The Twenty-First Century Seminary

Veteran seminary president David Allan Hubbard talks about the brave new world of theological education.

Seminary education is not what it used to be. Nor should it be, says veteran seminary president David Allan Hubbard. Because we live in an era of rapid change, he believes, ministry preparation must find new forms.

Hubbard speaks from experience: this year he celebrates his thirtieth and final year as president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Hubbard has also provided significant leadership as president of the Association of Theological Schools, the national accrediting organization for seminary education.

Here George Brushaber, CT senior editor and president of Bethel Theological Seminary, queries Hubbard for insights on where seminaries have been and where they are headed.

How has theological education and preparation for ministry changed over the last 30 years?

The changes have been sweeping.

The first, and perhaps most significant, change concerns training programs designed for laypeople. There was a time when seminaries saw theological education as focused almost entirely on professional ministry. Many students now want to enrich themselves with a seminary education but not necessarily aim for ordained or professional ministry. In most seminaries, this group represents 25–30 percent of students.

We now have more older, second-career students. They come after having become established in a profession. Many have experiences beyond any we’ve had as faculty members.

The number of women students has risen dramatically. I would suppose that most evangelical seminaries have at least 25 to 30 percent women in their student bodies. Some mainline denominational seminaries have more. This has meant more women on our faculties and boards. And it has brought more sensitivity to women’s needs, women’s role in the church, and to the longstanding contribution women have already made.

The ethnic picture has changed a great deal as well. We have 220 Korean students at Fuller. By the time you add the numbers of Hispanics and African-Americans, our ethnic population is larger than the entire student bodies of most seminaries. That means specialized programs. For Hispanics, it means bilingual education. For African-Americans, it means people who will teach preaching and music and so on in the African-American tradition. We’re trying to do more to equip all students for the increasingly multicultural nature of American life.

During the L.A. riots, a student gave a poignant word when she stood in a convocation and said, “I am being prepared at Fuller to minister in a church that I do not attend.” That was important for us to hear. Here’s an African-American woman who’s attending a church in which we are not preparing her to minister.

How do such changes affect the way seminaries operate?

It means our teaching needs to become more participatory. Students who have experience within the church or professional world need to make a larger contribution to classroom work. Compared to when I was in seminary over 40 years ago, this is a whole different gang. Many bring the knowledge of a profession. Or they bring the joy of an adult conversion. And they often bring in-depth experience in some phase of church ministry. We have to get out of their way and let them make a contribution along with the contribution we make to them.

Looking back, are there things we should have done differently in seminary education?

Well, I suppose we could have done many things differently. We tend to react because we are a conservative group theologically, and because probably every educational institution is conservative sociologically. Changes swamp us for a while, and then we play catch up.

For instance, we no longer have a situation where the typical student has been raised in a Christian home. In the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve had a flood of students who come to seminary, not on the basis of being raised in the manse or growing up in church, but out of a conversion as older adolescents or adults. They come with great expectations, great commitment, but relatively little knowledge of Scripture and the history of the church. They didn’t drink it in their mother’s milk as I did. We have to provide for them, but it has taken a while to discover that.

What are the critical issues with which seminaries must struggle now?

I think the first thing we have to understand is the accelerated rate of change. We must build into our decision-making structures more flexibility.

We also have to discern the ways secular thinking is making inroads in the church. That means we have to be more effective and actively counterculture than we have been. The entertainment and information media are much more pagan than Christian. We have to know how to survive in the midst of that and not capitulate. And we have to know how to prepare others to deal with it.

We need to help students minister in a society whose value system is being eroded and whose very pluralism and diversity makes it harder for us to think in terms of theological absolutes. In the whole mood of political correctness (which has some positive sides), we have to offer theological correctness that recognizes diversity yet makes concern about diversity subservient to the unity of the church and the kingdom.

How does ministerial training avoid obsolescence in an age of rapid change?

Thirty years ago we saw the bachelor of divinity degree—now known as master of divinity, or M.Div.—as the “terminal” degree. Then about 20 years ago we began to focus more on the doctor of ministry. We began to think ministerial training would benefit from several years of service in the church followed by more seminary work. Seminaries across the country now have thousands of students who are working pastors. At Fuller, we have eight or nine hundred. So the packaging of ministerial preparation has been altered because we assume that a majority of graduates who stay in ordained ministry will come back to upgrade and refine their ministerial skills.

Under the influence of mass media and the breakdown of institutional authority, Americans are more and more becoming religious consumers. That places great pressures on pastors. How do seminaries help?

Until people are in the middle of some of those questions, it is hard to deal with them in any way but cold theory. That’s one of the great advantages of continuing-education workshops and seminars where you can bring in specialists who understand the culture.

A lot of people in the megachurches read the culture intuitively. More of them are becoming self-conscious about their analysis and offering their own training seminars. In the seminary context, we need a steady flow of input from pastors like these who are reading culture right.

Adjunct professors are important here. In the future, we may see a third to half of education done by people engaged in some form of specialized ministry. We will probably use smaller core faculties and larger adjunct faculties. And we will be farming out more of our education to churches and other Christian agencies. They can be our laboratories. We need a revolution similar to that which physician and medical educator William Osler brought to Johns Hopkins when he started taking medical students into the hospital wards. We need a revolution in theological education, which leads to more networking with the church.

How will finances affect seminary education in the future? For many students, tuition levels and student debt load have become issues of crisis proportions.

The extent to which seminaries can afford the present situation for the next 20 years is really questionable. For my first 25 years, tuition went up at Fuller at least 10 percent a year, with perhaps one exception. For the last five years, we’ve slowed it down to the 6 to 8 percent range, but we are at a level where students just cannot earn enough money to pay for it. I believe we’re close to peaking on tuition raises.

Seminaries need affluent people to step up and lay large gifts on the table to subsidize student aid and to subsidize programs. Some schools with a denominational backing have been able to go to their denominations for a little more support. But we really need permanent support. And that’s where endowments are critical.

The student needs to bear parts of the cost, of course. Going into debt for an education is not a bad thing. But the entry-level income for pastors is low. A pastor may start at $25,000 a year. The margin he or she has for paying back a large indebtedness is pretty small.

Congregations may have to help with that. When they take on a pastor with a $15,000 educational debt, they may need to say, we’ll give $1,000 a year to help pay down that debt.

Beyond financial help, are there other challenges for the churches?

We’re seeing experimentation in field education, with congregations willing to take the nurture of students under their wing. Our students need to be trained in part by laypeople—not just by professional clergy. That means churches willing to invest time and resources in the next generation of leadership. I hope more and more churches will place a higher priority on their role as partners in theological education.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

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