I vividly remember the day I got turned down for membership in an professional academic theological society. The rejection letter came from the secretary of the organization, a man who was also a well-regarded professor at a big seminary that I happened to be very familiar with.
I knew that I’d jumped through all the same academic hoops his own school’s graduates did. I knew the sort of master’s thesis his program routinely produced, because I’d read a bunch of them, probably including some he’d signed off on: competent 50- to 60-page volumes totally dependent on secondary sources, which is acceptable for a master’s thesis. (At the master’s level, the task is to demonstrate mastery of the literature, not to make a contribution.) Meanwhile, mine—130 pages of meticulously documented original research that accounted for the secondary literature but was grounded in primary sources and making an argument not found in the secondary literature—is selling on Amazon. Not a ton of course, but a couple decades later, there remains a very small but consistent demand.
So why’d they turn me down? I had the right degree and the right background, but I didn’t go to the right school. The secretary of the association—I expect he’s a fine fellow, and I bear him personally no ill will—was just applying the guidelines he’d been given. By those guidelines, I wasn’t good enough for their professional association. If you prepare for ministry in the ways I tend to advocate for these days, you won’t be good enough either. Traditional mentor-disciple relationships have prepared our people for ministry for the better part of two millennia, but some folks just gotta see a piece of Department of Education-recognized wallpaper.
Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t care about that. The people you serve won’t care either, just like my people don’t.
You know who does care? Career academics. If you’re looking for wallpaper—credentials to impress career academics and land you a tenure-track position in a school somewhere—the traditional mentor-disciple preparation simply will not get you where you’re trying to go. In place of that, degree-granting academic institutions offer you highly credentialed faculty, a big library, and a lot of classroom time. The better ones will get you some internships too, which is great. But the ugly truth is that at the core, academic institutions are classrooms doing what classrooms do well. Classrooms can give you a lot of really useful deep background knowledge: Bible, languages, church history and history of doctrine—but preparation for using that knowledge to benefit real people in front-line ministry is just not something classrooms do especially well. Among seasoned ministers, there’s a rich vein of true stories—some tragic, some hilarious—that end with “They didn’t teach me about that in seminary!”
You can, of course, seek out a mentor and get the wallpaper. If you’re going to get the wallpaper, I highly recommend seeking out the mentor too, because the ugly truth is that academic institutions at their best are classrooms doing what classrooms do well. Preparation for real-world ministry is not something classrooms do especially well, but a good mentor is awesome for that.
If you need the academic degree to open up a door for you to pursue your calling, then by all means get it. But don’t neglect the much harder task of developing the character, skills, and knowledge to support your calling. On the other hand, if you’re content to be competent, and you don’t need the wallpaper, then you can save yourself a lot of money by foregoing seminary.
Me, I’ve had the privilege of mentoring a number of people for the ministry. Since I left the seminary world in 2012, I don’t do academic wallpaper. I’m not against it; God may take me back into that world someday. But right now, I’m occupied with mentoring, and I find it more effective. If you love the people you serve, if you want—no, if you need—battle-tested, real-world knowledge presented in its real context, then get yourself a mentor.
Full Contact Christianity 