Pastors With Fake Degrees

When a pastor with a D.Min. passes his degree off as an earned Ph.D he engages in chicanery

Most clueless lay people think “Dr. So and So” is a bona-fide academic, even though he only has, a good and useful, D.Min.

Discussion

You say a D.Min. isn’t a terminal professional degree? What would you then consider to be a terminal professional degree for a minister?

Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)

[JNoël]

You say a D.Min. isn’t a terminal professional degree? What would you then consider to be a terminal professional degree for a minister?

PG. Promoted to Glory.

Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun. What else is the terminal degree for a pastor….OK, with the possible exceptions of “DTS” (dying to self) and “MS” (mortification of sin)?

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

There’s definitely a range of communication between keeping your training secret on one extreme & obsessing over it on the other. There is no Christian virtue in pretending to be more ignorant and/or lazy than you really are, though. Nor is there any genuine tension between spiritual qualifications & academic ones.
Anti-intellectualism is not more godly than intellectualism.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

As usual, I take a more or less historical perspective on the question.

I believe the basis of the problem is in the Modernist takeover of the mainline seminaries before WW2 and the Neo-Evangelical accommodation to them in the later years. Such that it took until the mid 1990s for the academic landscape to stabilize. By then, matters had stabilized enough for men who describe themselves as Fundamentalist to attend a school like Trinity Evangelical Divinity without being tagged as compromisers. When men started to attend schools like TED, places like MBU, Central, BJU, et al. were able to assemble the faculty needed to confer their own earned doctorates.

So, we had a period covering say 50 or so years when earned doctorates were few and far between. In the period, what had been an award for life time achievement (the Doctor of Divinity) became a go to degree awarded on some time pretty flimsy reasons. Many schools saw the DD as an easy benefit for their supporters. Many men saw the degree as giving them an air of respectability and “arrivaledness”.

Personally, I liked the DD as it gives me a title of respect towards a man who is not my pastor. Also, it is useful for men who are not in their own pulpit. That is not to say some have not taken it to be the equivalent of “Your Eminence” to lord it over the Lord’s flock.

Today, the DMin is a viable earned terminal vocational degree.

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

One KJB-Only pastor was working on his dissertation from a seminary with a TEDS-like name when I asked him the standard question—what exactly makes your contribution to academia unique? His dissertation at that time was described as basically another synopsis of the gospels.

Oh, quoth he, it is twofold. The first unique contribution was that the text would be completely taken out of the KJB—hand typed word for word, mind you. The second, quoth he at my breathless query, was that all the footnotes were his own, his very own proper interpretation.

Well, he did land his PhD based on that dissertation, and the Bible College hands out “earned” ThDs through his educated guidance and a couple other ThDs that were awarded by him and a couple of honorary DDs. Not gonna be a great candidate for ATS or regional accreditation, I’d say.

Some good observations on the difference between DMin and PhD. There may be some but I don’t know of any DMin holders who try to pass their DMin off as a PhD any more than my primary care doctor does with her MD or DO. There’s no reason why someone can’t legitimately be called “Doctor” with a DMin although many that I know don’t care about being called “Doctor” regardless of what they have. As for honorary doctorates they might be of some value when they recognize significant accomplishments but too often are given out as rewards for loyalty. No one should have to demand to be called doctor. When done it should be out of respect.

A DMin from some schools might be every bit as rigorous as a PhD from other schools. There are also differences in the prerequisites depending on the institution. I know some men who received their PhD built on a 32 hour MA, while some DMin’s require an 96 hour MDiv. There is a difference in the DMin major project and a PhD dissertation but they both require a lot of work. Also in some cases the courses for a DMin and PhD are the same if residential courses. For example when I did a semester on campus at Trinity for a DMin in Missiology (which required different prerequisites than a regular DMin) I took the same courses as PhD students. Since the PhD was a resident degree and I couldn’t give two to three years on campus I opted for the DMin. In the end you get what you can but don’t think of yourself too highly. The truth is I would rather have a PhD but I don’t know that it would have mattered much in life and ministry.

As an aside, the one time I remember people calling me doctor was when I spoke at a Northland Heart Conference in 2006. I have to admit Dr. Davis had a nice ring to it. But in real life day-to-day and in church it’s Steve or maybe Pastor Steve or Pastor Davis. I really don’t care. In my work as a bi-vocational church planter working as a certified addiction therapist/clinical supervisor and with French diplomas I’ve been able to add some other initials. On my day job I use most of them (except BA & DALF) on my email signature because it’s done that way in my line of work and adds credibility when dealing with outside agencies. So following the example of DR. Joel Tetreau….

Dr. Stephen M. Davis, BA, MA, MDiv, DMin, DALF, CAADC, CCJP but just call me Steve :-)

[Steve Davis]

Dr. Stephen M. Davis, BA, MA, MDiv, DMin, DALF, CAADC, CCJP but just call me Steve Smile

you’ll always be “Stick” Davis to me!!!!

heh, heh

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Straight Ahead Dr. Steve!

jt

Dr. Joel Tetreau serves as Senior Pastor, Southeast Valley Bible Church (sevbc.org); Regional Coordinator for IBL West (iblministry.com), Board Member & friend for several different ministries;

[Don Johnson]

Steve Davis wrote:

Dr. Stephen M. Davis, BA, MA, MDiv, DMin, DALF, CAADC, CCJP but just call me Steve Smile

you’ll always be “Stick” Davis to me!!!!

heh, heh

“Stick” because I was so thin or because I stuck guys with demerits back in the days when there were monitors and not hall leaders? I was a great legalist!

[Steve Davis]

Don Johnson wrote:

Steve Davis wrote:

Dr. Stephen M. Davis, BA, MA, MDiv, DMin, DALF, CAADC, CCJP but just call me Steve Smile

you’ll always be “Stick” Davis to me!!!!

heh, heh

“Stick” because I was so thin or because I stuck guys with demerits back in the days when there were monitors and not hall leaders? I was a great legalist!

Well, you may have been thin, but that’s not why you were called that! I don’t think they even call them hall leaders anymore. Can’t keep up with all this change. Sure sign of aging.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

On Pastors with “just” a bachelor’s degree

I know this is S H O C K I N G but some Pastors just have a bachelor’s degree!

Early in my life this was my pastor.

Did he make some mistakes? Yup!

  • Took me to a Hyles’ pastors conference
  • Recommended Peter Ruckman’s book on the KJV to me

But he straightened out:

Does the PCA require a M.Div. for its pastors? I’ve never met one who didn’t have at least a M.Div.

Seems to me that apart from maybe Paul, all of the Apostles lacked proper credentials. :^) So while I am a huge fan of good education, especially theological, it does seem that there is another method that just might work.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

[Bert Perry]

Seems to me that apart from maybe Paul, all of the Apostles lacked proper credentials. :^) So while I am a huge fan of good education, especially theological, it does seem that there is another method that just might work.

Three years or so with the Master Teacher. Not a bad credential to have.

JSB