Christianity Today

Live Missionally

Dan Kimball is on staff at Vintage Faith Church, professor at George Fox University, and author of several books, including Adventures in Churchland: Finding Jesus in the Mess of Organized Religion.

Theological seminaries are a vital resource to the global church. They will always be necessary. But these schools face a major challenge. For their future, there is a great need for the majority of faculty and decision-makers to accept more fully their crucial role as missionaries and trainers of missionaries.

Whether professors teach Greek, theology, or another topic, the question at hand for them is: How does teaching this class do more than teach students how best to study the Bible and preach about it?

If seminary professors could teach preaching and other skills more passionately, seminary students would more completely develop a passion for evangelism. The global church would also stand to benefit greatly. This kind of seminary graduate as a career pastor might help every faithful Christian have a heart that is broken for a neighbor or friend who doesn't know Jesus yet.

I am not at all suggesting that we lower the academic level of teaching or ignore scholarship. Keep that at a high level. But all seminary instruction is best viewed in light of and evaluated by how it fuels the hearts and minds of students to serve as missionaries in their world.

If seminary leaders place this mission at the forefront, it could become a guiding influence in their evaluation of everything taught and every decision made. The challenge for seminaries is to shift their identities from academic to missionary. This shift would over time cause seminaries to become missionary-training centers fully intertwined with the lives of local mission-minded churches.

I believe this will happen naturally when faculty are themselves living missional lives and are not isolated in an academic bubble. When seminary professors become more personally involved in the mission of evangelistic churches, there are many good outcomes for the church and its mission.

More seminaries have made enormous strides forward in changing their priorities. More seminaries and professors are passionate about people who do not know Jesus. The next step is to make these professors and seminaries with a missional emphasis the norm rather than the exception in pastoral training.

If seminary leaders are not desperate to transform their schools into missionary-training centers for students who are themselves making new disciples, I wonder whether seminaries as we know them now will survive, because not enough Christians will want to be part of them. There is the reality of academic pressure and its legitimate concerns with, for example, tenure, scholarly inquiry, and peer review. But I don't think anyone would wish these academic aspects of seminary to overwhelm deep concern for non-Christians and involvement in the lives of non-Christians.

The evangelical seminary is surviving despite being buffeted by huge social change. Of course, it is worth repeating that change also creates opportunities. With a more missional ethos and culture, seminaries and their professors in greater numbers can show just how thrilling and contagious missional work can be.

Amp Up Innovation

Cheryl Sanders is professor of Christian ethics at Howard University and senior pastor of Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C.

Evangelical seminaries can maximize the impact of theological education on the future of evangelical congregations by making education more practical, diverse, and accessible. There is a great need for innovation in education as a whole and, fortunately, more theological schools are moving in that direction with new programs. Ideally, an evangelical seminary graduate will have learned how to engage in the practice of ministry illumined by a careful study of Christian thought, practices, and biblical interpretation. A seminary is an institution of higher theological learning, a place where students enroll to become equipped to work professionally in ministry.

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