Seminaries Reluctantly Selling Their Souls

[Bert Perry]

….is because I’ve heard it from a lot of people; that seminary can be spiritually deadly in its isolation. Now if that’s incorrect for many, that’s wonderful—I must note that Central, for example, doesn’t have student housing and most students are quite involved—but there are some cases where the structure of the school inhibits (does not prevent altogether; inhibits) discipleship.

And in that case, we’ve got to ask some questions on whether those things inhibiting us are necessary (e.g. jobs, family life) or externally imposed.

Another reason I note this is because I’ve known a few pastors for whom discipleship was an afterthought—they would do what they did in seminary, preparing for sermons for dozens of hours each week and administer the church, but you never heard from them unless they needed you to do something. That’s not entirely the fault of any one factor, let alone seminary, but sometimes these habits can be hard to unlearn.

I still think that those are all problems with the individual on a personal level. Not the seminary they attended. I most familiar with Faith and to a small amount Central.. Neither of these institutions have this problem you speak of.

…can be true, or it can be a warning sign that you’re blaming people for things someone else taught them. To draw a picture, it’s an adage (courtesy WE Deming) in quality engineering that 85% of business problems are really the consequence of the decisions and mindset of the executives. Deming himself is said to have confronted Ford executives by telling them that 85% of Ford’s quality problems were in the room with him.

Application here; yes, it’s the person’s responsibility to faithfully take on the tasks of the pastor. On the flip side, those training pastors need to carefully look at the incentives they are intentionally or unintentionally placing in front of people. Great example of this is Jim Peet’s comment (or someone’s) about being able to tell when the senior pastor came to a church—subtly but surely, that’s the decade of the attire worn by a lot of congregants. In churches that are like this, you can also tell that conformity is superior to thinking.

And yes, I’ve heard accusations and seen evidence that a fair number of schools out there are doing this. I hope that this is not the case for Faith, Central, and the like, but it’s definitely something to look out for.

You are still blaming those training pastors in doctrine and theory for how they are handling practice, which is primarily learned in one’s life, ministry, and internship from the church.

Paynen;that’s exactly correct. How are we to come to any other conclusion in light of James 3:1? God keeps those who shepherd and teach his flock more accountable, and how much more for those who train our shepherds?

Really, there are two comments of yours that trouble me. First of all is the assumption that one learns theory in seminary and practice outside—that’s totally compatible with my contention that one can be somewhat separated from discipleship while in training. Second, your contention that weaknesses are primarily the fault of the individual pastor.

I would expect, given such attitudes, a situation similar to that of the Detroit 3 blaming the UAW and suppliers for all their problems, when the big issue was really their own executives. If we value fundamentalism, we’re really got to start realizing that each level of our organizations—small groups, churches, seminaries, Bible colleges, etc..—has a culture that impacts other groups.

That is the problem with what you are saying. You seem like your understanding of colleges and seminaries is completely foreign and second hand. Every college and seminary I am familiar with have very strict requirements of service in the local church while attending the institution. Faith and Maranatha I know both have evangelitic requirements. They also have internship requirements. The require depth to your service. The only way you can be isolated is if you intentionally try to bypass the system. I can’t speak for the non-Baptist institutions that many attend. But I am very familiar with Faith and and central and I visited Maranatha
when I was looking for a college. I know their requirements.

Sorry, paynen, but it’s eyewitness accounts. You can say “second hand” all you want, but for my nickel, the testimony of multiple people who have been through seminary outweighs any testimony I could accumulate myself by a long shot, even if I spent my whole life there. Honest, reliable, fundamental Baptist men, as a whole.

Besides, you more or less concede what I’m claiming by pointing out that the mode you learned at Faith was that it was (primarily) about theory, and then you went out to learn practice. Yes, you’re required to attend church, do some evangelistic activities, take part in ministry, go on internships, but you yourself admitted that seminary was primarily about theory.

There is a tradeoff there; you get to learn Greek and Hebrew—languages that the Apostles didn’t need to learn—but there is, by your own testimony, an isolation from some of the work of discipleship.

And really, the Disciples had more of an apprenticeship than an academic education, don’t you think? Theory and practice were mixed every day. Listen to Him preach, collect the loaves and fishes, take care of ministry needs, pray, eat, etc., with the Master, no? Go out on the “journey” of a journeyman with the sending of the 12 and the 72, right?

Now the original writer (way up there) was commenting that in his opinion, seminary achieved some of this, but those who have been through both an apprenticeship and academic training would tell you they are very, very different.

from what you’ve said you’ve never been to seminary. Thus your evidences are second hand accounts from others. These evidences contradict everything anyone who has first hand experience with a seminary who has posted in this conversation has stated… Now you are trying to appeal to Scripture in a prescriptive manner, when the passages are descriptive. Pastors are not Christ and we don’t live during the early ages of a fledgling church when sign gifts were prevalent.

you are also making things up and saying I said them. You persume that is impossible to go to seminary and learn while being active in ministry in the church. I did not by my own words say going to seminary isolates anyone from part of anything. You can go to seminary and get an academic education, as well as get discipled by experienced men who have been in the pastorate. At the same time you can, and are required to be, active in ministry and disciple making, while learning from your pastor. This is the experience that myself and others here are telling you we have experienced, and you are ignoring. The people you have spoken to are either unmotivated in seminary or they are going to the wrong place, because we have proven it is possible.

Come visit Faith. Meet our students. See how they are involved. Ask them. We don’t need some dramatic change to or elimination of bible colleges and seminaries. Your basis has been proven wrong. If what you said was true, then it would be the norm coming out of seminaries and none of us here have seen that.

Paynen, if indeed one cannot use secondhand evidence, exactly how does anyone teach the Bible? It is by definition second hand. There is, logically speaking, no inherent superiority of one’s own perceptions versus those noted by others. In fact, checking your own perceptions for bias with secondhand evidence (or even thirdhand) is a primary part of good exegesis. A commentary—you probably own a few, as do I—is also second/third hand evidence, no?

And really, it’s troubling me how you’ve insisted that the problems of the church have little or nothing to do with the training of church leadership….seriously? By the same logic, we can start telling corporate hiring managers that it makes no difference whether the applicant graduated from Harvard or East Tennessee State. This will, of course, come as something of a surprise to the admissions officers at Harvard.

Your line of argument is, to put it mildly, not persuading me that I’m wrong in arguing that seminarians need to get out more.

I think, Bert, that you are arguing under the assumption that the majority (? vast majority?) of pastors are NOT making disciples, and so then it MUST be the fault of the organizations producing those pastors, similar to your example about 85% of the problems being the fault of executives. But you have not necessarily established your premise that the vast majority (or whatever percentage) of pastors are not disciplemakers. You have also not proven that pastors who have been trained in the local church are better disciplemakers than pastors who have been trained in seminaries.

Greg, I’m not arguing that pastors aren’t making disciples at all. What I’m arguing is that typically the process of discipleship ends while believers are still pretty immature because the “heavy duty” education is left to Bible colleges and seminaries.

Contrast that with the apprenticeship model used by Christ and by most tradesmen today, where each “master” goes out fully capable of training other masters. Now harnessing that model is difficult, to put it mildly; as you note, a lot of guys trained in the church find they’re in beyond their ability. But if you doubt that it can be done, ask a master plumber, carpenter, or electrician. For that matter, most of your great composers (Beethoven, Mozart, etc.) were trained predominantly as apprentices (if not by that name, definitely with that system). Another famous apprentice was Stradivari, whose feats still haven’t been duplicated by Ph.D. engineers.

Another example of a local congregation doing pastoral level training is your local synagogue, which will generally teach a good level of Hebrew to anyone who desires, not to mention quite a bit of Torah and Talmud in your more conservative branches. That’s why it’s called the “Shul” or “school”.

I’d argue that a good pastor will see if he can do something similar—teach the principles of exegesis, hermeneutics, and even a touch of Hebrew or Greek to those in the “Shul” who want to learn.

And yet if you want to be a rabbi, I’m pretty sure you have to go to seminary.

Bert, there is nothing particularly wrong with second hand evidence, except when it is completely torn to shreds by first hand experience. That is generally why one should not base one’s argument entirely on experiential evidence. You completely lose credit if someone does not share your experience. That being said as Greg has said the rest of your argument is based entirely off of assumptions based on second hand experiential evidence.

Tyler, I think what you say has infinite value generally for older students. Those who have already been placed in their called area of ministry and their local church. I don’t think it is relevant for the college student or the seminary student who is just out of college, which still is at least from what I see is mostly where your seminary students come from at least on the MA and Mdiv level. Generally a college student interested in the ministry isnt ever going to return to the church they grew up in for ministry. They are not being separated from anything. They are in essence moving. My church that I began attending at Faith, quickly became my “home” church. It is where I’ve been discipled by pastors, friends, and older men. It is also where I have to opportunity to minister to unchurched children. I’m not being cut off from any biblical model of discipleship, as the biblical model of discipleship does not dictate where or how discipleship takes place. Online education is a needed tool specifically for those men who want training that have already planted ministry “roots” and fully plan to return to those root, or stay in those roots while they pursue their education. It is especially necessary if you wish to train individuals on a foreign field. I particularly like the development of Faith’s online program as it is becoming a hybrid of their excellent module program that they’ve had in place for years. Eventually it will become something that will have entirely online options, but now someone can get a full degree without actually taking any traditional semester long in class classes.

to wit: Maimonides, Baal Shem Tov, and many others through history were trained through apprenticeship. Schneerson of the Chabad Lubavitch was also trained predominantly in that manner.

Now you go to Reform and many/most Conservative congregations, you’ll probably get a bigger insistence on a college degree in rabbinic studies. Not so much for the Orthodox, who are probably the closest analog in Judiasm to fundamentalism within Christianity.

And really, let’s take one class that most take only in seminary as an example; exegesis methods. Now, we are somehow to argue that our pastor is qualified to preach a sermon using what we derive from exegetical methods, but not the methods themselves?