The Recycled Seminary
On a TV show I enjoy the participants were charged with taking a broken car and rebuilding it into a functioning motorcycle. It turns out that they could.
Indeed, if you take almost anything and break it down into its constituent parts you discover huge potential creativity and new ways to move forward, particularly when these assets are placed in the context of emerging pedagogies and technologies.
And that is what Christian seminaries need to do if they are to best serve the church in preparing men and women for Christian ministry. It will be hard, however, because it requires that those of us who teach re-consider who we are and what we have to offer, as I note below.
Right now too many of the valuable assets of Christian seminaries are locked in buildings, administrative structures, degree programs, certificate programs, academic guilds, and syllabi that are no longer effective tools for preparing men and women for Christian ministry. In this captive state they not only have extremely limited reach, they cannot be integrated into financially sustainable, lifelong programs of education for Christian ministry. But what is needed is more than the usual curriculum reform, because it may be that the current concept of a curriculum also needs to be dismantled.
We forget that virtually all of the structures we take for granted in theological education are actually cultural artifacts borrowed for their utility or aesthetic value in a particular place and time. They may have no more to with actually preparing men and women for Christian ministry than the tail fins on a 1957 Chevy had to do with driving from Detroit to Daytona.
And with all the changes of the last half century now we find ourselves driving Johnny Cash's "one piece at a time" Cadillac, put together none to elegantly with an "adapter kit." The survival of the Christian seminary in the future will depend on breaking down and recycling it constituent parts into new ways forms of theological education rather than putting new parts on a broken model.
Some of these assets (typically buildings) are located in such specific situations that generalizations about how to best reconcile and use them are impossible. What is certain is that a simple sell-off to gain funds to continue failing in another location probably isn't one of them. For the same reason consortial agreements are a short term fix. Merging two or more failing institutions is of now value if they are all failing for the same reason.
Still, there are general ways of breaking down human and curricular assets so that people can thrive and their investment in preparation and experience teaching can be offered far more effectively. Let me suggest some briefly.
1. With regard to teaching faculty it is useful for us to ask ourselves where our skills and passions are evident, and how these can be best deployed in preparing men and women for ministry. It cannot be assumed that our best use will be as a generic teacher/researcher in a generic classroom/library. Not everyone, for example, either enjoys or is effective in doing research and publishing. Its possible that the field we started in no longer engages our imagination or the interest of the church.
So we may be happier and more productive if relieved of the burden of research and publishing to focus on teaching and mentoring. We made need to embrace emerging fields of study that are both more useful and more interesting. A good PhD is really preparation for continual learning and development, not burrowing into narrower and narrower specializations.
Some of us may be excellent mentors and researchers but poor presenters in a classroom setting. And in emerging patterns of theological education mentoring may be the most important task than teaching as more students are self-directed rather than curriculum-directed.
Other faculty members may well come into their own in a studio preparing video lessons rather than engaging in live interactions with students. Some who are uncomfortable individual teachers may shine in a team environment where we engage the ideas of a colleague.
In any case thinking of ourselves not as "teachers" but as individuals a variety of experiences, skills, and passions allows us to reinvent ourselves in new roles in an emerging theological education paradigm.
2. Equally important in a seminary that offers accredited degrees will be the process of deconstructing degrees and courses into specific learning objectives and methods of reaching them that can be recycled into many different forms to suit a variety of student needs while still meeting accreditation standards. The established idea of offering choices at a course level with electives in a degree program isn't flexible enough to either be deployed for the broadest number of students nor to meet the needs of those students. Integration of teaching resources into constantly shifting patterns of student need and interest, as well as providing education outside or beyond a degree demands a more modular approach to teaching.
3. This cuts both ways. All teaching outside the curriculum (including continuing education programs and certificate programs right down to guest lectures) needs to be identified by the same kinds of learning goals found in courses, supplemented with additional resources, and paired with means of measuring learning for integration into online programs. This then allows the content of continuing education courses to be integrated into both degree programs and continuing education programs in an orderly fashion that gives students maximum choices for reaching their identified goals or those of their institutions.
4. Ultimately a flexible LMS can serve as the framework that both allows students full access to all teaching/learning resources while providing the information necessary for credentialing. With appropriate guidance students can devise not only paths to the credentials they need, but paths for systematic lifelong learning. The process of preparation for ministry will become less focused on a terminal degree and more focused on a continual tri-logue between the student, their context, and experienced mentors who can see clearly whole fields of study or ministries.
5. Many of the clergy consultants now at work outside theological schools might ultimately be integrated into partnerships with Christian seminaries. When the Christian seminary is a center for continuous life-long learning then continual engagement with consultants and church leaders will help it develop the most useful resources for those who subscribe to its services.
Christian Seminaries could become, in essence, workshops where students work alongside masters to create their own masterpieces of theological education. And those in turn will not stand alone, but will be the beginnings of entire galleries prepared over a lifetime of learning and ministry.
I'll close by noting that I'm proposing radical changes, and that these are the hardest kind. It is possible that existing seminaries simply won't be able to adapt, and that new models will emerge from new initiatives and organizations. Or equally possible existing seminaries will need to give birth to offspring institutions that will eventually replace them. What I think is certain is that the Christian seminary in its current form has a limited future because increasingly it is ill adapted to its cultural and social context.
Indeed, if you take almost anything and break it down into its constituent parts you discover huge potential creativity and new ways to move forward, particularly when these assets are placed in the context of emerging pedagogies and technologies.
And that is what Christian seminaries need to do if they are to best serve the church in preparing men and women for Christian ministry. It will be hard, however, because it requires that those of us who teach re-consider who we are and what we have to offer, as I note below.
Right now too many of the valuable assets of Christian seminaries are locked in buildings, administrative structures, degree programs, certificate programs, academic guilds, and syllabi that are no longer effective tools for preparing men and women for Christian ministry. In this captive state they not only have extremely limited reach, they cannot be integrated into financially sustainable, lifelong programs of education for Christian ministry. But what is needed is more than the usual curriculum reform, because it may be that the current concept of a curriculum also needs to be dismantled.
We forget that virtually all of the structures we take for granted in theological education are actually cultural artifacts borrowed for their utility or aesthetic value in a particular place and time. They may have no more to with actually preparing men and women for Christian ministry than the tail fins on a 1957 Chevy had to do with driving from Detroit to Daytona.
And with all the changes of the last half century now we find ourselves driving Johnny Cash's "one piece at a time" Cadillac, put together none to elegantly with an "adapter kit." The survival of the Christian seminary in the future will depend on breaking down and recycling it constituent parts into new ways forms of theological education rather than putting new parts on a broken model.
Some of these assets (typically buildings) are located in such specific situations that generalizations about how to best reconcile and use them are impossible. What is certain is that a simple sell-off to gain funds to continue failing in another location probably isn't one of them. For the same reason consortial agreements are a short term fix. Merging two or more failing institutions is of now value if they are all failing for the same reason.
Still, there are general ways of breaking down human and curricular assets so that people can thrive and their investment in preparation and experience teaching can be offered far more effectively. Let me suggest some briefly.
1. With regard to teaching faculty it is useful for us to ask ourselves where our skills and passions are evident, and how these can be best deployed in preparing men and women for ministry. It cannot be assumed that our best use will be as a generic teacher/researcher in a generic classroom/library. Not everyone, for example, either enjoys or is effective in doing research and publishing. Its possible that the field we started in no longer engages our imagination or the interest of the church.
So we may be happier and more productive if relieved of the burden of research and publishing to focus on teaching and mentoring. We made need to embrace emerging fields of study that are both more useful and more interesting. A good PhD is really preparation for continual learning and development, not burrowing into narrower and narrower specializations.
Some of us may be excellent mentors and researchers but poor presenters in a classroom setting. And in emerging patterns of theological education mentoring may be the most important task than teaching as more students are self-directed rather than curriculum-directed.
Other faculty members may well come into their own in a studio preparing video lessons rather than engaging in live interactions with students. Some who are uncomfortable individual teachers may shine in a team environment where we engage the ideas of a colleague.
In any case thinking of ourselves not as "teachers" but as individuals a variety of experiences, skills, and passions allows us to reinvent ourselves in new roles in an emerging theological education paradigm.
2. Equally important in a seminary that offers accredited degrees will be the process of deconstructing degrees and courses into specific learning objectives and methods of reaching them that can be recycled into many different forms to suit a variety of student needs while still meeting accreditation standards. The established idea of offering choices at a course level with electives in a degree program isn't flexible enough to either be deployed for the broadest number of students nor to meet the needs of those students. Integration of teaching resources into constantly shifting patterns of student need and interest, as well as providing education outside or beyond a degree demands a more modular approach to teaching.
3. This cuts both ways. All teaching outside the curriculum (including continuing education programs and certificate programs right down to guest lectures) needs to be identified by the same kinds of learning goals found in courses, supplemented with additional resources, and paired with means of measuring learning for integration into online programs. This then allows the content of continuing education courses to be integrated into both degree programs and continuing education programs in an orderly fashion that gives students maximum choices for reaching their identified goals or those of their institutions.
4. Ultimately a flexible LMS can serve as the framework that both allows students full access to all teaching/learning resources while providing the information necessary for credentialing. With appropriate guidance students can devise not only paths to the credentials they need, but paths for systematic lifelong learning. The process of preparation for ministry will become less focused on a terminal degree and more focused on a continual tri-logue between the student, their context, and experienced mentors who can see clearly whole fields of study or ministries.
5. Many of the clergy consultants now at work outside theological schools might ultimately be integrated into partnerships with Christian seminaries. When the Christian seminary is a center for continuous life-long learning then continual engagement with consultants and church leaders will help it develop the most useful resources for those who subscribe to its services.
Christian Seminaries could become, in essence, workshops where students work alongside masters to create their own masterpieces of theological education. And those in turn will not stand alone, but will be the beginnings of entire galleries prepared over a lifetime of learning and ministry.
I'll close by noting that I'm proposing radical changes, and that these are the hardest kind. It is possible that existing seminaries simply won't be able to adapt, and that new models will emerge from new initiatives and organizations. Or equally possible existing seminaries will need to give birth to offspring institutions that will eventually replace them. What I think is certain is that the Christian seminary in its current form has a limited future because increasingly it is ill adapted to its cultural and social context.
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