Reflections on a Chief Challenge for Christian Seminaries and Schools of Theology

It seems to me that there are two primary questions to ask concerning theological students: Are they heading toward ministry or toward academics? And do they have a committed life outside of school, or is school the focus of their life at present?

The latter questions concerns a kind of gradated spectrum from single 22-year olds straight out of college, to married mid-20s folks, to students married with children, to those for whom graduate school is a means to a second (or third) career. Furthermore, any of these may be working part- or full-time (or more than full-time, unfortunately).

Thus we are left with something like four identifiable groups:

1. School-is-life academics
2. School-is-life pastors
3. Life-outside-school academics
4. Life-outside-school pastors

Seen in this order and identified in this way, it quickly becomes clear how great the challenge is for faculty and staff to formulate an educational strategy that will teach, shape, form, and train each of these types of students -- and everyone in between -- in a way that is in equal parts academically challenging, theologically appropriate, pastorally minded, and practically aimed.

The simplest way to see the problem is to compare the first and the last categories with each other. For example, I happen to fit the first category perfectly: I entered seminary as a 22-year old, with a four-year degree in Bible, knowing that I was headed for doctoral work, and while I was/am married, not only did/do we not have children, my wife's full time income has meant that I only had/have to work part-time -- and that 10-15 hours a week at the theology library on campus.

Now take an example of the fourth category: a man in his mid-40s with a spouse and three teenage children, with a background/degree in a discipline other than religion, preparing to go into ministry, and in fact already working full-time at his church (in a provisional situation, pending his ordination).

How could a professor possibly craft a syllabus and pedagogical plan for a class with only us two students in his class, much less others? I am able to read hundreds of pages a week, digest them, reflect on them, blog about them, enjoy them, compare them with all of my past and present extracurricular theological reading. In my fellow student's case, he has a single aim: to get to the end with a passing grade (and so to the end of the degree). If he learns something valuable (read: practicable), even better. Otherwise, he has a family to take care of, a job to attend to, needy parishioners to be mindful of, worship to lead on the weekends, and this with little to no prior theological education (much less contemporary reading on the side "just for fun").

Whatever various faults and misguided decisions mark the current state of graduate theological education in America -- and there are many -- this single challenge, taken on its own, is enough to complicate matters to a nearly insoluble degree. Keeping it in mind does good work in softening cynicism for institutional choices that prove so annoyingly common, as well as in tempering impatience with fellow students who just do not seem to be keeping up.

In other words, a bit of institutional grace to remember every now and then.