We hear of some very successful churches led by people without seminary training. Yet nearly all pastoral search committees require an M.Div. How important is seminary training today?
You're asking somebody who has invested 25 years of his life in seminary training. What I have learned about pastors of large effective churches who have not gone to seminary is that they are avid readers—insatiable in their appetite for understanding life and the world, culture, and the Bible. And a great number of them have done the equivalent of seminary education by seeking out gifted mentors who have a wealth of resources and provide guided studies. So I think many of these people—the ones that last over the long haul—have the characteristics that I've just described.So those who have succeeded in ministry for the long haul without seminary are those few exceptionally driven people who achieve the same level of learning—not just from themselves, but from others they accept guidance from—without the discipline of seminary?
What I often say to people thinking about seminary is that a seminary degree will create a structure of discipline for you to read and study and learn in areas that you would want to learn anyway. Without the structure seminary provides, you may not find the discipline to make it all happen.Read the rest of the interview.
I think the danger of doing pastoral ministry without the equivalent of seminary education is in being contemporary without having roots in the history of the church. The history of Bible and theology, for example, turns up every conceivable heresy that we find in our world today. They have surfaced before in an earlier setting. They may be called something else, but in essence there are rarely new heresies. If you have the benefit of church history, it shapes a world view that diffuses the enthusiasm for everything that's new by tempering it with the truths of God that have been given to us through the Scripture and godly teachers down through the centuries.
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The problem not listed in this article is the fact that many times seminaries do more damage than they do good. For example, I went to college supported by the Southern Baptist Convention. Supposedly Baptist affiliated. My Theology professor was off the charts. He said things like "we don't have a personal relationship with God. Instead, our relationship with other humans is our relationship with God." Another time he said, "Jesus' death on the cross was not a payment for our sins, but rather an example of the suffering that we should be willing to endure for other human beings." So here I am, a young college student going into the ministry, and I am like "are you kidding me? This is what seminaries produce??"
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Another well known college that started a seminary program had to completely wipe out the staff just a few years after beginning because of the liberalism that infiltrated the teaching. The Pastor that I served under at my first full-time ministry told me things about seminary that made me say to myself I don't even want to go to a place like that.
Secondly, Seminaries were created in a time where there was not the wide-spread and immediate access to learning materials like we have today. There may have once been a time when it was relevant. But if someone does not have the discipline to educate themselves, find the mentoring, and allow the Holy Spirit to teach, then we should wonder why these individuals are going into ministry. If they don't have the discipline now, how will they have the discipline once they get out of seminary to continue being a learner and therefore continue leading?
I have served under 3 Pastors. First as a Youth Minister, second as an Associate Pastor, and 3rd as a Pastor to Youth and College. I have learned more from these men in 7 years than any degree I could ever get. I have allowed God to guide me and not some "system" of theology.
What have our "Seminaries" done in America? Allowed for a decline in Evangelical Christianity? Allowed more churches to be closing their doors now than are opening? Allowed Muslims to give more of their income to tithe per capita than Christians do? Yes, these are what Seminaries have done. They have produced men that are too educated for themselves.
We don't need education, we need Revolutionaries. Seminaries can't teach the leading of the Holy Spirit. They can't teach a lifestyle of prayer. Like Timothy who was brought under the wing of Paul, I was brought under the wing of men and worked along side them in ministry. I think that should be required rather than a degree.
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