Seminaries Reluctantly Selling Their Souls

What you say would also be impossible to do for any one pastor. On a small scale perhaps a pastor could take an individual under their wing and train them up eventually to be another pastor. I think though that unless the pastor had some sort of in church education system (like a seminary) or worked together with like minded other area pastors (kind of like a seminary) the training of an individual for ministry would take far to much time. where a college or seminary could train any number of men in 3 years easily a pastor would take at least twice that to train 1 man. I think you have your idea of the problem entirely reversed. You are correct pastors need to be involved in the training, discipleship, and education of all men especially one’s considering the ministry, but a college or seminary does not separate men from that. A good pastor is going to be able to handle all those things for all his congregation with the help of deacons and other church leadership regardless of whether or not individuals attend a college or any higher level of education, ministry or not. You perhaps have a point that many, especially untrained pastors, in our churches have over time begun to have the idea that since we send kids to Bible college/seminary they are off the hook, in a similar way that many parents in our country think they are off the hook when they send kids to schools. This is not the fault of the college, seminary, or the parent, but is a cultural issue that is prevalent in our country. This again is not the problem of the seminary.
I think your primary issues, besides the fact that you base your views off of experiential evidence, that you have is that for some reason you think that the seminary and its professors are in some isolated hierarchy above the church. I think you forget that every single administrator and professor is a member of a local church under the authority of the local church and its leadership. There is no separation of the people who make up a local church and the people who train our pastors. Are pastors, when they go to seminary, are trained by former pastors and local church leadership. They just work together in a central location and pool their resources and specialized knowledge to educate future leadership alongside and partnering with local churches of like faith and practice. These isolations that you talk of are completely contrary to the idea of what a college and seminary is.
You can have your belief that pastors should be trained by one pastor. That is fine. I don’t have issue with it. I think its an unfeasible idea, but it is and idea. My problem is with the so called proofs for why this must happen. Your condemnation of seminaries is inconsistent with common experience.

Paynen, no, your anecdote does not completely override mine. Evidence does not work that way; what we have is contradictory anecdotes where people in my acquaintance have claimed one thing and you have claimed another.

It is also worth noting that yes, the university system does separate people from their homes. Sometimes that is good, sometimes it is awful. If we were to move to more of an apprenticeship system, you at least have a stronger likelihood that someone is going to get to minister to people where he knows how they tick.

And impossible to do? Paynen, look at the bios (wiki has them) of the rabbis I mentioned. Each of them would be fluent in at least three languages (German or Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew) and would be competent in a few others—due to Cossacks, they moved around, after all. Moreover, they would also be conversant in 22 volumes of the Talmud.

Now we have of course our theological differences with the Jewish religion, but if we’re going to claim that the only way to get people with a given set of intellectual skills is the seminary or university is pure nonsense. Examples from the gentile world include Michael Faraday, William Herschel, and Gregor Mendel.

Just finished my first of 13 online subjects through BJU Seminary. While I miss the face to face contact and teaching sessions with the lecturers the online model suits me down to the ground.

The ‘problem’ (for some) with going away for seminary etc is that some guys think they are pastors etc just because they graduated. Yes you do need their church to affirm their gifts.

I think online ed is likely the future for many training for the ministry ( or already in ministry) and wanting more education.

Everyone is trying to do their best, whether local church run colleges or larger institutions. Let’s not forget that.