Posted on 04/01/2013 9:23:05 AM PDT by JerseyanExile
America’s mainline Protestant seminaries are in crisis, but so far they seem to be spending more energy dodging tough choices than preparing for the future. A recent article at Inside Higher Ed describes the enrollment collapse at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. Luther is one of the most important Lutheran seminaries in the country, but its status wasn’t enough to insulate it from the forces upending seminaries everywhere. Enrollment fell off sharply, and the institution ”was running multimillion-dollar deficits, spending down its endowment and relying on loans.”
The seminary’s response? It’s making some painful cuts, letting go of some staff and reducing the number of degree programs it offers. Luther isn’t alone; seminaries all over the country are facing tough choices.
In many cases, survival has required selling off property or losing independence. More seminarians enroll later in life than in the past, meaning that seminaries often don’t need buildings filled with dorms and apartments. Others have worked to develop online programs, requiring less of a physical footprint, and selling or leasing their additional facilities.
These may be steps in the right direction, but they are baby steps at the beginning of a very long march. Higher ed is in trouble in every branch of learning, but the crisis facing seminaries is worse than that facing any other professional degree program. Seminaries, and especially those serving mainline Protestant denominations, have to change faster than law school or PhD programs if they want to survive. And selling some property or firing some staff, though sadly necessary in many cases, is just the start to a wrenching period of transformative change.
In effect, these churches are clinging to the ministry model that dominated mainline churches in the 20th century. Seminary leaders act as if the average seminary grad will still earn an average salary in an average church, that that salary can still support the loan payments that keep tuition levels high enough to support a traditional seminary, and that denominations or rich believers can and will make up the difference between tuition and cost. These assumptions are almost certainly false.
As noted before, the modern American church, especially among mainline Protestants, but also to some degree among Catholics and evangelicals, got mixed up in the blue social model. The clergy became a ‘profession’ like the others. People pursued careers in the ministry, complete with grievance procedures and pension programs. Denominations built up regional and national organizations that were staffed with professional staff. Progress was seen as replacing volunteers with certified, graduate educated professionals: Directors of Sacred Music and Directors of Christian Education. People built lots of buildings they couldn’t afford to maintain. From an organization perspective, denominational bureaucracies were like GM and IBM in the 1950s and 1960: hierarchical, growing every year, and offering employees jobs for life.
Neither Jesus nor any of the twelve apostles could get a job in any self-respecting mainline church in America today; none of them had a degree from an accredited seminary.
So part of America’s contemporary religious crisis has to do with the decline and fall of this blue model church, and any solutions to that crisis need to involve creative ways of transitioning to a post-blue era. More and more mainline Protestant ministers can expect to be part time or volunteer. The traditional denominations (each with a network of expensive seminaries and bureaucracies) will have to consolidate. Church bureaucrats will largely need to disappear.
This means that seminaries will have to change much more fundamentally than firing a few professors or selling off some dorms. Christianity is going to have to be more of a mission and less of a profession in the future. It may be that future ministers will learn the trade the way Peter learned from Jesus and Timothy from Paul: they watch the masters at work, and start their own pastoring careers under the supervision of someone they respect.
It’s not surprising that most seminaries and denominational bureaucracies would rather think about anything than the collapse of their business models. But rethinking the way the churches work is an essential part of the mission of Christian leaders today, and their failure to engage bespeaks a much broader failure to grasp the challenges of our times.
Pivoting off of the Inside Higher Ed piece, Rod Dreher asks about possible solutions to the wider troubles facing US seminaries. He writes:
What liberal Christians will say is, “Be more liberal!” What conservative Christians will say is, “Be more conservative!” Neither strategy seems suited to the nature of this crisis.
Dreher is completely right that the problems facing seminaries aren’t just theological. And it’s more than a question of budgets; penny-pinching won’t see them through the storm. It’s time for new leaders with vision and imagination to take the church beyond the blue. Since the colonial era, the genius of American Christianity has lain in the ability of new generations of Christian leaders to reinvent institutions, find an authentic theological stance and voice that appeals to each new generation, and put Christianity in the forefront of individual lives and social challenges from age to age.
Theology can be debated; liberal, conservative, protestant, catholic, fundamentalist, modernist. There is much to be said for each of these positions, and the debates need to continue.
But there’s a much more critical difference: the difference between life and death. There is a lot of dead wood in American Christian institutions today, and the carters are coming to clear it away.
"LIFE: that terminal affliction that, one day will, inevitably, "knock the chocks from under" our hulls as we rest here on these earthly "Shipbuilder's ways" -- and launch our incomplete hulls into the great voyage of eternity.Those of us who have been "Christened" with the Blood of the Lamb look forward to our glorious final "fitting out" and our incomprehensible eternal voyage with Him -- not with fear, but -- with calm assurance and, as "launch date" draws nigh, with excited anticipation.
I pity those who fear that end, and who, rightfully, can expect their ship to plunge beneath the dark waters -- and be forever a sunken, rotting hulk..."
TXnMA
Could it be that the above concept is one (of many) such vital messages that our seminaries have taught their victims graduates to stand behind their pulpit and de-emphasize and euphemize -- or totally disregard?
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I fear much of the blame for that "watering down of the Gospel" can be laid right at the feet of our ?deservedly? failing seminaries...
I'm on a tight deadline to design an archaeological presentation for Friday, but perhaps, later, I can find a few moments to share a list I (as a Deacon) made recently for our new pastor -- of similar "disregarded vital Scriptural concepts" that most of our churches gradually have been denied over the past few decades.
"Completed" is better. :^) I do believe that's true! And it works both ways.
That's what my bones tell me every time I go to get out of my chair. LOL!
“I fear much of the blame for that “watering down of the Gospel” can be laid right at the feet of our ?deservedly? failing seminaries... “
Spirited: Certainly blame rests there. But something else is at work-—the spirit of our age speaking persuasively in terms of the church’s need to accommodate to our thoroughly degraded culture and why compromise is a ‘good’ thing.
Excerpts from “The Fellowship of Trendy Catholics and Contemporary ‘New’ Evangelicals”
In a Biblical reply to those who prefer a trendy, compliant church, Msgr. Charles Pope notes that during the recent Papal Conclave the media had a field day interviewing various degrees and types of disaffected Catholics,
“... who all presented their wish list (or list of demands) of how the Church should change to be tenable and relevant to modernity and regain their “loyalty.” Most of the demands of course had to do with sex and power: that the Church should approve contraception and promote it, homosexual activity and same sex unions should get the thumbs up, divorce and remarriage should be approved, women and active gays ordained, priest should be able (sic) to get married, abortion approved, euthanasia applauded, etc.” (Is the Church a Thermometer or a Thermostat? A Biblical reply to those who prefer a trendy and compliant Church, Msgr. Pope, Apr. 11, 2013, Archdiocese of Washington)
Though Msgr. Pope’s reply is primarily aimed at disaffected Catholics, it speaks as well to ‘new’ evangelicals, the youth-idolizing seeker-sensitive contemporary and emergent evangelicals who are traveling the same broad, smooth highway to destruction taken previously by liberal mainline Protestants.
Both disaffected Catholic and contemporary ‘new’ evangelicals are united by the demand that the Church update her teachings,
“….be more modern in her thinking, teachings and structures.” She needs to “Listen more to young people and speak their language and share their vision.” Put more in a hostile way, the Church, “needs to abandon her medieval ways, cease being hostile, judgmental, intolerant, bigoted, sexist, homophobic, hateful etc” (and the usual list of modern accusations that reflect more the accuser’s personal issues than the Church). (ibid)
If the Church does all this, said Msgr. Pope, then our parishes will be filled again and all will be right with the world:
“Never mind that the Liberal (mainline) Protestants have tried all this for decades, approving whatever the people and the polls demanded, and with that approach their numbers have plummeted, far lower that any Catholic Parish. Never mind too that the only Protestant denominations that are growing at all are the more biblically conservative Evangelical Protestants who reject a good bit of the list of demands above.” (ibid)
As Msgr. Pope points out, only the more biblically conservative evangelical churches that reject the contemporary influence are growing at all. As for the rest, their fall into irrelevance and death is happening with breathtaking speed, said Michael Spencer:
“Collapse....will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former “glory.”
(break)
In “Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture,” Herbert Schlossberg exposes the timeless seductive promise underlying the mindset of accommodation:
“....the antinomian idea that Christian love can be used to nullify the requirements of the law and so free autonomous man to determine good and evil for himself (which) repeats the serpent’s blandishments.” (p. 48)
read more: http://patriotsandliberty.com/
As Msgr. Pope points out, only the more biblically conservative evangelical churches that reject the contemporary influence are growing at all. As for the rest, their fall into irrelevance and death is happening with breathtaking speed, said Michael Spencer:
“Collapse....will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former “glory.”
But there is something that can revitalize the church and that's the Holy Spirit. He's not reckoning HIM into the picture. When men look to organizations, they will all fail, one after another, but God always has a remnant.
And when the final curtain comes down, as it appears is happening, then it will all be done for good and God wins.
Precisely stated!!
Except, for this discussion, I would amend that to read:
Is the SEMINARY a Thermometer or a Thermostat?"
~~~~~~~~~
BUT, admittedly, seminaries are, (or, very well should be) directly expressive of the doctrines of the church (or, if you will, "Church" or "denomination") whose next-generation clergy they are chartered to supply. Therefore, the blame actually rests on compliant church leaders who are either
1) failing to exercise proper doctrinal control over the curricula of their own seminaries.
or
2) actually reacting to lowest-level parishioners' licentious wishes by dictating that seminaries adjust their curricula accordingly.
or
3) have abdicated their stewardship of church doctrine by admitting graduates of non-compliant (or "other church") seminaries into their church's clergy.
(Sadly, the "or"s above are, all too often, "and"s...) :-(
In any case, the seductive and evil hand and voice of the Deceiver, himself, is clearly at work in all ("major") churches (of which I'm aware).
Clearly, there are still churches (and by that I mean independent, mostly small and rural congregations) who literally seem "frozen" in the "purity" of prior centuries. But most "Christians" nowadays avoid them for various reasons -- basically they find them to be too "fundamentlist" for their comfort.
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IMHO, I'd say that Satan's "tools" of "'congregation ["body count"] growth' expectations" and "meeting (ever-expanding) budgets" lie at the root of this creeping perversity.
NOTE: Those secular criteria for measuring clerical performance are NOT required for successful propagation of the Gospel of Christ -- as our Lord commanded it to be done! (See Matthew 28:16-20...)
Our "Rock" is turning to mush...
But, we should not be surprised: our Lord, Himself, foretold that things would trend thusly -- as the time of His return nears...
BUT, He also foretold Who triumphs at the end of all earthly things... :-)
VIMHO, I’d say that Satan’s “tools” of “’congregation [”body count”] growth’ expectations” and “meeting (ever-expanding) budgets” lie at the root of this creeping perversity.
Spirited: St. Augustine rightly pointed to pride as the beginning of all vice. It’s pride (ambition, making a name for oneself, etc.) that underlies and inflames all of the stated “tools.”
Maranatha, Jesus!!!
Very well stated!!
Please accept my apologies,dear Sister,it was rude of me to call it weakness.
It was my weakness that was not acting in the spirit of love.
Not to worry, dear brother in Christ! You are loved.
"Disaffected Catholics," et al., are asking the Church to stop being the Church; that Christianity stop being Christian.
But how on earth does one "update" Truth, which is eternal, on which human souls, and the whole natural and moral order utterly depend?
As Heraclitus put it, some 500 years before Christ (paraphrasing): The Logos (i.e., God's Truth) is One and applies to all men. But the many draw aside from it, turning into their own private dream worlds.
This sort of thing — this turning aside into private dream worlds — is the very antithesis of Truth. Not to mention the very source of all the cultural disorder and turmoil we experience in contemporary American society today.
I am about to put my biblically-based "bigotry" (in the eyes of many of the screaming meemies who think they can improve on the Reality God made by fashioning "second realities," the fictitious products of their dreamworlds) on display. To wit:
In Genesis, God tells us that on the Sixth Day, "...God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" [Gen. 1:27]. Hmmmmmm. It seems to me that, if God had created any shemales on that Day, He would have mentioned it.
The Lord goes further: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth...." [Gen. 1:28]. Now "shemales" cannot "be fruitful and multiply." From which I conclude, quite rationally I think, that there is no biblical basis for "shemales," a/k/a, persons of homoerotic persuasion. These "shemales" are people whose entire self-concept is derived solely from their sexual preference, which is purely a "bodily" thing having nothing to do with the Whole Man, who God created not merely as "body," but as soul and spirit — and the latter by far is the most significant thing about divinely-created man. For body perishes, while soul/spirit never do.
But now we have Catholics, Evangelicals, others, so agitating for the "normalization" of something God did not create and which the Holy Scriptures later outright condemn that God's Truth is to be wholesale abandoned? Have they forgotten that we are commanded to "love the sinner, but hate the sin?" That so-called "gays" so demand to be accepted that we have to dump God and His Word, turn the Church upside down, just so they can "feel better about themselves?"
And what a misnomer "gay" is: The most miserable people I know are self-described "gay."
Case in point: my dearest sister. Every week she goes to a shrink — another Lesbian — who my sister pays to tell her just what she wants to hear — using other people's money (state retirement benefits received by virtue of her partner, a retired state worker). Diagnosis: My sister suffers from "anxiety disorder." Jeepers, I'm no shrink; but it seems to me a better diagnosis would be narcissistic personality disorder. Recently I mentioned to my sister that she doesn't need a shrink, she needs a priest. That didn't go over so well, as you might imagine, though she is a self-described or "nominal" Catholic.
Don't get me wrong; I love my sister dearly. But she is destroying herself. She has zero self-knowledge, and no apparent interest in acquiring any. Yet self-knowledge — as Socrates, probably the greatest psychologist of all time pointed out 400 years before Christ — is the beginning of Wisdom. As a result, she is constantly tossed and agitated on a raging sea of transitory emotions, and can hardly sleep at night....
But enuf of that. It suffices to say that I will not step foot into a "Rainbow Church": for the very presence of that "rainbow" tells me that Church is a faithless church; i.e., a Church that has turned its back on the divine Logos. So if churches want to fill their pews, they'll have to do it without me, and people who think as I do. And if they still manage to fill their pews, in all likelihood they will have reduced themselves (as Eric Voegelin pithily put it) to "social clubs for like-minded families," utterly bereft of the Holy Spirit of God.
JMHO FWIW. Take it or leave it; whichever, go in peace.
Actually the wholesale rejection of God and His Truth is not just a contemporary phenomenon, something "new" in the world. It has an ancient heritage, and some of the greatest thinkers in the world — Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, et al. — had diagnosed it over two millennia ago.
Plato considered this phenomenon a pneumopathological disorder (i.e., a psychotic condition) that he termed nosos, and its sufferers as idiotes; Aristotle called it nosemos; Cicero characterized it as aspernatio rationis, or the contempt of reason. The Old Testament refers to the sufferer as nabal, or the man who says in his heart, "There is no God."
'Nuff said for now.
Dear sister in Christ, my "spirited" friend — thank you so very much for your (as ever) outstanding essay/post!
Indeed. She needs the holy spirit.
She has to be willing to start down a path without predetermining herself where it must end up. She has to let go of her non-negotiables; having done that God will over time, give you new ones.
Or not even. God has a way of working around your non-negotiables until, over time, they fall away of their own weight, their reason for being having faded leaving no further need for them.
You just have to let Him be Him.
Not judging anyone; most of us have non-negotiables of our own. Something central to your identity is hard to let go of; the only way is to let God give you a new center and from that a new identity takes form. Its funny how it works.
Indeed. Well said, dear marron!
The clergy became a ‘profession’ like the others. People pursued careers in the ministry, complete with grievance procedures and pension programs. Denominations built up regional and national organizations that were staffed with professional staff. Progress was seen as replacing volunteers with certified, graduate educated professionals: Directors of Sacred Music and Directors of Christian Education. People built lots of buildings they couldn’t afford to maintain. From an organization perspective, denominational bureaucracies were like GM and IBM in the 1950s and 1960: hierarchical, growing every year, and offering employees jobs for life.
Interesting because although I am aware that there is a movement within certain evangelical circles like you have mentioned, what I've seen in local churches that I've been attending is actually a move towards getting BACK to solid Scriptural teachings.
God always has a remnant.
Plato considered this phenomenon a pneumopathological disorder (i.e., a psychotic condition) that he termed nosos, and its sufferers as idiotes; Aristotle called it nosemos; Cicero characterized it as aspernatio rationis, or the contempt of reason. The Old Testament refers to the sufferer as nabal, or the man who says in his heart, "There is no God."
The emperor who had no clothes comes to mind...
Thank you so very much for sharing your testimony and all your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
Jeepers, such folk seem pretty benighted to me....
Plus they seem to be chasing their own tails....
Thank you, dearest sister in Christ, for your kind words of support!
My father passed away last Tuesday, at age 92 after a long illness.
***Prayers up for you and your family. I’m reminded of when my mother passed away. I did not know she was a believer, and in fact in her later years she seemed anti-christian. One of my siblings asked me to speak at the funeral and handed me her bible she read as a child.
I was surprised to find her writing in the margins. It indicated she had accepted Christ as savior when she was younger, so that’s what I spoke about in the funeral and proceeded to preach the gospel, as told by my recently departed mother. It was spiritually very significant and freeing.
I hope you are comforted in the days to come. 92 years is a long time on this earth... but only in this day & age.
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