This is right on. The best prep for preaching I had came after seminary from a drama coach. Ministry is not alone in its anachronistic seminary curricula. Same could be said for psychology where 80% of what is required is not relevant to the task of doing therapy, i.e. statistics, research design, history and systems, etc. More practitioners rather than academic types should re-design the courses of study. Academia begets academia.

Don Hands

Jerry Bowyer seems to reduce ministering as a pastor to public speaking, but there's more to it than that. There's also leading liturgy, organizing community, teaching doctrine and history, counseling church members, etc., all of which require education and training. Who among us really wants to rely on "a high school dropout with generous dollops of the gift of gab" for spiritual counsel and pastoral guidance with some of the heavy and complicated problems life throws our way? The fact that some very dangerous, very unhealthy and very un-Christlike ideas are percolating through American society right now is largely due to "high school dropouts with generous dollops of the gift of gab" getting control of a pulpit or a radio microphone. The educational background of the presbyters down at my local Episcopal church shows both in and out of the pulpit -- and for that I am very glad and quite thankful. It assures me I'm not being sold a bill of shoddy goods, and that the church exercised some test of quality control in selecting its leaders.

I agree with Gregory Orloff. I've seen large congregations led by the "gift of gab" types, but what passes for theology among this kind of "gifted" does not, in my experience, sustain the parishioners when life gets tough and St. Paul's "milk for babes" is no longer effective. The kind of study that takes years of work and much midnight oil, plus more years to distill in laboratory of experience, is what's needed here. I'm for keeping the academic as well as the pastoral requirements high.

I agree with Gregory Orloff. I've seen large congregations led by the "gift of gab" types, but what passes for theology among this kind of "gifted" does not, in my experience, sustain the parishioners when life gets tough and St. Paul's "milk for babes" is no longer effective. The kind of study that takes years of work and much midnight oil, plus more years to distill in laboratory of experience, are what are needed here. I'm for keeping the academic as well as the pastoral requirements high.

I think that if you think preparation for priestly ministry is fully contained in the information downloaded in seminary classes than you're sadly mistaken. I believe seminary classes are the beginning, and that through prayer, formation, reflection, and practice in community you begin to get the sense of what the vocation calls for. One of the potential drawbacks of distance learning for seminaries is the possibility of losing this piece.

Further, not all priests are called to parish ministry, and ministry can (& should) take many shapes. In my part time job as a hosptial chaplain, I've never given a sermon, but being able to thoughfully process the theology has helped me immensely.

I'm also not to sure that we should be so fully invested in such a market-driven paradigm for what church can or should be. That said, the church would do well to take up calling for priesthood as an active process of recruitment rather than waiting for people to self-identify.

Jon

Seminary, like Dr. Schubert Ogden's description of the Christian faith, is "gift and demand." It's a rare privilege to have the opportunity to do the kind of hard, hard work that sharpens the mind and shapes the heart to perform the "cure of souls" correctly and effectively.
One short example: the Proper Preface for Lent says of Jesus, "Who was in every way tempted as we are, yet did not sin." This calls to mind the Monothelite Controversy, settled in 681 C.E. at the Sixth Ecumenical Council. It was established that Jesus had a human as well as a divine will. Without his having a human will, we could say, "Easy for you, Jesus. You were
God." But it was no easier for him than it is for us to resist temptation. Maximus the Confessor, in his 80s, lost his right hand and his tongue for defending this position. He died of his wounds within the year.
When the pastor is facing temptation or counseling a parishioner who is, this is valuable information, but it's not the kind of thing we in the pews typically learn in a parish. This is the sort of thing that someone with a Ph.D or a D.Min. teaches in seminary. Her or his students burn the midnight oil, struggling to learn it for an exam or to incorporate it into a (usually) lengthy paper. Students "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" this by wrestling with it. Finally, as Dr. Roy Heller, professor of OT and Hebrew at Perkins says, "Like Jacob, we wrestle, and we come up blessed."

The basic comment I have is Mr. Bowyers doesn't actually describe the seminary setting even remotely well, at least in my experience thus far. Also, some of the points are just false. Like: "Imagine that the graduate school in question is constitutionally forbidden from receiving any form of government aid."

SIM, the Society for the Increase of Ministry, has been supporting seminarians in The Episcopal Church for more than 150 years. Tom Moore III, SIM's Executive Director, can shed some light http://www.simministry.org/

Mel Ahlborn

Some of us commented yesterday on facebook about this article ... and we disagreed with Mr. Bowyer. I don't know which seminaries he checked out, but in Episcopal seminaries, you not only have to take homiletics, you have to do field work, where you are expected to preach.

Mr. Bowyer also seems fixated on seminarians all being male and married with children. Again, to which seminaries is he referring?

Not all seminaries do all the right things, agreed. But Mr. Bowyer's article does a great disservice to seminaries and denominations ...

Lauren R. Stanley

I only agree to the extent that the seminaries are not all they should be, and have failed to keep up with the changes in the larger world as it enters the post-Christendom phase, and people entering seminary may need more remedial work up front due to the decline in Bible-reading in the home, Sunday School, and all of the other apparatus of the late 19th to early 20th century American model. There is also the sad fact of the cost. But I think the seminaries and the seminarians need more support, not less.

Years ago I visited the CIA (not the spies but the school for chefs) that occupies the campus of a former major seminary for Jesuits. Teilhard the Chardin is still buried there. All around me were the signs of heavy investment in the future chefs on the part of the food industries: buildings blazoned with the names of the sponsoring giants of the industry. And I thought, if the church put the same kind of money and energy into the training of its future ordained leaders, what might we see?

The wives seem to suffer the most...

This is a somewhat incredible statement in the year 2011.

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I believe well developed diocesan programs provide candidates with essentials for roles in the diaconate and priesthood, especially for those who can not afford to relocate to another city to attend seminary, hold down a job and tend to the... needs of the family. We do not live in the type of world where folks enter into seminary in their 20s like 30 years ago or longer. Most people are entering in their late 30s, 40s and 50s. And the cost of seminary education is extremely high. If you come from a diocese that can not provide you with the funding needed and if you can not obtain the additional financial care to cover the necessary (and also unnecessary) costs, a diocesan program serves as an alternative. Also many dioceses use these types of programs to implement what used to be referred to as Canon IX Priests. Don't get me wrong - I believe that a seminary based education provides the candidate with the in depth training and study needed - but I do not believe that a diocesan program should disqualify nor discredit one's ability to be a fantastic deacon or priest either. We are very smug and arrogant in the Episcopal Church on this subject. The bottom line is that it is always good to have alternatives - when those alternatives are well developed.

Br. Thomas Squiers, BOSM
Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth

I can imagine Mr Bowyer concluding "It's so illogical, what these seminarians undergo. It's like . . . It's like . . . a cross they bear!"

JC Fisher

Tobias begins to nibble in the right direction. Perhaps the issue is Seminary Leadership and Management. They should be focused on bringing in the cash to allow them to make the education cost free to the seminarians, although perhaps not wit neon corporate sigils all around.

It is there job to make the case why there seminary is important and if they can't then the seminary probably should cease to exist. Seminaries that make this case, like Virginia and Sewanee have enough cash to underwrite substantial proportions of seminary costs. As a result they have lots of students and can better make their case to donors.

We have argued for centuries about the worth of an "educated" clergy. Edward VI and Elizabeth provided Books of Homilies to be read in parishes to ensure content of quality. I do think though that we are unsure about what we want priests to do. Altogether to often profiles will list "Administration" as a top quality sought. Almost as often is stewardship leader. I don't think either of those are necessarily a priestly duty.

In Maryland the singular quality we looked for in aspirants was Can They Tell the Story. I have been through all the literary critical methods, but they are all useless if you cannot tell the story.

We also looked for evidence that they could connect relationally with people. Part of this was whether or not they had good personal boundaries and could maintain good personal boundaries.

Seminary should provide the content for telling the various elements of the Story from the Bible, to Church History, to Theology and Ethics. We train people in Liturgy so they can tell the Story through that as well.

Theory and Practice of Ministry and Social Concerns are the more relational aspects, and Seminary should help form a person in the techniques that help they connect more effectively and pastorally or that help them analyze community settings to see where the life of the parish and the needs of the community intersect.

All of this could be done outside of a residential seminary, but the one thing that residence does is to create a safe place in which people can explore these issues and receive feedback on a daily basis. I have found too that programs that bring people together for intense weekends over a period of years also creates that formative space. There is something significant to being pulled out of the life you were living, being shaped and then sent off that is very powerful and I would not want people to miss that.

If folks have not noticed the new Title III is based in a recruitment model and not a self-selection model. I do not think those in charge of congregations have made that mental adjustment yet.

In the end it is about money and priorities. When our leaders can tell the story in a way that encourages generous and sacrificial giving most of the issues we perseverate over would dissolve away. In the present climate that is turning old customs topsy turvy and creating a world we hardly recognize it is time we worked on how to tell the story and relate to people in the present moment.

I think my seminary education (EDS) provided a good balance of the academic and the practical, though I have still had to do a lot of learning on the job.

The issue that really needs to be addressed is financing. I had the resources that the cost was not a big issue, but I saw classmates struggling with debt, and I see new clergy desperate for a position that will give them enough income to pay off student loans. Dioceses do need to look at the financial side and support postulants more.

I want to reinforce some comments of responders to this most important subject for the future of The Episcopal Church. Let me start with Tobias Haller’s last sentence: “what if the church put the same kind of money and energy into the training of its future ordained leaders, what might we see?”

In 1857 a small number of leaders thought and acted on “what if.” Seven clergy and one layman met at Trinity College in Hartford to discuss an organization to “find suitable persons for the Episcopal ministry and aid them in acquiring a thorough education.”
Were they vain dreamers? Not at all! Since that meeting SIM has invested more than $6 million of assistance to over 5,000 men and women (including 28% of today’s bishops) to serve The Episcopal Church (TEC) as ordained leaders. Regardless of the serious challenges of that time (the country was very divided in that pre-Civil War period), these eight reached what Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, calls a “strategic inflection point,” where the hard decision to invest in a down cycle becomes superior to a “stay the course” potential of decline. Is TEC at such a “strategic inflection point”?

Jon White advocates for the church to engage in an “active process of recruitment rather than waiting for people to self-identify” their calling to the priesthood. SIM has been refocusing on those 1857 words “to FIND suitable persons for the Episcopal ministry and AID them in acquiring a THOROUGH education.” We want to provide tools that could be used in a system of recruitment, training and deployment.

Jon White’s caution of “fully investing in a market-driven paradigm for what the church can or should be” reminds me of a warning from the dean of an Episcopal seminary that “finances were driving our faith instead of our faith guiding our finances.” Faith tells me that despite the daunting challenges facing theological education today, God will continue to call future leaders as God has done throughout salvation history. Now is a time to make the hard decision to invest in those who will shape our church in the future.

SIM may be small but we can provide solutions for the church’s decades-old issue of funding theological education. One example is our $18.57 Circle of Seminarian Friends initiative with amazing potential for a grass roots supported sea change in funding theological education in The Episcopal Church. SIM believes in that TEC reputation of well-educated and well-trained clergy. SIM invests in future ordained leaders to serve The Episcopal Church.

Tom Moore
Executive Director
Society for the Increase of the Ministry

While I applaud the work of SIM, and hope it will continue, I do think a reexamination of the seminary model is in order, as well as exploring other forms of clergy training and formation.

"If I were king" I would likely move to a four year curriculum, years 1-2 being groundwork in Scripture, Theology, History, Liturgy and Homiletics; followed by CPE in the summer and then a full year parish internship -- with a small stipend -- under an intensive mentorship program; and a final year of in depth study in electives and a focus on pastoral issues, growing out of the actual parish experience.

I don't think this is the only answer, but it is one I think would address some of the real needs of the church and the world.

There are several problems with this article, as Tobias and many others have already pointed out above:
1. The Church is not a business.
2. Its members are not customers. 3. Most people who leave the Episcopal Church do NOT go to pentecostal or charismatic churches 4. A Church whose criteria for authority includes REASON might be forgiven for taking intellectual training seriously.
5. In short this article is just another low-brow, anti-intellectual rant by someone who:
6. Doesn´t know jack about the church, its nature or its mission.
7. Probably uses the term "intellectual" pejoratively.

That said, our seminaries ARE in crisis, and not only financially (that´s easily solved by closing most, centering on two or three, developing on-line ways of transmitting content, etc etc).

The real source of our crisis, IMO, is rather our confused ecclessiology: We really don´t agree on:
What´s the Church called to be?
How shoule it organize itself?
To what end?
What kind of training are needed for which kinds of leadership?
What is the role of serious intellectual development in all of this?

Only after answering these questions might we begin to craft a new life for our seminaries --assuming that the Church (through General Convention) takes up the challenge of supporting them financially.

I've long wondered why bishops don't provide for and require post seminary, post ordination mentoring for at least three years to help the newly priested understand the pastoral side of their ministry. Some who find curacies in large parishes may get some of this but those who find themselves in the typical small to medium size parish are usually left to struggle on their own.

To Tobias' wish for theological education, the model you propose is the one used by the ELCA. Bexley Hall, my own school, exists in partnership with Trinity Lutheran Seminary (ELCA) so I've seen this up close. I don't know that the Lutheran students are really that much more prepared as compared to our doing time in a good Field Ed site.

The drawback to this model is that it exacerbates the problems of debt and can be very disruptive to family lives of seminarians.

The Lilly Foundation's efforts to create a model of post-seminary mentorship is an effort in the direction suggested by Paul Woodrum and I believe many bishops are aware and looking for such solutions.

But as several commentors have noted, if we are a church that holds training and education of the ordained to be important, than we as a church should do more willing to support the cost of doing so. Thirty years ago, General Convention passed a motion direction all parishes to put 1% of their giving towards theological education. How many actually do so, or even know they are expected to?
Jon

@Jon, I was aware the ELCA used an approach something like that. The cost is a major factor, as I note; which is why I think a stipendiary field placement is a help. But my initial concern, up above, was about the extent to which the church at large fails to support the seminaries and the seminarians financially. Many parishes are stretched to the limit and can barely support their current clergy, let alone the next generation. It is time for a radical reexamination of the whole question of clergy training and formation.