In my experience with grad schools, I’ve found that unfortunately, they mostly think of character formation as someone else’s job. The church should do it, or the students should find a mentor on their own, or…well, someone else, anyhow. The school focuses on knowledge, and somebody else can worry about the students’ character.
It makes a kind of sense. Grad schools are classrooms, doing what classrooms are good at: book knowledge, and lots of it. They’re sticking to their strengths. But the brutal truth is, the church looks to the schools to prepare people for ministry, and the schools expect someone else to handle the character component, because they’re not set up to do it. All too often, no one does the hard work of character development. Who loses? You do. And so does everyone you minister to for the first few years while you catch up…if you catch up.
Grad schools have the luxury of taking a hands-off approach to character formation because they don’t have to live with their results. You go to them for training, and then you leave, and become someone else’s problem.
Apprenticeships work differently. If we’re mentoring you, we have to live with your mistakes the whole time you’re with us. Also, we hope to keep some of our apprentices even when they’re ready to launch, because the harvest is plentiful around here, and we could use the help.
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