We at BtT wish to make our readers aware that SEBTS recently named John Ewart as Associate Vice President for Global Theological Initiatives. Dr. Ewart brings quite a bit to the table: he is a top-shelf leader and visionary, a seasoned pastor, a popular classroom instructor, a recognized expert on small group based church growth strategies, and the holder of an irrepressibly sharp wit.

Dr. Ewart has served as Fletcher Professor of Missions at SEBTS since 2008, while also serving as Associate Vice President of Program Development. He has served as senior pastor of four Southern Baptist churches, is the founder and president of R.E.A.C.H Worldwide Ministries, teaches evangelism and missions, and holds degrees from Baylor, Southwestern, and Southern.

Dr. Ewart provides leadership for several major areas within SEBTS, including The Center for Great Commission Studies (CGCS), our partnerships with local churches (EQUIP and supervised ministry), and our distance and innovative learning initiatives. For those BtT readers who are interested in partnering with SEBTS or sending students to SEBTS, here is an expanded summary of the exciting initiatives led by Dr. Ewart.

In addition Dr. Ewart oversees our current and potential partnerships in the United States and abroad. Current partnerships include Uganda, Liberia, Zambia, Sudan, Vietnam, Malaysia, East Asia, Moldova, Ukraine, Germany, England, the Middle East, Brazil, Mexico, El Salvador, Cuba, and Peru. Components of the partnerships include adjunctive teaching, affording faculty members in these countries the opportunity to do doctoral work with SEBTS, evangelism and missions projects, and various levels of consultation and assessment. Each partnership includes a prayer covenant as well. Here in North America, Dr. Ewart oversees similar partnerships with urban church planters in cities such as Atlanta, Boston, New York, and Toronto.

Finally, Dr. Ewart oversees the multiple initiatives associated with the CGCS. His oversight includes the MDiv International Church planting (a missions degree which includes both an on-campus component and a two-year missionary field service component), various North American church planting initiatives, and student/faculty short-term missions mobilization. In addition, Dr. Ewart’s office directs and administrates SEBTS’ distance learning initiatives and its EQUIP supervised field ministry partnerships with local churches and parachurch organizations.

Faculty-Free Universities?

We don’t make these things up, you know. The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 12, 2013, p. A6) informs us that the state of California is considering endorsing a “faculty-free” division of higher education. The California Assembly has in front of it a bill proposing a fourth division of the state’s higher-education system, a “New University of California,” which would have no faculty members but which would still grant degrees based upon students passing examinations.

This New University of California would be governed by the same chancellor and board of trustees that oversee the other universities.

Under this proposal students enrolled in the New University would be able to “obtain the necessary knowledge and skills to pass the exams from any source, including paid courses, self-directed study, and . . . MOOCs.” When students felt prepared enough they could then pay a fee and take a test to get credit for the “course”–if they pass. Legislators hold mixed opinions on the bill while the California Faculty Association expresses concern at the bill. Most of them argue that increased classroom support and resources, not online options would better serve California.

In response, I note that this sort of mix-n-match system poses several challenges, of which I’ll limit myself to two: (1) the faculty-free university poses the same challenge as online degrees: how can students flourish if the human elements of the degree program are further removed and mostly electronically-mediated? At least in an online degree the institution can build in relational elements, but in the mix-n-match system this will be difficult, if not impossible, to do. (2) The Western university increasingly is becoming a pluri-versity. Even Christian universities are experiencing an ever-increasing worldview disintegration and disciplinary fragmentation which keeps us from building an increasingly unified and God-centered body of knowledge, that it further handicaps the specialized disciplines themselves, and that it impoverishes human existence by separating out what ought to be held together.

A Buyer’s Market in College Education?

The same edition of The Chronicle includes an article “Colleges Must Prepare for a Buyer’s Market” (p. A60). The author, Jeffery Selingo, argues that colleges must get better at answering the questions of increasingly savvy prospective students and parents. On the basis of increased resources, such as the U.S. Education Department’s College Scorecard, and the hyper-speed growth of online education, Selingo offers the following as questions colleges ought to prepare to answer.

First, colleges must be able to answer “What is my return on investment?” That is, colleges must describe to prospective students the relationship between the quality of the education and level of debt they may incur while attending that college. Second, “how mobile are the academic credits earned on your campus and elsewhere?” Selingo notes that with the rise of online education, particularly MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), colleges should “expect students to ask what happens if they come to your registrar seeking credit with a certificate . . . from a MOOC in hand.” Third, “how tech-savvy is your institution?” Here colleges must answer to the rising tide of course delivery options and thus should be prepared to answer questions about how technologically and pedagogically savvy their professors are.

Fourth, prospective students increasingly ask, “What are your college’s priorities, and does academic rigor rank at the top?” That is, more informed students and parents will sniff out an emphasis on prestige or tradition over academic rigor. Selingo suggests that colleges provide an honest appraisal of their grade distribution among the student body and faculty instruction. Fifth, colleges must grapple with the reality that the hot jobs of today may not exist in twenty years. Thus they must be prepared to answer: “Does your college prepare students for their fifth job, not just their first?”

Sixth, if money is king in the decision process, the king often makes his real face known late in the game. That is, most families do not know the complete financial-aid package and thus their expected contribution to the cost of education until a few weeks before the deadline for a decision. Hence colleges ought to answer, “How easily does your institution allow admitted students to compare financial-aid offers?” Finally, in light of the fact that one-third of all colleges in the U.S. are “significantly weaker than before the recession and are on an unsustainable fiscal path” prospective parents especially will wisely ask “Is your college transparent about its own financial health?”

Selingo’s article raises a praetorian guard of further questions and discussion points. I limit myself to this point: Selingo is right that colleges must learn to be increasingly consumer-friendly while at the same time unflinchingly sound academically and pedagogically. The learning curve will be steep, but if we navigate these waters wisely, we might just come out stronger in the end with an increased ability to give our students a strong and consistent return on their investment.

Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of participating in a consultation on “Transdisciplinary Scholarship” sponsored by the Paideia Centre for Public Theology in Ontario, Canada. The meeting lasted for two days and was populated by thirteen scholars or public figures including Craig Bartholomew, R. R. Reno, Hunter Baker, Claudia Beversluis, C. Stephen Evans, Derek Halvorson, Michael Healy, Eric Johnson, Todd Ream, Robert Sloan, W. Jay Wood, Edward Zinke, and your scribe.

The notion of transdisciplinarity is fetching and, in my opinion, significant for the renewal of Christian higher education. Our discussion of transdisciplinarity began with a co-presentation by Bartholomew and Johnson, in which they assessed the state of affairs in Christian higher education. Their presentation was divided into three parts, which I shall try to distill in the next several paragraphs of this post.

First, Bartholomew and Johnson asked “Where are we?” In response, they noted that Christian scholars are still living in the shadow of the so-called death of Modernity, a complex ideological movement that handicaps Christian scholarship in myriad ways. This ideology “can be characterized by a reliance on autonomous reason and the scientific method for knowledge (often synonymous with positivism), skepticism regarding tradition and biblical revelation, the proliferation and growing specialization of knowledge, a commitment to individualism and human rights, and a strong belief in cultural progress.” Although many of the positive aspects of the modern agenda spring from the West’s Christian roots, the negative aspects arose because the Christian worldview was abandoned. Western scholars ultimately displaced a Christian framework for knowledge by embracing a naturalist metaphysic and epistemology, and a secular system of public and scientific discourse. As a result higher education came to have no center, and experienced disciplinary fragmentation.

Second, they asked “What is the next phase in Western thought and practice?” Although evangelicals have tried to overcome de-centered education and disciplinary fragmentation by embarking on a project of “integration,” this project often is tainted by late modern presuppositions and therefore often is unable to offer a truly Christian account of the academic disciplines. For this reason, we must go beyond “integration.” We must recognize the ways in which late modernity has reified and isolated the disciplines from one another, and replace the later modern paradigm with a truly Christian one. In order to do so we leverage the Christian Scriptures and worldview toward the end of promoting a Christian “transdisciplinarity.”

Third, they asked “What is transdisciplinary scholarship? Transdisciplinary scholarship is scholarship which promotes the synthesis of human understanding for a distinctively Christian viewpoint. Against the late modern academic model, which results in ever-increasing specialization and the fragmentation of the disciplines, Bartholomew and Johnson argue that transdisciplinarity’s goal is “the transposition of each discipline into a higher, ever-increasingly unified order of knowledge and love, based on a Christian metaphysic.” Transdisciplinary scholarship relies upon certain metadisciplines (biblical studies, theology, Christian philosophy) to guide it in building an integrated body of knowledge, understanding, and practice. Instead of merely learning within isolated disciplines, therefore, we are able to bring the disciplines into conversation with one another, with each discipline being enriched, and with new transdisciplines being created.

Bartholomew and Johnson’s presentation was followed by several others. Robert Sloan spoke on “The State of the Nation” in regard to higher education. Eric Johnson presented “Transdisciplinary Scholarship as an Alternative Model.” Craig Bartholomew presented “Spiritual Formation, Intellectual Community, and Transdisciplinarity.” C. Stephen Evans presented “Philosophy and Transdisciplinarity.” Finally, yours truly wrapped up the consultation with a presentation which sought to point the way forward in light of the previous presentations.

The consultation was refreshing, in part because it was a small collaborative discussion rather than a sprawling and disconnected “conference,” but also because the concept of transdisciplinarity is a useful one for bringing unity to the field of Christian higher education in upcoming years. I agree with several of the presenters that the academy is experiencing an ever-increasing fragmentation, that this fragmentation keeps us from building an increasingly unified and God-centered body of knowledge, that it further handicaps the specialized disciplines themselves, and that it impoverishes human existence by separating out what ought to be held together.

I am not arguing that the universities and seminaries should discourage specialized knowledge, but that specialized fields of knowledge should remain in conversation with one another, and they should together be informed by certain metadisciplines (such as biblical studies, theology, and Christian philosophy) which are vital to their ultimate fruition. In other words, the Christian university should seek truly to be a uni-versity, a unified endeavor. The Christian university should center itself on biblical studies, Christian theology, and Christian philosophy, allowing the various scholarly disciplines to flourish within this truly Christian framework.

The obstacles to building a transdisciplinary Christian university are many, but not insurmountable. Presidents and Provosts must re-prioritize by hiring faculty members who will invest in the project, providing forums in which professors from various disciplines (e.g. arts, sciences) remain in close conversation with one another, and in which they together converse with biblical scholars, theologians, and Christian philosophers. Professors must re-prioritize, by investing time and energy in reading more broadly (in the meta-disciplines and in other disciplines) and engaging in their research projects communally. To re-prioritize in this manner poses a challenge, in light of the fact that many scholars are already stretched thin because of their teaching, advising, writing, and committee-attendance. However, the challenge is not insurmountable, and those persons and universities will be rewarded who meet the challenge in order to forge a genuinely transdisciplinary environment.

One final note: I hope the reader does not come away from this post with the impression that I think “all is bad” in Christian higher education. On the contrary, there is much about which to be optimistic. There are many Christian universities who have a vision to build a truly Christian university and who are realizing the fruits of their efforts. Union University, California Baptist University, and Houston Baptist University immediately come to mind, as do others. However, although everything is not bad, neither is everything good. Christian institutions of higher education have been adversely affected by our late modern and postmodern context, and find themselves struggling to build a truly unified and God-centered framework for knowledge. Toward that end, the concept of transdisciplinary scholarship seems a helpful one, and worthy of extended discussion and reflection.

We at BtT are pleased to announce that Southeastern has received permission from its Board of Trustees and SACS, and has petitioned ATS for permission to offer the entire Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree online, beginning in 2014. Although we have been offering MDiv courses online for years, accreditation standards have made it impossible to offer this 90-hour degree completely online.

We are compelled by a number of reasons to add a fully online M.Div., but the most important reason is its Great Commission potential. Thousands of church planters and missionaries now desire theological education but are not in a position to uproot themselves from the ministry God has given them in order to move to our campus in Wake Forest, NC. Some of these church planters and missionaries are American, but others of them hail from the Middle East, Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, the Pacific Rim, Europe, and other areas of the world. An online M.Div. means that these men and women won’t be robbed of the opportunity for a more comprehensive theological education than they currently have.

Pending approval by our accreditors, this new development will allow students to remain actively engaged in ministry while taking their M.Div., without having to relocate to Wake Forest, NC, for their studies. This opportunity should prove especially helpful for those serving on the mission field, in the military, in local church and para-church ministries, and in bivocational ministries.

Although some Master of Arts degrees are already available in full online delivery, the full MDiv approval will allow for a more in-depth program of training and ministry preparation to those who otherwise might never have access.

One of the most exciting and important aspects of the online courses from Southeastern is that although our delivery methods are accessible and creative, we are determined never to lessen the quality or depth of our content. Students taking online MDiv courses participate in the same lecture content as those in our on campus courses both in quality and quantity. They read the same books, complete the same or comparable assignments, and participate in various creative and meaningful interactive discussion opportunities throughout a semester. The vast majority of our online instructors are full-time SEBTS faculty members. In some courses, we capture creatively the best content from several of our professors as well as other experts in the subject matter. The result is a powerful educational experience marked by breadth, depth, and diversity.

For readers who wish to investigate the online format, Dr. Akin’s online hermeneutics course is available for public viewing. Currently, the course is being offered to the public in for-credit and not-for-credit formats. Over 2,600 students are enrolled, with students from every continent taking the course. Dr. Akin’s videotaped lectures are the exact same lectures he delivers in our on-campus courses. Other online courses follow this pattern as well.

Our Distance Learning Office has years of experience developing these courses and preparing our faculty. They are ready to assist any current or prospective student in participating in an online course or degree. Courses will be offered fall, spring, and summer. Long term schedules will be available to help students at a distance plan out the completion of their entire degree. For more information about distance learning through SEBTS, click here.

Should the theological school be considered an “academic” enterprise? Or is it a “churchly” endeavor? Yes and yes. Or, so says Richard Mouw in his recent monograph, The Challenges of Cultural Discipleship. In the next-to-last chapter, “The Seminary, the Church, and the Academy,” Mouw argues that the theological school is an academic manifestation of Christ’s kingdom, and yet it is a manifestation closely related to the church.[1]

Mouw begins the chapter by providing a concise overview of the struggles within the Christian Reformed Church in the late 19^th century, in which the Free University of Amsterdam (associated with Abraham Kuyper) promoted an essentially non-ecclesiastical model while Kampen Theological Seminary (where Herman Bavinck spent the large portion of his career) operated under ecclesiastical control. Kuyper was anti-ecclesiastic because of his doctrine of sphere sovereignty, which argues that each sphere of human culture (e.g. the academy) has its own unique integrity and should not be controlled by another sphere (e.g. church).

Mouw notes that the “theological school” is an interesting case study for proponents of sphere sovereignty (of which Mouw is one), and argues that the theological school’s ontology is of the academy and for the church. For him, the theological school is an academic manifestation of Christ’s kingdom. It is a kingdom manifestation not because it is a church, or is essentially churchly, but because it honors God in the way it conforms to God-given principles and norms for academic-type work.

He further argues that both churches and theological schools are manifestations of the same kingdom of Christ. “To emphasize,” he writes, “that the church and the theological school are together accountable to something larger than either of them is to guard against the impression that either entity exists simply to serve the other’s interests. A theological school may be accountable to a specific ecclesial body, but it also has other accountability relationships—not the least being its relationships to the larger world of theological education.” For this reason, there exists a special pattern of accountability between theological schools and the church: “the theological school is indeed in the academy; but it exists there to make the benefits of academic life available to the church, and out of a deep love for the church’s life and mission.”

Theological schools, Mouw argues, should be accountable to church bodies because ecclesial concerns necessarily should shape and inform its curricula. Although the theological school might also focus on other constituencies such as relief organizations, occupation-specific laity groups, parachurch organizations, etc., its most significant focus should be on the struggles and challenges of congregational life. In exactly this manner, the theological school is “more than” an academic institution. The church should expect its theological schools to complement the church in spiritual formation, community involvement, psychological training, etc. In fact, in doing these “more than” activities, the seminary can impress upon the broader academic world the significance of such matters.

Toward the end of the chapter, Mouw provides a nice summary and distillation of his view when he writes, “Theological education needs to be free to pursue its unique functions in the context of the kingdom of Christ. In insisting on this I am not espousing an unbridled ‘free inquiry.’ As an evangelical Calvinist I am convinced that theological education will be at its healthiest only when it is grounded in a deep commitment to biblical orthodoxy. I firmly support the maintenance of confessional boundaries that define and safeguard that commitment to evangelical institutions. Theological educators ought not to lust after a promiscuous intellectual freedom. We are bonded to the Word of God, and to the cause of the Savior whose cosmic redemptive mission is infallibly revealed in that Word. This means that our academic callings can never be pursued in a way that distances us from the church over whom the Savior reigns as Lord.” For Mouw, the theological school is “an academic manifestation of the rule of Christ” which is accountable to the church.

My response will be limited to a brief reflection on the hybrid nature of theological schools such as the institution at which I am employed, the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Although we are indeed an academic manifestation of Christ’s kingdom, the seminary is essentially church-related.  We exist at the pleasure of the SBC and in order to train ministers for SBC churches, missionaries for the IMB, and leaders for the convention entities. We operate faithfully and gratefully within SBC confessional boundaries. We want our education grounded in the worship and witness life of the redeemed community. For this reason, we require our students to be meaningful members of their churches. Further, we build “churchly” elements into the seminary’s life and curriculum: we have chapel services, promote spiritual formation, community life, and evangelism.

And the seminary is not a church. A seminary is distinctively different from a local congregation. We do not baptize or administer the Lord’s Supper. We do not endow any members of the seminary with pastoral authority. Unfortunately, however, seminary students can (either consciously or unconsciously) allow seminary to replace church. The chapel services become congregational worship, the professors become functional pastors, and a student’s peers become the members of their “covenant” community. If and when a student allows seminary functionally to become his church, he warps and distorts God’s purposes for the seminary and does so to his own detriment.

Although the seminary is church related, it is an academic manifestation of Christ’s kingdom. SBC seminaries are called forth by Southern Baptist churches in order to serve the church in the academic aspect of its discipleship and leadership training. Our education includes academic elements: we deliver lectures, administer exams, seek accreditation, publish journals, require Chicago style for our papers, and participate in conversation with the broader academy. These are essentially academic elements of seminary life; they are not “churchly,” and yet they count as “kingdom work.” For each aspect of the seminary’s life is to be brought under the Lordship of Christ and normed according to his word.

And yet the seminary is not purely academic. It is called forth into existence by the church and in turn serves the church. It does not bow to secular norms for the academic disciplines. For each academic discipline which has a counterpart at state universities, we ask at least three questions: What is God’s creational design for this discipline? How has this discipline been corrupted and misdirected by human idolatry? In what ways can we bring healing and redirection to his discipline? By asking these three questions, we are able to transform (or in some cases, reconstruct) disciplines such as biblical studies, counseling, or ethics in light of God’s normative word.

I’ve limited myself to a few brief reflections, and wish to hear our readership’s reflections on this significant topic. Do you agree with the basic thesis of the blog? Is there anything you would add or modify? Do you see further dangers of misunderstanding the seminary’s place in between church and academy?

Hmmff. In a recent blog post, “On Writing Well,” Stephen M. Walt (Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University) tackles the question of why academic writing is often quite poor.[1] Walt believes there are some real reasons why academic writing suffers, but this is not because either “no one encourages future academics to write well” or “because of poor editing at journals or university presses.” He offers a couple of surface level reasons followed by two deeper reasons academic writing is “frequently abysmal.”

One reason academic writing is difficult to read is “because the subjects being addressed are complicated and difficult and hard to explain with ordinary language.” Academic discussions on philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, or epistemology, for instance, can be very technical. Walt notes, however, that this is no excuse because writer should still set forth his prose as lucidly as possible.

Another reason is that many scholars fail to “appreciate the difference between the logic of discovery and the logic of presentation.” By this Walt means academic writers should not explain their argument in writing in the same order or manner in which they built their argument while researching. Good writing, Walt argues, requires the researcher-writer to craft an argument with clear, logical connections. The point of writing for an audience is to help the audience to understand the argument and be persuaded by it.

A third, and deeper, reason that academics set forth such turgid and torturous prose “is that many academics (and especially younger ones) tend to confuse incomprehensibility with profundity.” That is, scholars often use confusing prose and slather their essays with technical jargon in an effort to sound intelligent. Yet as Walt indicates, a convincing argument does not require stuffy, specialized prose even if the academic might be writing about a specialized topic.

A final, and similarly deep, reason is “fear of being wrong.” If one writes clearly, one’s work is easier to understand and therefore easier to critique. In order to avoid this some academics may write in an intentionally obscure manner. As Walt claims, “bad writing thus becomes a form of academic camouflage designed to shield the author from criticism.” I second Walt’s point, and quote historian of philosophy Bryan Magee, who once put it this way: “The desire to communicate and be understood as widely as possible often comes directly into conflict with the desire to impress. This gives many people an incentive not to be clear, because what they have to say does not amount to much, and so the more clearly it is expressed the more obvious that fact will be.”

Whatever the reasons for bad writing, Walt proposes some solutions. He encourages his own students to read books about writing. He recommends the classic by Strunk and White, Elements of Style, particularly for its emphasis on concision. “Most of us tend to overwrite . . . and shorter is almost always better.” He also recommends Anthony Weston’s A Rulebook for Arguments for sharpening one’s argumentation skills. Second, Walt encourages students to “emulate writers they admire.” Of course, this piece of advice requires students to read a good bit and therefore know that they actually do admire certain writers. Those who read (and read well) write better than those who do not.

Walt’s article is spot on, and I’ll offer two thoughts in response. (I’ve thought about this topic a bit, especially in light of the felt need to make my own writing style less awful.) First, Walt is correct that scholars often are poor writers. Of the “Great Book” authors, Herodotus, Hegel, and Kant come to mind. In fact Hegel’s prose is such an obfuscation that Caird described it in this manner: “the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to…stupidity.”  I shudder as I remember early in my career trying to explain Hegel to my wretched flock of imprisoned undergrads, as we slogged hopelessly through his Phenomenology of Spirit.

Second, Walt’s four suggestions strike me as reasonable explanations for poor academic writing. Scholars often address difficult ideas, follow the logic of discovery rather than the logic of presentation, try to sound profound, and seek to shield themselves from criticism by writing in an intentionally obscure manner. In addition to Walt’s suggestions, several others present themselves immediately to my mind. Some scholars are never told that good writing takes hard work and many layers of revision. In addition, some scholars are never offered the services of a writing center or the tutelage of a skilled professor of rhetoric. Finally, some scholars are not fascinated by words and have little interest in crafting excellent sentences. In a word, they don’t really care about language.

Third, Walt recommends Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and Anthony Weston’s A Rulebook for Arguments. In addition to those books, I recommend two more. First, William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. Zinsser’s book is, ahem, very well written and serves as a fine introductory text to the task of writing. Second, Joseph Williams’ Style. Williams’ book is the field standard for aspiring academic writers.

Three cheers for Stephen M. Walt, who reminds us that our writing is often quite poor and that we should work hard to make it better.

In a recent article in the Chronicle, Stacey Patton argues that the PhD dissertation is an outdated and ineffective exercise.[1] Citing “many scholars” and “many faculty and administrators,” Patton argues for new means of earning a PhD. These means are various, but all include the option of canning the practice of spending several years writing a “proto-book” on a very specific topic for (likely) an even smaller readership. Before noting some of her proposals, however, she notes the problems with the dissertation.

Dissertations take too long and are too lonely: many take five-to-seven years to complete, and these projects are undertaken by a lonely soul toiling in a library or lab in the wee hours of the night–for many, many nights. Dissertations are too specialized and burdened with jargon so that “they are incomprehensible to scholars from other disciplines, much less applicable to the broader public.” Dissertations of the traditionally ink and paper sort “ignore the interactive possibilities of a new-media culture.” Moreover, dissertations continue to be written in an ever-increasing tight job market for those who actually finish (and successfully defend) a dissertation. Thus William Pannapacker, professor of English at Hope College, says the PhD dissertation is “a hazing ritual passed down from another era, retained because the Ph.D.’s before us had to do it.”

Because of this laundry list of negatives, Patton surveys several universities for the new approaches some are taking to the dissertation. Graduate programs at City University in New York, Michigan State University, and University of Virginia have increased funding and resources for students to do digital work, i.e. nontraditional dissertations. Some other schools allow students to produce three-to-four “publishable articles instead of one book-length text”; others encourage work for “public consumption.” Still other schools, such as Emory University, allow students to wok collaboratively on history or geography projects. Many of these changes stem from the digital revolution. As Patton notes, “to the extent that dissertations have changed already, technological advances have been largely responsible.”

Patton notes that although the digital revolution promises (or threatens, depending on who you ask) to revolutionize the dissertation, there are barriers to the implementation. Many programs are behind on the technology, either for financial or administrative reasons. Other programs do not have faculty with the expertise to oversee these sort of digitally based dissertations. Still other faculty members believe the book-length dissertation itself still holds value as an academic and vocational exercise.

In response to Patton’s article, allow me to note two things. First, related to the discussion about dissertations is a discussion about the value of doctoral studies in the humanities in general. Doctoral programs usually are designed to produce graduates equipped to be professors. However, after years spent in coursework and writing, most graduates find that positions they longed to obtain do not exist. Thus, the dissertation finds itself in the sights of trigger-happy academics because dissertations tend to spend productive years of a graduate’s youth on an investment which may have little or no return in terms of a job. Those spent years often lead to debt and lost wages for aspiring academics who are not able to find full-time professorial positions. As a result they are forced either to take underpaid, part-time adjunctive positions or to seek work outside of the academy altogether, where many employers view them as failures, as overqualified for the job under consideration.

Theological education faces many of the same challenges. Like the humanities in general, there are far more graduates of doctoral programs than there are available professorial posts. Unless the PhD graduate intends to serve in a pastoral position from the outset, he will likely view his himself as failure if he does not obtain a teaching appointment. Are five to seven years of specialized study, capped off by a grueling dissertation worth the time and effort?

Second, I am not at all convinced that we should do away with the dissertation as a requirement for all PhD students in the humanities. A well-researched and well-written dissertation is the fitting culmination of a PhD program, and it can serve a pastor, missionary, or counselor just as well as it serves a future professor. PhD seminars, colloquia, and dissertations equip students to answer important questions by building tight arguments, and this skill is relevant to any ministry profession.

Take, for example, a PhD in Theological Studies (Systematic Theology), such as the one offered at SEBTS. During any given seminar, the students gain breadth in the topic of that seminar (e.g. Theological Method) by reading 10-12 books and they gain depth in one aspect of that seminar (e.g. the relationship of theology and the sciences) through the major research paper they write for that seminar. Further, during the seminar they present their paper to the class, after which time they learn to engage in higher-level debate and discussion as they defend the thesis of their papers. Throughout the two years of seminars, they increasingly find themselves able to ask a theological question, and then construct a sound biblical-theological-historical argument as they answer the question. They learn to argue without misrepresenting their opponents, overstating their case, or relying upon untrustworthy sources.

The dissertation is the culmination of the program, as the student tackles one final question and provides a tight argument in answer to that question. In the end, the student has learned a skill that he will use for the rest of his life, whether he ends up being a professor, a pastor, a counselor, or a missionary: he learns to use his critical thinking skills to build sound and sustained theological arguments in order to answer the questions he encounters. So I’m not convinced that we should do away with the dissertation, which is an effective and practical exercise for anybody doing a Ph. D., even if the person doing the Ph. D. does not end up taking a job as a professor.

The following post was written by John Hammett. Dr. Hammett serves as Associate Dean of Theological Studies and Professor of Systematic Theology at Southeastern Seminary. This post is adapted from a recent talk that he gave to undergraduates in the Religion Department at Charleston Southern University. While at Charleston Southern, Dr. Hammett also delivered the annual lecture for the Staley Distinguished Scholar Series on the topic “Three Views of Knowing God’s Will.” You can read a press release about his lecture at the university’s website.

Five Reasons Why Christian Ministry Majors Still Need Seminary

By John Hammett

There are many fine Christian colleges out there who offer majors to students who feel called to some form of pastoral ministry. After four years of college in which they have taken courses in Bible, theology, church history and other ministry related topics, they may naturally wonder if they need three more years of seminary. Many want to go immediately into ministry.

Others  may be open to taking some additional courses from a seminary along the way (online), but do not see the need to relocate to a seminary campus, put their ministry plans on hold for a while, and study full time. I can understand such thinking, but want to offer some reasons for their consideration why seminary training may be very well worth the additional time, effort, and money it will cost.

1. The challenge of contextualization. Anyone seeking to minister in today’s post-modern, post-Christian culture must do so as a missionary. We can no longer assume a familiarity with the Bible’s grand story line of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Basic Christian terms and themes are akin to a foreign language for many of those to whom we minister. Learning to communicate the gospel and practice ministry in a way that speaks intelligible language and engages the culture effectively without becoming captive to culture and compromising the gospel is one of the most difficult challenges imaginable. Attempting to do so without acquiring the tools and skills that allow one to theologically analyze culture is a recipe for disaster at worst, or ineffective, irrelevant ministry at best. Those tools and skills are honed by study in how Christians in the past have encountered their cultures and contextualized the gospel. Such topics are the stuff of classes in church history, theology, ethics, and philosophy. Such skills presuppose an accurate understanding of the gospel, drawn from Scripture itself and not only from seeing how it is communicated in this culture. This is the goal of classes in Old Testament, New Testament, Hebrew, Greek, and Hermeneutics. Some Christian college majors may give students some exposure to the tools they will need, but few will enable them to develop the depth they will need to minister effectively in the context of 21^st century North America.

2. The nature of pastoral ministry. Pastors are called to be generalists, because the church is called to offer all the ministries Christians of all types need to grow to maturity. Aside from the small minority of multi-staff churches, most churches look to one man as their primary leader. He needs expertise in teaching and preaching the Bible, competence in counseling and other areas of practical ministry, skill in evangelism and discipleship, ability in educational administration and worship leadership, and more. Certainly the members of the body are called to minister; he cannot do it all. But he is called to lead it all. Few colleges have the breadth of faculty that seminaries do—experts in homiletics and preaching, counselors and administrators, educators and worship leaders, evangelists and missionaries. Pastoral ministry is comprehensive ministry; training for pastoral ministry should be similarly comprehensive.

3. The value of informal learning. This reason especially applies to those who think online learning delivers essentially the same educational experience as residential study. But imagine the difference between listening to an insightful lecture online, one which sparks all kinds of thinking of how the ideas discussed could affect the shape of one’s ministry, compared to hearing the same kind of lecture in person. In the first scenario, you complete listening to the lecture and in most case have no one around you who heard the same lecture, has the same interests, with whom you can debrief and discuss the implications of what you have just heard. In the second context, you can go up to the professor after class and ask if your implications are valid, you can grab a couple of guys in class and stop for a cup of coffee or lunch and discuss what you have just heard and what it means for ministry. This is the reason why Google and Facebook and all the big technology companies see the value of having a physical headquarters. They know how to Skype and videoconference  with the best of them, but they have found that the type of informal learning that occurs when people talk together over lunch, or chat around the water cooler, or work on projects together to be irreplaceable. To be sure, such conversations can begin among Christian ministry majors during their college years, but the conversations become deeper and more profoundly formative as students mature.

4. Mentorship in ministry. In the area surrounding Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, we are fortunate to have numerous churches who offer various types of ministry opportunities to students—mentorships, internships, supervised ministry experiences, involvement in counseling, mission trips, worship leadership. These churches feel a special calling to involvement in the training of those called to ministry, and the seminary actively partners with them to allow students to get seminary credit for ministry involvement. Such mentoring opportunities seem to me the perfect complement to seminary education, as they allow students to test the value, validity, and viability of what they hear in the classroom in the crucible of church life. Again, some Christian colleges may have some similarly helpful churches around them, but there is a significant difference between what a church can and should allow an 18 year old teenager to do compared to what a 25 year old young adult can and should do. Churches can rightly expect more of and offer more to seminary students.

5. An environment in which to mature. Young adults in their early twenties are in the midst of some of the most important decisions of their lives. This is the time when many young people find a mate and often begin a family. This is the time when a career trajectory begins to take shape, when partnerships in ministry are formed, where iron sharpens iron as students work, study, live and play together. In my years as a professor, I have seen many students meet a future spouse in my classrooms. In more recent years, I have heard of many finding kindred souls and forming church planting teams to go together into the cities of this country. Others develop friendships with professors or other students that will be sources of advice and encouragement for decades to come. Perhaps this can happen in the contexts of a Christian college, but many of these types of decisions are not finalized until well past the college years. I can think of no healthier environment to spend these maturing years in which you are making these life-shaping decisions than one in which you are surrounded by those who share your passion for serving Christ, who are involved in loving God with all their minds and discovering how they can be used by God to serve kingdom purposes in this world. They will provide the examples, friends, and community in which healthy growth happens.

The Preacher wisely observes, “If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed, but skill will bring success” (Eccles. 10:10). Yes, seminary takes time and effort and money; you will not be able to devote your full attention to ministry for a few more years. But it is time well spent in sharpening the edge of your ax so that you minister with the skill needed for success.

In a recent essay in The Atlantic Richard Gunderman discusses the recent pedagogical trends in medical, dental, and nursing schools.[1] One trend is that the traditional “lecture” is going the way of the deceased patient. Yet Gunderman believes there may yet be life and hope for the academic lecture.

Medical educators increasingly doubt the effectiveness of the lecture, but they’re not the only ones.  “Commentators frequently single out the lecture as the prototypically old school, obsolete learning technology, in comparison to which newer educational techniques offer interactive, customized, and self-paced learning alternatives.” These newer techniques include the use of laptops, tablets, and other technology in interactive group formats. Moreover, this is not simply a choice individual instructors or institutions have made. As Gunderman notes, “The LCME, the organization that accredits US medical schools, strictly limits the number of hours per week students may spend in lectures.” Some schools are even put on probation for not adhering to this criteria, apparently spending too much time on “passive” approaches to learning.

In the wake of all this progressive and interactive learning one asks, “what then of the lecture?” Gunderman believes, recalling Mark Twain’s words, “widespread reports of the lecture’s demise are somewhat exaggerated.” Ineffectiveness is not inherent in the lecture; it is inherent in the poorly delivered lecture. Surely just as there are boring, ineffective lectures there are boring, ineffective study groups. So Gunderman believes educators “must attempt to understand better the features that distinguish effective, engaging lectures [and lecturers]” rather than “disposing entirely of the lecture as a means of learning.” Thus the fate of the lecture is more a matter of the lecture’s purpose and the lecturer’s acumen and passion.

Gunderman encourages educators to ask a basic question: “why am I lecturing?” This question connects administrators and teachers to a more effective means of evaluation. The “why am I lecturing” question evaluates both the lecture and the lecturer. For as Gunderman argues, “the core purpose of a great lecture is not primarily to transmit information . . . The real purpose of a lecture is to show the mind and heart of the lecturer at work, and to engage the hearts and minds of learners.” Because of this sort of teaching, students raise new questions, connections, and possibilities in their own minds. Hence education is far more than disseminating information and tracking its consumption. Education is, then, a very human endeavor; good lecturers and good lectures recognize and strive for this.

Gunderman thus notes the qualities of a good lecturer and lecture. First, “a great lecturer tells a story.” Second, great lecturers enjoy lecturing (use “teaching” if you still dislike the term). “A great lecture is not a rote mechanical reading of notes, but a kind of dance, in which lecturer and listeners watch, respond to, and draw energy and inspiration from each other.” (There is “group study” in good lectures!) Third, good lecturers lecture in person. Gunderman recounts, as examples, two lectures: one given by Randy Pausch (professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon) in 2007 (while he was dying of cancer), and the other by Steve Jobs in 2005 at Stanford University. They did not record their lectures on high-tech gadgets, about which they both knew a little bit, and they did not simply read their notes. Instead, Pausch and Jobs spoke passionately, personally (to their audience), and reflectively about their respective subjects. Their lectures were effective because they caused their audiences to think about their lives “from fruitful new perspectives” and likely without boring their audiences. Gunderman, then, challenges medical educators, and by extension all educators, to think twice before pronouncing the lecture deceased. Rather, “the lecture remains one of our most precious educational resources.”

Kudos to Richard Gunderman, wherever he is. The lecture remains one of our most precious educational resources, and it ought not be sent to the pedagogical morgue on account of its most boring and tedious practitioners. As teachers, we must work hard to evoke from our students a curiosity and excitement about the things of God. To be a lazy teacher, preacher, or writer is a sin. Although George Steiner was not writing about theologians, his words are instructive:

To teach seriously is to lay hands on what is most vital in a human being. . . . Poor teaching, pedagogic routine, a style of instruction which is, unconsciously or not, cynical in its mere utilitarian aims, are ruinous. They tear up hope by its roots. Bad teaching is, almost literally, murderous and metaphorically, a sin. It diminishes the student, it reduces to gray inanity the subject being presented.

May teachers everywhere, and especially professors of theology, lecture as if their hair were on fire. May they tell the Great Story passionately, personally, and reflectively, and in so doing inform, energize, and inspire their students.

Patrick Deneen makes a fine point. In a recent First Things essay, he argues that “great books” programs can be the source of their own demise, and for that matter, the demise of civilization.[1] This article caught my attention for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that The College at Southeastern requires all baccalaureate students to take four seminars in “History of Ideas,” a program which focuses on the so-called “great books.”

Deneen begins the article by noting that the uppity-ups in higher education these days tend to focus on “critical thinking” as a goal upon which educators can agree even if they cannot come to any consensus regarding the content of their curricula. As Deneen sees it, proponents of “Great Books education” wish to teach the great books to their students as a way of teaching their students not only a way of thinking (i.e. critical thinking) but also a specific and substantive set of conclusions. They believe that a great books-based education prepares students for citizenship because these books are “the sources from which we have derived such concepts as human dignity, equality, individual liberty, constitutionalism, democracy, and so on.” In a nutshell, these proponents believe that these books have shaped not only certain individuals but indeed Western civilization as a whole.

Deneen doesn’t deny that the books have shaped Western Civilization, nor does he urge the academy to stop exposing students to the books. However, he does warn that the so-called “Great Books” contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. Many of these books actually argue against the type of learning goals conservative colleges would want to assume. “In recent years,” Deneen writes, “I have come to suspect that the very source of the decline of the study of the great books comes not in spite of the lessons of great books, but is to be found in the very arguments within a number of the great books” (p. 33).

In building his argument, Deneen begins by noting that many of the great authors (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Dante, Aquinas) seek to conform humanity to the natural or created order. For these authors, the overarching goal for education is virtue. Virtue is modeled and nurtured by way of learning from the ancients. However, other authors (Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes) sought to conform the natural or created order to humanity’s power. Francis Bacon, for example, who is known as the father of the scientific method, “sought to justify a new kind of science that had as its aim the expansion of human control over nature.” Bacon castigated the older authors and their virtue-based approach, and argued for a new approach to knowledge. Deneen then offers Descartes, Hobbes, and Dewey as further examples of authors whose approach to education involves discarding the virtue-based wisdom of the ancient and medieval thinkers.

Dewey in particular is an exemplar of this approach. As Deneen recounts, Dewey “argued that learning should be accomplished ‘experientially’ rather than through an encounter with books . . . Laboratory was to replace library, experiment would substitute for knowledge gleaned from the past” (p. 36). Deneen evaluates this shift: “In Dewey, as in Bacon, a close connection is forged between the modern project of mastery of nature and the rejection of an education focused upon the teachings of the great books” (p. 36). This shift is prominent in the American academy and can be seen in its focus on the STEM disciplines (Science, Tech, Engineering, and Mathematics).

Deneen shows how prominent private (e.g. Princeton, Harvard) and public (U. Texas-Austin) universities illustrate this drift. These universities each have open books emblazoned on their university seals, and yet their recent mission statements undermine book-based and virtue-based education by promoting scientific research as the preeminent goal of the university. Rather than encouraging and modeling virtue, these schools now hold intellectual discovery and diversity as the ideals of education.

Deneen further argues that these two divergent views of education arise from (and foster) equally divergent notions of humanity and human liberty:

Thus, two distinct and contradictory conceptions of liberty have been advanced in a long succession of great books. The first of these commends the study of great books for an education in virtue in light of a recognition of human membership in a created order to which we must conform and that we do not ultimately govern. The other argues against the study of great books and asserts a form of human greatness that seeks the human mastery over nature, particularly by the emphasis of modern science (p. 37).

Deneen concludes with some advice: “Perhaps we even need to reconsider the very language of greatness, and consider commending instead humble books, or at least great books that teach humility, in contrast to those great books that advance a version of Promethean greatness, an aspiration that has undermined the study of books” (p. 38). So read Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes but know that they are not arguing the same thing as Aristotle, Cicero, and Augustine. One group (Aristotle’s) encourages learning to understand the past for wise living in the world, while the other (Bacon’s) encourages learning to gain “new knowledge” for human mastery over nature.

Deneen is “spot on” to note that the Great Books contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. For this reason, they are best taught in a confessional environment in which the faculty members and students draw upon the Christian tradition as they seek to understand and critique the ideas in those books. In this type of environment, the student is able to discern (1) God’s creational design for human life and thought; (2) the idolatrous misdirection of God’s design which is evident in many of those great books; and (3) the ways in which the Christian community can redirect human life and thought away from idols and toward the living God.

The point, therefore, is not that we should not read or teach the Great Books but, rather, that we should not teach the Great Books as an end in and of themselves. Only Christ can be such an end, and so we read the Great Books as those who are under submission to the Lord’s commanding authority and within the framework of his revealed written word.