreds of dollars who had not been under a sink in multiple decades? Can you imagine being taught how to develop a hedge fund financial firm from an advisor with consistently declining results? All three of these points of imagination sound ridiculous, but for some reason many academicians do not see the ridiculousness of an analagous situation in the seminary classrooms around the USA.
Lengthiness
My brother, an MBA from University of Texas, asked me why I sounded surprised when I told him of the declining enrollment of many Southern Baptist seminaries. He then went on to tell me of how odd it seemed to him to require so many credit hours for a Master of Divinity. If you wanted to go through University of Texas’ dual degree program of an MBA and Master of Manufacturing and Decision Systems Engineering (MDSE), it is only 76 credit hours. If you wanted to become a nurse anesthetist, with an MSN from Union University, it is only 73 credit hours. However, where I went to seminary, they advertise it as a 91 credit hour degree with six additional hours required in elementary Greek courses.
The degree is way too lengthy, but it is expected to be the degree of pursuit for those who feel called to the senior pastorate.
Lack of Change
Besides the addition of internet courses, how has the seminary educational process changed since the 1950s? People cheer in agreement when, at pastors’ conferences, a preacher will proclaim how if the 1950s come back, our American churches will be ready. However, the same is true with the seminary educational process. My Dad, a 1979 graduate of Southwestern Seminary, in comparison with me, a 2007 graduate of the same institution, found very little difference in the process of how we were trained. Similarities are eery from his academic experiences to mine. On a rather humorous note, even the same tables and chairs are still in a majority of the classrooms from his time in south Ft Worth, to mine nearly thirty years later. Meanwhile, the world around us has changed dramatically.
Conclusion
While I have offered the reasons for needed change in the American seminary educational process, I will offer my proposed solutions to these problems in a future blog post. Stay tuned . . .
