Threads from Henry's Web

Category: United Methodist Church

  • Community vs Supporting the Organization

    Miguel Angel Nuñez, in a post on Facebook, discusses what he would like to see in a church. Here’s an extract:

    Deseo formar parte de una comunidad cristiana que base su relación en la igualdad y no en la jerarquía, en la sinceridad y no en medias verdades, en la intimidad y no en un vínculo fingido, en la aceptación y no en la aplicación de etiquetas y partidos, en el poder curativo de un Dios de amor y no en la toxicidad de un dios que atemoriza, que culpa, que persigue y que manipula.

    For those who don’t read Spanish, let me provide a quick translation:

    I want to be part of a Christian community that is bases its social structure in equality and not in hierarchy, in sincerity and not in half-truths, in intimacy and not in fake ties, in acceptance and not in applying labels and parties, in the healing power of God’s love and not in the toxic nature of a god who frightens, blames, drives away, and manipulates.

    I like the kind of community we’re talking about, but I wonder just how it is that we can achieve it. I have experienced many different Christianity communities, either through membership or as a visitor. I have tried connecting with groups that claimed to be non-hierarchical, and in general I find that they are very hierarchical. In fact, the less explicit they are about their hierarchy, the more manipulative they become. There is nothing quite like the manipulation that takes place in a group where the lines of authority and the social connections are poorly defined.

    On the other hand, manipulation does not disappear in highly structured organizations. It may be easier for the newcomer to navigate the structure, but the more subtle manipulation of the group with an undefined structure is replaced by an inflexibility of the fixed structures. Methodist churches often fall into this second category.

    But I have observed something else. Often the structure that is claimed, either in writing or reported by members, is not the same as the real structure. If the claimed structure is not being followed in reality, the result can be even more manipulative than one that is completely undefined.

    In any of these churches one will hear calls to community, to give up oneself, to live for others. It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s all about God. But when all is said and done, God seems to support some “me’s” and “you’s” more than others. Those god-favored folks for some reason seem to be the same group that tends to become leaders in any social organization.

    It’s not supposed to be this way with the church.

    In his first letter to the Corinthian church Paul has to address issues of immorality as well as serious errors in theology and in church practice. But he starts out with his surprise that factions have broken out in the church. There’s even a “Christ” faction. I don’t know if the groups precisely match, but this reminds me of myself in a factional dispute. I’m prone to create a “not part of any faction, just following Jesus” position, which quickly become its own faction of holier than thou folks because, well, we’re not a faction! We’re an unfaction. Or something.

    Whether you’re in a home church organization or in a highly structured church organization, this human tendency toward hierarchy and faction can, and probably will, rear its ugly head.

    What can we do?

    The one answer that I have found is more application of the gospel message. When we apply the gospel message, we need to apply it first to ourselves. In other words, I need to get out of my faction, including the faction that says I have the answer, and start pointing to Jesus. No, not pointing to the way in which I’ve got Jesus under control so that my non-faction is the only group in the church that has things right.

    The gospel teaches us that we are all outsiders. We’re not part of any “in” crowd. It is only by grace that we become part of the only community that really matters, the community that belongs to Jesus Christ.

    (You can also follow me on Facebook.)

  • On UM Insight

    I want to thank UM Insight for publishing a post from this blog, Defensive Christianity. It’s encouraging to have a post recognized and republished, and I appreciate what they do for the United Methodist Church.

  • Measuring Liberal Christianity

    There have been a number of posts around the web regarding the decline of liberal Christianity. It got started by Ross Douthat in the New York Times. There have been a number of good responses, including Rachel Held Evans (which connected best with me), Chaplain Mike, and Diana Butler Bass. All these responses are good.

    There are so many factors in making a church a vibrant, successful operation that it’s easy to see how people can disagree so widely on what’s wrong and what ought to be done.

    My first problem is with how we measure the success of a church. Most of us are quick to claim that numbers don’t matter when the our own numbers are in decline, yet we are quite ready to accept that the decline in someone else’s numbers is an indication that something is wrong with them. And there are good scriptural examples of both. Jesus began his ministry with crowds following him and ended it pretty much alone. The early church, on the other hand, experienced steady growth.

    We can easily use “numbers don’t count” as an excuse for not doing our duty. At the same time, I don’t think that numbers really tell the story. When I look at a conference dashboard (a UMC thing!), the first thing I notice is the context-free use of statistics, with numbers not normed for church size nor adjusted for the demographics of the community in which a church is located. But more important, I think managing churches by the numbers is a sign of the very laziness of which some pastors are accused. It’s an excuse for bishops to fail to do their duty to use spiritual discernment in leading the church. I must confess that at first I was merely ambivalent about this approach. But the more I watch it, and the more I read about it, the more firmly opposed to it I become.

    This doesn’t mean that declining numbers cannot indicate failure. It’s just that they are not the one and only indicator. Determining the difference requires spiritual discernment and a willingness to take responsibility for acting on that discernment. I think the church is badly in need of this sort of leadership.

    But let me now turn my discernment to liberal Christianity, and take responsibility for my own views. I use the label “liberal charismatic” along with “passionate moderate” in the header to this blog. This doesn’t result from a rejection of labels, as one might take it from Brian McLaren, but rather a search for a set of labels that are applicable. I think I look at liberal Christianity with one foot in that camp.

    From that perspective I see a great deal of life in liberal or progressive Christianity. Unfortunately, like conservative Christianity, there is often a great deal of difference between the pastors and leaders and the folks in the pews. There are also dead spots in both versions (and all those between). I think these dead spots result from the same thing.

    Too many liberals in the pews are liberals not because they are liberal in theology but because they are not conservative. (I’m sure this applies to some pastors as well, but I don’t know many like that personally.) By this I mean that they really don’t have a theology of scripture. They reject the conservative doctrine and then just go along “not taking it as literally” as conservatives. They don’t have a liberal doctrine of the atonement; they just don’t accept the conservative view.

    I think it’s quite possible that it’s as a result of this lack of interest in doctrinal positions that liberal pastors often don’t preach much about doctrine. But there are liberal interpretations of all these things, and quite robust ones. I know liberal preachers who do preach about them, and in general their congregations are doing well. (Note that all such comments are from personal experience, not any sort of survey.)

    I have the privilege of publishing some authors who would identify themselves as progressive. Bruce Epperly, Bob Cornwall, and Bob LaRochelle come to mind immediately. I hope they won’t mind my taking their names in vain here, but they are all serious about their theology and active in discipleship and mission. They are deeply interested in Bible study. Indeed two of them have written Bible study guides that I publish. I list these three because of personal knowledge, but I would add that when I recently attended the Academy of Parish Clergy conference, I heard a number of presentations from people who are serious about both theology and mission. (Some of these folks should probably be categorized as moderate as well, but they were generally mainline.)

    While there are certainly churches in decline, what I question is the potential of the organizations for success. It is not that there is no life at the local level. It is rather that organizations are not tending to respond to the realities of ministry today. In the United Methodist Church, I think there is a substantial number of both clergy and laity whose main occupation is keeping things as they are. It is these people who are bringing death to the church, not the active liberal pastors and thinkers.

    I believe there is life in liberal Christianity, and in conservative Christianity as well. There is no life in the way we’re trying to determine success.

  • Have You Ever Crossed the Street?

    Crossing the StreetNo, I don’t mean this in the very literal sense, but either in the spiritual sense or in terms of affiliation. One of the defining experiences of my life involves crossing the street in this sense. I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist. That involves quite a number of things, including keeping the Sabbath (Saturday) as a day of rest and worship, accepting certain ideas regarding the last days (eschatology), and rules for dressing, eating and drinking.

    In my case, I can easily see my life experience as multiple street-crossings. Most of my younger years were spent in the self-supporting organizations in Adventism. These formed, at the time, a sort of subculture within Adventism that was stricter in adherence to many of the teachings of the church. I moved from that to a more mainstream Adventism before I left the church entirely. I then spent time outside of any church and quite determined I would never be involved again. Finally, I found my way into a United Methodist congregation, where at first my feeling was that I had found a place of comfort. Then I got active and engaged in the work of the church again. Each of these experiences involved some aspect of “crossing the street.”

    Bob LaRochelle has just written an essay for Energion.net regarding the current controversy in the Catholic church regarding American sisters religious (nuns). It’s well worth checking out.

    I’m getting the crossing the street metaphor from a book my company recently published, titled—you guessed it!—Crossing the Street. That book, by Dr. Bob LaRochelle, describes his personal journey of crossing the street, moving from the Roman Catholic Church to the United Church of Christ. In it, he gives two reads of the metaphor “crossing the street.” The first is a negative one, in which one crosses the street to avoid what one believes is evil. “Don’t get too near the Catholics!” the protestant might say, or vice versa. But crossing the street can, as Bob makes clear, also be a positive experience.

    I have encountered the negative view of crossing the street many times in negative reactions to my own street crossing. Seventh-day Adventists find it hard to understand that I could leave their church. The more conservative of them regard me as an apostate, more to be avoided than even the ordinary non-believer. (To some SDAs, non-believers include most non-SDA Christians.) Others express understanding that I had problems with the church organization, but can’t imagine how I could have problems with the doctrines. Others assume that I’ve found a kinder, gentler organization in the United Methodist Church, and that must explain everything.

    Non-SDAs who know my background often wonder why I don’t go hammer and tongs against the horrible heresies perpetrated by the Adventist church. Surely I should use my extensive knowledge of Adventism (I’m a graduate of an SDA college with an MA from the graduate school at Andrews University, earned in conjunction with the SDA Theological Seminary) to rip apart all those wrong people.

    My approach is different. I value my experiences growing up as an SDA. I can reject certain elements of what I was taught without decided that the entire experience (or those I experienced it with) are horrible, without value, and not deserving of respect. In fact, I like to encourage SDAs to get into more dialog with the larger church and the larger church to get into dialog with them. There are things we can learn from the SDA experience. There are things they can learn from us.

    This street crossing is very much a part of who I am. It forms a lifelong defining experience.

    So when I got a proposal for a book titled Crossing the Street and discovered what it was about, I was excited. At the same time, I figured this experience would be different, because the author was moving from the Roman Catholic Church to mainline Protestantism. And, as I had learned thoroughly in growing up, there really is no organization less like the SDA Church than the Roman Catholic Church.

    Wrong! Bob’s experiences in crossing the street were very similar to my own. The authority issues in the Catholic church were similar to those I found in the SDA church. What was more, Bob had moved from the Catholic church to the United Church of Christ and still saw great value in his former tradition. Instead of seeing it as a change of sides in a war, he saw his move as a new opportunity to improve dialog.

    One of the things I like to emphasize to my SDA friends is that if you leave the SDA church, don’t do it because you think you’re going to find the perfect church, one without the problems in SDA churches. There are many things in the SDA church that I’ll criticize. I follow the news. I see some of the things being done currently, such as the rejection of the La Sierra University Choir by an SDA academy in Michigan, and they make me angry.

    But the United Methodist Church doesn’t get everything right either. Not even close! Many of these things are based on the same human emotions as those in the SDA or the Roman Catholic churches.

    I wish I had read Crossing the Street before I crossed the street. It wouldn’t have prevented the crossing, but it would have saved me time in terms of finding my balance. Yes, this book talks about a change from the Roman Catholic Church to the United Church of Christ, but it would have facilitated my own move from SDA to United Methodist just as well. In fact, I commend this to my SDA and ex-SDA friends as an example of a healthy attitude to take to such changes. I suspect that others will find similar help.

     

  • Beware the Cult of the Speaker

    Dave Black warns us today against the cult of the speaker. (With permission I’ve extracted the relevant portion as a post at JesusParadigm.com since Dave’s blog doesn’t allow linking to a specific post.)

    Considering what we’ve heard recently about megachurches creating satellite campuses that receive the message from the senior pastor on the main campus via video. It’s not my intent here to point to any particular speaker as an example of being a celebrity preacher or of participating the cult of the speaker. Those of us without the temptation of multi-site ministry or television opportunities can be just as much tempted to pride, arrogance, or any of the myriad of other temptations that come with celebrity.

    Dave’s post brought to my mind a concern I’ve had with many churches. I was a member of one church that had somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the average Sunday attendance in the lay speaker program. That’s a wonderful thing. But how often did any of these lay speakers speak? Not very frequently.

    Now as we were constantly reminded in lay speaking classes, preaching on Sunday is not the only place in which we could serve. But in the same way I would remind pastors that preaching on Sunday is not the only way they can serve their congregations.

    This was brought forcefully to mind a few years back when I invited a pastor to speak at a conference. He eventually had to back out because an emergency came up that kept him out of his pulpit for one week. He told me that he had a covenant with the congregation to be in the pulpit 50 out of 52 Sundays.

    While I commend that pastor for being faithful to his word and for putting his beliefs into practice, I don’t think having “the pastor” or “the senior pastor” speak every Sunday is necessarily a good thing. It’s possible that other people in the congregation have something valid to contribute as well. But much more importantly, if we don’t learn to speak about the gospel in church, where will we learn?

    If we want lay speakers (speaking “Methodist”) to learn how to speak, where could it be better to do this than at their home congregation? I know there are concerns about the quality of the preaching and the theological/doctrinal accuracy of the message. But one of the things a pastor could do would be to spend the time he or she might spend in sermon preparation helping a lay speaker prepare a sermon.

    Then what about the substantial number of members of any church who are neither called nor equipped to present a sermon? There are many varieties of sharing, including testimonies. We have this kind of thing in the church from time to time, but why is it so rare?

    I recall testimonies about the ministries of the church given over a period of four weeks. These were excellent. They gave me a better idea of what certain church ministries were accomplishing. It was great to hear from the people involved.

    Recently we had a youth Sunday. We have one of those a year. Why is it just once a year? The young man who brought the message did an excellent job. I could stand to hear him more often.

    We have many members who feel very inadequate to talk about their faith. Does not the example set by the Sunday service suggest that it requires a trained professional to present the Christian message? Does that example not encourage people to think that what they need to refer their friends and acquaintances to the pastor if they are to have a conversation about faith?

    At my home church (First UMC, Pensacola), we are blessed with an excellent pastoral staff. I very much appreciate their ministry in preaching. But I wonder just how much that ministry might be expanded if more time were spent training members of the congregation to share in everything from a one minute testimony to a full sermon.

    We often wonder why people tend to become pew sitters rather than becoming active. But isn’t the example of Sunday morning a suggestion that this is precisely the proper role for the “ordinary” church member? I think it’s worth considering.

     

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  • Seventh-Day Adventist vs Methodist on Family Guy

    As an ex-SDA who is now Methodist, I just have to share this video:

     

    Now my experience amongst Methodists is that most will just shrug their shoulders about worship on Saturday. They get a little more tense about soul sleep.

    I have encountered a few Methodists who are like the one in the video, generally those who really have no idea what SDAs believe.

    On the other hand, I’ve gotten some very interesting reactions from SDAs who discover I’m ex-SDA and now Methodist. At one meeting where I had brought one of our Energion authors who is SDA, I was cornered by someone at the book table afterward who said he simply couldn’t understand how one could ever have doctrinal disagreements with the SDA church. Take it from me—it’s really quite easty! It’s only fair to point out that our hosts at that church were embarrassed and apologized to me for his behavior, though I actually didn’t mind.

     

    (HT: Spectrum)

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  • Connectionalism and Dysfunctional Churches

    I have made a few negative comments about conference dashboards keeping statistics on membership, apportionments, and other activities available to anyone who wants to read. I continue to question whether these numbers really tell the story of the health of the churches. There are, I believe, some very large and growing churches that have little or nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

    Nonetheless, I think we have a problem with accountability in the United Methodist Church. When I took my new member class in my first United Methodist congregation, I recall the teacher, who made a number of historical errors, emphasized connectionalism. But if I were to go by his discussion of it, connectionalism means simply that we all go help one another as needed; nothing was said about accountability.

    Those who are pushing the statistical approach are, I believe, responding to a very real problem. Pastors and church congregations in the United Methodist Church can go on indefinitely violating the discipline of the church or refusing to take necessary actions to make their church successful, while expecting that others will take up the slack.

    That is what happens when a church continually fails to pay its apportionments. Now I’m not 100% a fan of apportionments as they are currently implemented, but they do represent a critical element of connectionalism. We put our money together to accomplish things we can’t do separately. Whatever reforms the system might need, the basic concept is sound, and more importantly if you have such a system, and some churches don’t do their share, all suffer.

    This means that we need accountability as part of our connectional system. Churches need to be accountable to those who support them. In a more congregational system, an older church barely hanging on while slowly dying would have a hard time getting people to send money to help. A United Methodist congregation that refuses to take necessary actions, and continues to fail to support the team will nonetheless benefit from the resources of the denomination.

    We should be willing to give money to support the mission of the church. But supporting a church that is willfully imitating a sinking ship sliding under the waves is not mission—it’s bad stewardship.

    In addition, dysfunctional congregations continue to be part of the witness our denomination gives regarding Christ. Our “brand” can be tarnished by the actions of any of our churches. In the case of a denomination, tarnishing the brand also provides a negative witness—tarnishes the brand, so to speak—of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    My problem is that statistics can and generally do fail to get the entire picture. You can have good statistics and still not be building the kingdom of God. I welcome moves to make pastors more accountable. I think more could be done to make churches accountable as well.

    But accountability is going to take more than reading the numbers. It will require people with good discernment who can see the context, make the necessary decisions, and take responsibility for those decisions. It may be difficult. We may prefer to find some objective measure, but it is still necessary. An objective measure of a subjective set of values will, by nature, be deceptive.

    In critical ways, the church is not a business. Thus my call is for accountability carried out by human beings who exercise all their discernment and wisdom and seek to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

     

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  • A United Methodist Pastor on Revitalizing Dead Churches

    Out of This World: an Assessment of Christian CommunityThere are many days when the United Methodist Church discourages me, and I wrote a post yesterday with that sort of feeling. But there are two things that regularly encourage me: Encountering vital small congregations, and meeting some of our young pastors.

    Via another young pastor, Geoffrey Lentz, who is doing wonderful things at First United Methodist Church and especially with our ICON service, I met one of these young pastors through my publishing work–be warned that I’m going to push his book in this post just a bit–Darren McClellan. His book is Out of This World: An Assessment of Christian Community, and in it he evaluates a church congregation through interviews, and then looks at some suggestions to improve the way in which we handle such things. It’s a slightly edited version of his Princeton Doctor of Ministry dissertation.

    It’s with our paid/team imprint EnerPower Press, because it was submitted as a simple dissertation printing. Had it been submitted for traditional publishing, I might well have decided not to take it due to the size of the potential audience. In terms of quality, the manuscript need have no apologies (nor the author).

    I’m not going to comment extensively on this, as it’s hardly my field, but in it, Darren starts with a view of discipleship derived from both Bonhoeffer and Wesley, and then allows the anonymous church members to express themselves on how this worked in their church. He then gives some specific ideas for reform in the church, and finally addresses suggestions to churches, to new pastors, to district superintendents, and to bishops. This may be a bit ambitious, but such directness is needed to prevent what Darren calls “vocational homicide.” That’s a strong term, no doubt, but my observation is that there are many people in the church who are guilty of that charge.

    For my United Methodist readers, and any others interested, I’m going to put this book on sale for direct purchase. I see that the Amazon.com price today is $18.99. I’m going to put it at $18 shipped via Energion Direct. I’ll leave the sale price up for two weeks. I have some on the shelf here ready to ship.

    At the same time, bloggers who are interested in reviewing it can e-mail to request a free review copy. The only requirement is that you do review it. There’s no requirement as to how you review it, but if you receive a free copy, I want to see your review. Oh, and the government wants you to note that you received a free copy.

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  • Dashboards, Discernment, and Responsible Leadership

    Logo of the United Methodist Church
    Image via Wikipedia

    Yes, that’s a big collection of topics, but I think they’re connected. John Meunier links to an excellent post by Dan Dick, which you should read before you read this one. The topic here is the conference dashboards in United Methodist annual conferences, such as this one for the North Alabama Conference.

    I do have substantial problems with the church dashboard, including a great deal of the way in which the statistics are presented. I also am concerned about numerical measures of success in the church. It’s quite possible to build up numbers and be missing the mission and ministry of the church, and the proclamation of the gospel message. Some people will leave a church that is aiming for full commitment and discipleship. At the same time, as Dan Dick pointed out, some people’s professed disdain for such numbers is the result of laziness. But all of this has been thoroughly discussed amongst the Methodist blogs.

    It seems to me, however, that the use of these numbers on conference dashboards is just a symptom of a certain retreat from personal responsibility. I don’t mean by this that our United Methodist bishops are off trying to avoid hard decisions. Rather, we are systematically trying to codify and quantify so much of human behavior and organizational policy that not only can avoid taking personal responsibility; they must.

    For example, in my district, the district superintendent has 53 churches for which he is responsible, and the conference as a whole has more that 600 pastors, for which our bishop is responsible. Each year, pastoral appointments are made by the bishop, with the advice of the cabinet and many people in the churches, for those 600 churches. I think the temptation is going to be very strong to put some kind of simplified set of numbers on performance. The more details you have to consider, the harder it is to make a choice.

    What I wonder is how often a bishop could get by with ignoring the numbers because, let’s say, one pastor is making better disciples, even if his numbers (for some reason) didn’t look as good. Could the popular pastor with the watered-down message be overlooked in favor of the pastor with the harder message of sacrifice and service? I recognize here that the pastor with the good numbers may be an effective disciple maker. I know some pastors in that category. The pastor with the bad numbers may be either lazy, or much more likely simply too beat up by parishioners, the system, and the unrealistic expectations we have for pastors that he is, in fact, performing badly.

    But can the leadership determine this with accuracy in all (or nearly all) cases? Would they be willing to send the less popular pastor to a larger church?

    It seems to me that collecting statistics is valuable, though I think someone well qualified in analyzing data should rework the conference display. I sense a few cases of deceptive use of numbers. Most importantly, the numbers are not related to the nature of the existing church body and the community in which it is located. All of that requires personal knowledge such as cannot be collected remotely.

    But what if such information was collected and available? Would our leadership be willing to act against popular pressure? I see this as a common problem in leadership, at least in the United States today. We have a problem making a decision and standing up for it. Of course, in employment situations, the decisive leader may well have to present statistics as evidence in court in order to justify a decision.

    That’s one reason for “zero tolerance” policies in so many cases. “Zero tolerance” means that people in leadership don’t have to make responsible, nuanced decisions. But “zero tolerance” is just the extreme case of avoiding responsibility. Putting it all on a set of numbers is another one. It’s a trend I don’t like, even though I recognize it as a response to the other extreme–a complete lack of accountability. (I have tremendous respect for Bishop Willimon, for example, whose dashboard I linked as an example. Yet I’m still not happy with it.)

    I ramble because I don’t know a solution, other than to say we need leaders to take responsibility, and we need to make sure we know who is responsible for what, so they can be accountable. I also think we need to bring leadership closer to the local church so that each person in leadership is responsible for a reasonable number of people and churches. That would allow individuals to seek out all those nuances that back up the numbers.

    I don’t know the solution, and since I am neither a pastor nor a church administrator, and have avoided most church committees, I am probably the wrong person to propose one. What I do believe is that, though structural changes can help, the answer doesn’t lie in precisely how the church is organized. There are congregational style churches that are just as dysfunctional as any Methodist church whose bishop sent the “wrong” pastor.

    What we do need is a change of our personal culture, from that of an organization that must maintain itself to one of gospel driven discipleship.

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  • On a Virtual Seminary Education

    Spire of First United Methodist Church
    Image by unca_cthulhu via Flickr

    Jason Byassee explains why he voted to allow up to 2/3 of seminary credits to be taken online in his United Methodist conference (HT: Joel Watts).

    Readers of this blog will already be aware that I believe it’s inevitable that the majority of education is delivered by virtual means. Not only that, I think this is a good thing. I think it will make it possible to deliver a higher quality education. There is always resistance to new technology, because it takes away from our old standard ways of doing things. But instead of fighting such technology, which is still just a tool, we need to find ways to use it to make things work better.

    I think our current concept of a university, a college, and a seminary are doomed. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing good in those concepts. There are experiences that do need to be carried out together. But those classroom lectures with hundreds of students ignoring the professor can be replaced by more efficient means, and we can spend our money, and the precious time of quality teachers on the most important things.

    For example, I recall preparing lessons for my later classes while occupying a seat in a class on Daniel and Revelation, and then getting a comfortable ‘A’ in the course. I could have learned more by spending those hours online. Could the professor have done better? Absolutely. But he also had to deal with about 50 students, so detailed discussion of all points involving all of us would have been impossible.

    On the other hand I would not want to exchange my time studying Greek exegesis with Dr. Sakae Kubo for anything else. There we had half a dozen serious students, and we made that time with an expert count.

    Dr. Byassee comments on hands-on education, such as learning how to take the hand of a dying person. There’s where I think even seminary fails. I have talked to many seminary graduates who are uncomfortable praying with a member of their congregation when they graduate. They have to become comfortable as they pastor. Here the local church needs to be involved. I wonder why a young person, especially one contemplating full-time ministry, would be allowed to get through their youth in church without learning how to pray with one another.

    I’d think strong local church involvement plus a good online program with additional time spent in person at a seminary (weekends, weeks, months, sabbatical years) would be a good formula. All of those elements should be lifelong, and not just during a time of preparation.

    In my view, social media and virtual education will only hurt us if we don’t learn how to make the best of the resources available.

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