The Future of Seminary: Non-Accredited

October 20, 2011 By Tony Jones

This post is part of a Patheos symposium on the Future of Seminary Education.

Accreditation is a funny thing. The primary accrediting body for theological education is the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). When you’re on a seminary faculty, and especially when you’re in the administration, there’s lots of deference paid to ATS. They’re talked about in hushed tones. And if you notice that everything on your campus is being painted and the lawn is especially manicured, you can bet that an ATS site visit is in the offing.

The rub is that the people who accredit your seminary, the ones who decide if your seminary is up-to-snuff are (wait for it) employees of other seminaries!

I suppose that’s a common practice, to a certain extent. But a hospital ethics board is not staffed exclusively by physicians — it also has nurses, lawyers, and patient advocates. With ATS, it’s not the foxes guarding the henhouse, it’s the hens deciding who gets to have an official henhouse.

Accreditation is ultimately about standards, and standards are good. But accreditation as it currently stands in seminary education is driven by two forces: doctoral programs and denominations.

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The Future of Seminary: Non-Residential

October 18, 2011 By Tony Jones

This post is part of a Patheos symposium on the Future of Seminary Education.

One of the hallmarks of the emerging church movement, from its earliest days, has been its call to deep community. For some of us, that’s meant rootedness in the places we were reared. It’s also meant that some church planters (think Doug Pagitt, Chris Seay, Dan Kimball, Tim Keel), it’s meant a long-term commitment to the churches they founded (not very Pauline of them!).

So it’s seemed odd to us that when individuals in our communities desire more theological education, the requirement is that they uproot themselves (and their families) from our churches and move somewhere else for three or four years.

Indeed, that’s what I did. But I was a 22-year-old, fresh out of college, when I matriculated at Fuller Theological Seminary in the fall of 1990. I wouldn’t do that today, nor would I encourage a person of that age who’s finding life and ministry opportunities in abundance at Solomon’s Porch to do so. I would encourage them to stay put, and to get innovative at how they extend their theological education.

There are, of course, ample opportunities to study theology online, even with accredited seminaries and divinity schools. I’ve taught a few of these courses, and I’m not a huge fan. Learning happens, to be sure, but it’s not an ideal learning environment.

At this point, my encouragement to students of this sort — whom seminaries refer to as “non-traditional students” — is to find a seminary that suits their needs and desires, and take classes á la carte; that is, take intensives. That’s how the D.Min. that I teach at Fuller Seminary is arranged. However, that means you can’t attend Princeton Theological Seminary, because they don’t allow non-traditional students.

So it’s an imperfect solution, and it’s temporary. It’s a stop-gap measure, developed by seminaries and divinity schools, and it’s fine for now. But, as I will explore later this week, there is something better on the horizon.

The Future of Seminary Education – Intro Questions

October 17, 2011 By Tony Jones

This week, Patheos will kick off an online symposium on the future of seminary education. I’ll be blogging about a few ideas I have on this subject, but I want to start the week by soliciting your opinion(s). The symposium was catalyzed by a post written earlier this year by Fred Schmidt, “Is It Time to Write the Euology? The Future of Seminary Education” — reading that is a good place to start.

After reading that, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the questions that are being posed in the symposium. Leave your thoughts in the comments or, if you’re so inspired, write a post on your own blog and leave us the link:

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Frederick Schmidt on the Future of Seminary

March 23, 2011 By Tony Jones

Seminary faculty often lack any real affinity for the church and, that too, has colored the kind of graduate that seminaries have produced. In part this state of affairs can be traced to the seminaries themselves, which hired faculty from a wide array of institutions, including many that were shaped not so much by theological categories as they were the assumptions of religious studies programs. But churches also made it difficult, if not impossible, to be ordained and, at the same time, prepare for an academic career. The complaint that anyone with a Ph.D. isn’t really interested in the church or is looking for advanced placement is a common refrain sung by bishops, boards, and commissions charged with overseeing the ordination process; and it thins the ranks of those committed to serving the church in her seminaries.

via Is It Time to Write the Eulogy?: The Future of Seminary Education.