There’s much I appreciate about my training at Theological College. A key benefit for me was the support and discipline provided to help me learn the Biblical languages. There was access to a phenomenal theological library and more importantly there were lasting friendships with fellow students and with staff, not just faculty.
One particular advantage of residential study is that you aren’t just reading the books but you have in person access to talk things through with lecturers. My MTh dissertation was helped because one commentator I interacted with was on faculty. My supervisor introduced me to other key people at different institutions. Such things are not guaranteed with off site learning. Even as a mentor for a learning community I could not guarantee that all tutors would engage with me.
In wider terms, I’ve spoken previously about the benefits of being trained and mentored over a ten year period in my home church. However, that can give you a one dimensional perspective. You are shaped by the pastor in your context picking up his strengths and his weaknesses. Theological College gave an opportunity for three different placements and to spend time with different pastors and elders. I got to see the strengths and weaknesses of their approach to ministry too.
There’s much I remember with fondness of my days at College too. However there were downsides too.
I think that primarily one challenge was that many of the faculty had been recruited over a similar time period. They were mainly younger men and thinking about the church context I was going into, mainly white, middle class. There is something to consider about the diversity of voices and backgrounds in training but I don’t want to focus on that so much here.
Rather, I want to focus on one point. If a significant element of pastoral training is what has become known as spiritual formation and if it is about encouraging maturity then surely we should primarily expect faculty to be there because they bring a significant level of maturity and experience.
In fact, we may need to make a choice between maturity/wealth of pastoral experience versus academic sharpness.
As well as being younger, a lot of the faculty had primarily come through academic theological routes. Some had served curacies but few (in fact I think it may only have been two) had served as vicars or pastors for a significant period of time. Furthermore there was little experience of secular work too.
In fact, there were times when students who had spent time in secular work and served in last leadership capacities had perhaps more experience and dare I say it a more rounded experience than those training and assessing them. This came home to me when we were set the task of writing a church newsletter article. Not only had I written news articles for our church but I’d also provided in house communications in my secular work. In fact back in my student days, I’d also been involved in political communications and campaigning too!
So thinking about healthy theological training, it would be good to consider two things. First to what extent have our theological colleges learnt the lessons from the past? How is that affecting both the programmes they offer and the staff they recruit?
Secondly, as someone who believes that theological training in most cases is likely to be and should be “in house” in the local church, I and those who share this outlook need to consider how we best respond to the limitations of this approach and bring in the strengths of what theological colleges offer?
Faithroots 