Church and Seminary: A Reciprocal Relationship

I had to speak at a conference of professors of theology and found it difficult to bring my topic into focus. My wife did it for me. “What you really want to say,” she explained, “is how the seminary needs the church and the church needs the seminary.” Yes, I thought. If seminary and church would wholeheartedly recognize and accept the dependence each has for the other, both would improve.

The seminary needs the church for several reasons. The call to the ministry should, and most often does, come through the church. Some of the most effective pastors I know decided for the ministry in their youth in evangelical churches. They attended college and eventually seminary. But they first heard God calling them in church.

I grew up in an Evangelical Free Church in Pennsylvania, and there I heard a call to the ministry. Occasionally my church invited young people to preach what were called sermonettes. I had been wondering if God wanted me in the ministry, when I was asked to give one. I decided to put out a fleece, probably because someone had recently taught me the story of Gideon. I thought, Lord, if you want me to go into the ministry, have three women shake my hand before any man shakes my hand after the sermon. All the women sat on one side of the sanctuary, the men on the other. Ordinarily, more men than women greeted the speaker. But to make it as difficult as possible, I stood on the men’s side. Three women greeted me. That initial sign of my call to the ministry God has confirmed over the years.

Although I don’t recommend my youthful approach to determining God’s call, it shows that God’s call can come within the context of the church. It ought to come through a congregation, which will encourage and help young people.

Then, the seminary needs the church to provide students with models to follow. While I was studying at Princeton seminary, which was far from evangelical, I needed an example. I needed something with which to measure the variety of views thrust at me in seminary.

The New Testament encourages us to find good examples. Paul mentions it several times—be imitators of me or imitators of the brethren, he urged. The Greek word for “example” appears in the New Testament eleven times either as a noun or a verb. Providing examples for seminarians is an important aspect of the work of ministers and congregations.

We underestimate the value of that. (Perhaps it looks too much like hero worship verging on the idolatrous.) But it proved important in the ministries of my seminary classmates. The students came with untested ideals, eager to help a needy world. Some of them now have valuable ministries. Those who heard solid preaching most often achieved valuable ministries. Those students who didn’t have been less effective.

The New Testament encourages us to find good examples. Paul mentions it several times—be imitators of me or imitators of the brethren, he urged. The Greek word for “example” appears in the New Testament eleven times either as a noun or a verb. Providing examples for seminarians is an important aspect of the work of ministers and congregations.

Also, the seminary needs the church to provide the context in which the student can practice what he learns in the classroom. In school you have books; in church you have people.

I wanted seminary to educate me to be an effective preacher. I tried to go through seminary as fast as I could, and to accumulate as much knowledge as I could. I didn’t get experience in the local church until graduate school in Basel, Switzerland.

Some students and I inherited a Bible study, which grew into a church. Each Sunday morning we met in someone’s living room. Only five of us attended initially. With only a five-member congregation, you can’t declaim and gesticulate dramatically. Through that experience, God taught me to preach naturally, not by some homiletics textbook. I sat in a chair and talked about what I had studied during the week.

By the time I left Basel, it was a good church—though not large. Through it the Lord gave me practical experience, which balanced my academic approach to biblical theology. A seminary student preparing for the pastorate ought to join a church—not just drift from congregation to congregation. And he should work in that church—teaching Sunday school, leading a youth group, or whatever area he is called to.

Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia uses seminarians. Right now, we have four. We pay them based on the time they can give us. One of them, for example, has the gift for administration and works well with small groups. Each of them brings certain strengths to our congregation. They add vitality, are not afraid to try new things, and don’t know they can fail. They enthusiastically plunge into a job.

Finally, to survive the seminary needs the financial support of the church. A good seminary costs money. Many students come from families with less money than students in other professional schools. Seminary students anticipate lower salaries than those of other professionally trained people. Mission boards are rarely noted for their offer of large salaries, and ministerial salaries have ranked the lowest among all professions. Seminaries can be effective only as churches supply them with enough financial resources to prepare qualified servants.

Yes, the seminary needs the church. Is it reciprocal? Suppose all of the seminaries disappeared. Would the church survive? Of course. The church does not need the seminary for its life. But the pattern for all professions today is that of formal advanced education. We need the seminaries to educate ministers the way the church can’t. Even had I the time, I could not adequately train the four young men I’ve mentioned in Greek, Hebrew, exegesis, theology, and the other disciplines. We need specialists to do that.

Here, however, we have a problem. Seminaries sometimes rob the church of academically gifted pastors. A student attains a B.A. and an M.Div., what he needs for the pastorate. But if he’s really got a good mind and can get a Ph.D., then we assume he should get it and teach in a seminary. I contest this assumption. Highly educated people should go into the pulpit, not necessarily into the classroom. That doesn’t mean that someone with a Ph.D. should give theological lectures Sunday after Sunday. But it does mean that, the church deserves the very best we are able to provide.

Young men preparing for the pastorate also need a systematic theology with which to buffet temporal theological trends. Some pastors successfully provide such training. I’m trying to do it in certain areas myself. But seminaries can do it better. When I was in seminary studying to be a preacher, I thought the New Testament was at the heart of the Christian message to the world. I wanted to learn how to preach New Testament texts. That is right, but I see increasingly how much I also need systematic theology.

Then, the church needs a seminary not just to teach students but to teach pastors through the publications of faculty. Pastors don’t have the time to spend in research. I accumulate in the course of a year forty to fifty books to read. During summer vacation I read as many of them as I can. Serious scholarship can be done effectively only in graduate schools and seminaries. But pastors, to say nothing of the people in our congregations, desperately need the fruit of this scholarship.

The church and seminary complement each other. The seminary would not exist without the church, and the church would be weakened without the seminary. Jay Grimstead of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy has described the relationship between the two this way: The pastor is the one out there in the church fighting the battle with people who don’t believe that the Word of God can be trusted. He’s similar to the soldier about to land on Normandy beach. Bullets are whistling by. People shoot at him. He wonders how he can win. But he knows that he is backed up by reserve forces. That’s the seminary. The church does the fighting, but it can only do so effectively with the full support of the seminary.

We must promote the biblical union of high intellectual excellence and piety. It’s possible to learn biblical theology without finding a relationship with God and without bearing fruit. At the same time someone involved in a vibrant ministry may lose his direction and need to be balanced by biblical norms. Neither can function effectively without the other. The seminary needs the church. The church needs the seminary.

James M. Boice is a pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He holds the D. Theol. from the University of Basel, Switzerland.

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