Carol Howard Merritt: The ties that bind churches and seminaries
A seminary fundraiser recently complained to me that pastors do not give enough money to prepare our future leaders. "Why don't churches and pastors make giving to seminaries a priority?"
I'm not a pastor who begrudges her seminary. I loved my academic institution, had a wonderful experience, and hold immense gratitude for seminary education in general. It's vital and important and that's why I give money to my school.
Yet, when I hear comments like the one above, it seems like there's a breakdown in the relationships between pastors and seminaries, or at least it suggests they could be stronger.
Why should seminaries care? Pastors don't have much money. Seminaries probably don't get much cash from their alumni, and in turn, many seminaries don't seem to worry about what pastors think. Our concern can become an annoying far-away voice that's mixed in with all the other constituencies. It's easily ignored.
But we need each other. Seminaries are preparing people for our jobs. We know stuff, we send our members to particular institutions, and seminaries do ask us for money. If the church is to thrive in the years to come, the relationship between churches and those who train our leaders will need to strengthen.
I'd love to start a conversation between seminary leaders and pastors about this. If you serve a seminary and you're wondering what you could do about the relationship, here are a few ideas from my limited vantage point as a pastor.
1) Think about the seminary's organizational structure from the perspective of a pastor. From an outsider's viewpoint, it looks as if the administrative structures of some seminaries keep growing. Institutions add vice presidents, deans and secretaries, but student bodies are not increasing at the same rate as the management. To be sure, many seminaries had to make difficult cuts during the economic crisis, but the staffing realities of seminaries and churches are still worlds apart.
When we compare student bodies to church memberships, we know that many seminaries are only slightly larger than our congregations. Church staffs are decreasing. People are having to cut hours and benefits. So when a pastor compares the size and staffing structure of his or her church (which usually has a pastor, secretary and janitor) to the seminary's vast organizational chart, the inequities become shockingly clear. We wonder why our struggling church should give to an institution that seems to be able to afford so much more than we can.
2) Seminaries can communicate how they are helping relieve student debt. Many pastors who have graduated in the last 15 years know the reality of student loan debt. Unfortunately, they often serve churches that aren't able to adjust salaries for the additional hardship. Many pastors would love to give to seminaries, if they knew that the money would go to alleviating the burden on the student. But we become suspicious when the bureaucracy and endowments increase along with the student's debt load.
3) Seminaries can encourage faculty to publish for the larger church as well as for the academy. I recently picked up a theology book, giddy with excitement at the topic. I made it fifty pages in and realized that the book was written for (maybe) a hundred people. It was a group of theologians within the academy writing for another group of theologians within the academy. I love reading theology, but this was an insiders' club book and will have no lasting significance on the larger church.
Meanwhile, some professors do write books for the wider church and are scorned in the academy for doing so. Why is that? I understand the need for academic books, but often the audience only seems to be those who show up for AAR/SBL. Our pastors and congregations long to read, too. Could the faculty be encouraged to serve the whole church in their scholarship? Could they read books written by practitioners? That could go a long way in bridging the academic/professional divide.
Those are just a few thoughts, some which are not new but no less important. Pastors and churches are asked to give to seminaries, and seminaries are preparing our future leaders for our jobs. Are there other ties that bind us? How can we learn from each other in this important time? I hope seminary leaders will respond with their insights.
Carol Howard Merritt is pastor of Western Presbyterian Church in Washington DC and author of "Tribal Church" (Alban). She blogs at tribalchurch.org.
As another parish pastor, I
As another parish pastor, I would like to express my complete agreement with these three points. Pastors of small-membership churches could teach seminaries and denominations a lot about doing more with less, if anyone was interested in listening.
Response
Carol, As you know, I have enormous respect for you. I often give your books to friends and point them to your blog posts. However, I want to challenge the caricature of the seminary institution you portray here. I cannot speak for all seminaries, but will speak for the few I have served (I'm happy to give names if requested). Here are a few points I think you miss.
1. You assumption that seminary folks don't understand or listen to pastors is misinformed. Most of our faculty and a good percentage of our administration have served as pastors; many are out each weekend speaking in churches. Anytime we do curriculum reviews, we spend years in systematic conversations with numerous church constituencies. We have alumni boards and trustees that speak loudly and often and have a strong role in determining our future. It may feel like nobody is listening, but it is simply not true.
2. You assume that seminary organizational structures are expanding inordinately. You are partly right. Most of the new positions you see are simply other positions that are being renamed and positioned in new more democratic structures. For example, prior to our recent upgrading of several positions to Vice president there was nothing that resembled a collaborative cabinet to work closely with the president. But, you are right that there is probably a net growth; there are two reasons for this: 1) We have added a few (very few) new positions in development to raise funds to keep the institution sustainable. The recent downturns have brought too many seminaries near to death--not because their missions were unfilfilled, but due to dire economic reasons. 2) secondly, one of the positions we have added or repurposed is involved in creating new avenues for theological education--certificate programs, CLP, other forms of lay and clergy training. This is one area created directly in response to listening to the church.
3. If you look closely you will see a sort of ecology in published materials by faculty. Most of us do periodically write something or another expressly for the church. However, it is very important for scholars to be able to raise critical questions that will not be interesting to average church folks. In fact, many of the folks who write churchy stuff draw from the work of these scholars. Without some materials written for, say, 100 other scholars, much of our church materials would be undertheorized. Think of how impoverished your own work would be without the work of Brueggemann, Hauerwas, Crosson, Fioreanza, etc. We need both theoretically sophisticated writings and accessible popular materials.
I think your most important point has to do with how we communicate what we do to our alumni and constituents. There are no easy answers there--and what answers there are require more staff and funds.
Finally, I know there is a perception of seminaries as soul-less institutions driven by survival. Frankly, I would have held some of these same assumptions until I found myself struggling for endless hours, weeks and months with other bright, faithful people trying to figure out how to best attend to the call of God. If you think I am off base on any of this, I am happy to chat.
Blessings, friend
Thanks...
David,
I appreciate your response. I want to acknowledge that you're a professor at the seminary that I graduated from, and I want to be clear that my post is not solely a response to my own academic institution or seminary experience. I work with a lot of seminaries, have a lot of friends who are (or were) professors, and so my perspective is broader than the three years I spent in graduate school. In some aspects, I would point to our seminary as a healthy example (especially when it comes to writing for and serving the larger church).
It's good to know that seminaries are listening to pastors. Often times when pastors complain about seminaries not being practical or relevant, I think they're trying to say, "We know things that students should be learning." So I'm glad to know that seminaries are listening.
I do not doubt that scholarship that speaks to the academy must be done. My concern is when I hear that professors are unwilling/unable to write for the broader church, because they are afraid that writing on a popular level will hurt their chances of getting tenure. This seems like a disservice to the church.
I also hope that you don't think that I'm trying to communicate that seminaries are soul-less and driven by survival. That may be a perception that's out there, but it's not mine!
Carol Howard Merritt, as
Carol Howard Merritt, as always, is on point. I don’t have much to add to topics 1 & 3, but I would like to underline, highlight, and put a big flashing neon sign around #2.
Frankly, education debt is a crisis for the country, but especially for the church. Imagine STARTING your career with the equivalent of a healthy mortgage. A career in which you can expect to earn the equivalent of most professions which only require a bachelors degree. By the time I’ve paid off my student debt I will be 40. I will NOT be able to offer college support to my own 2 sons, and I will only just be able to seriously look at owning a home. Which means I MAY be lucky enough to have that home paid off near retirement… maybe.
The usual conversation around debt turns on personal responsibility. Of course I am responsible for the choices I made in getting my education. Some are in a better position than me through better money management, or good fortune, but there are many in a worse position than me too.
Meanwhile, in my denomination, the number of churches which can even afford a full-time pastor is shrinking rapidly, clergy are retiring later (and even being encouraged to delay retirement by official policies of the Board of Pensions of the PC(USA)) and so most seminary graduates will find it very hard to get employment in ministry at all, let alone employment which pays well enough to help them with their debt.
Yet, seminaries, far from advertising this situation, actually downplay it and even outright lie about the need for new clergy based, of course, on their own need for reasonable class-sizes in order to stay afloat. It was standard practice at my seminary to offer large scholarships for first-year students to entice people to enroll and then drop those scholarships in the 2nd and 3rd years. If a prospective student doesn’t look closely at the long-term they’ll underestimate the amount of debt they will incur based on such deceptive practices.
This isn’t meant to be a tirade against seminaries – they are in a hard position financially as well. The church has some hard decisions to make in its near future about the importance of seminary education and how to pay for it, because the current practice of placing the burden on the student is utterly unsustainable, unjust, and detrimental to the life of the church.
blog response...
Daniel Kirk, a NT Professor at Fuller has a good response to this post here: http://www.jrdkirk.com/2011/08/04/church-and-seminary/
Aric,
I've actually been in trouble with a couple of recruiters for talking about the debt. But when it's such a huge issue for so many of us, we *have* to talk about it....
I'm glad that you're willing to speak up.
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