Showing posts with label seminary vision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seminary vision. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
What they didn't learn in seminary
I was sent this link today on what various people didn't learn in seminary. I will resist bragging on a newly formed seminary I've heard of...
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Seminary Vision (7-23-09): Genius of Our MDIV
I was chatting earlier this week with a former student for a magazine article about our new MDIV degree. Yes, we've said it all before... But I thought the unique features coalesced exceptionally well in my mind in this conversation.
1. Convenient for students
Online...... doesn't make us unique, but it does distinguish us along with the leaders of seminary education. Bethel Seminary (where Mike Cline who was interviewing me went) certainly is one of the leaders here. Asbury Seminary is as well. Others like Wesley Biblical have joined.
The flagship seminaries like Duke and Princeton will survive without programs that allow you to do most of your courses online and then only come to campus once or twice a year for intensives. But most seminaries will wither away without these sorts of options. The Wesleyan Seminary immediately joins a small group of leaders who offer seminary degrees without making you move somewhere.
2. On the job training
Study while in ministry... really puts us in a small number. Bethel Seminary has this option as well, but who else but us and them does? And even then, my impression is that Bethel has not geared their curriculum (yet) to maximize the learning in relation to being in a local church while studying specific topics. My impression is that "in ministry" for them simply means the same as #1 above--you don't have to leave your church to train.
By contrast, in our program, you do action research on your local congregation and its environment every week! The sample below brings this out.
3. Integrated foundations with practice
Learn Bible, theology church history in the context of ministry...... nowhere, and I mean no one, has this integrative piece, not the way we do. The sample says it all.
Sample week at our seminary:
You'll remember that someone gave our seminary concept a rather scathing review a few weeks ago. I really felt sorry for him because he really has no idea how much more the typical seminary student is going to like our way over business as usual--and how much sounder the paradigm is pedagogically. Purists are usually wrong. But even more often, they end up marginalized.
I was looking at a week from one of our online courses starting this Fall. Three features of this week jumped out at me because these are assignments his seminary couldn't assign even if they wanted to!
1. Convenient for students
Online...... doesn't make us unique, but it does distinguish us along with the leaders of seminary education. Bethel Seminary (where Mike Cline who was interviewing me went) certainly is one of the leaders here. Asbury Seminary is as well. Others like Wesley Biblical have joined.
The flagship seminaries like Duke and Princeton will survive without programs that allow you to do most of your courses online and then only come to campus once or twice a year for intensives. But most seminaries will wither away without these sorts of options. The Wesleyan Seminary immediately joins a small group of leaders who offer seminary degrees without making you move somewhere.
2. On the job training
Study while in ministry... really puts us in a small number. Bethel Seminary has this option as well, but who else but us and them does? And even then, my impression is that Bethel has not geared their curriculum (yet) to maximize the learning in relation to being in a local church while studying specific topics. My impression is that "in ministry" for them simply means the same as #1 above--you don't have to leave your church to train.
By contrast, in our program, you do action research on your local congregation and its environment every week! The sample below brings this out.
3. Integrated foundations with practice
Learn Bible, theology church history in the context of ministry...... nowhere, and I mean no one, has this integrative piece, not the way we do. The sample says it all.
Sample week at our seminary:
You'll remember that someone gave our seminary concept a rather scathing review a few weeks ago. I really felt sorry for him because he really has no idea how much more the typical seminary student is going to like our way over business as usual--and how much sounder the paradigm is pedagogically. Purists are usually wrong. But even more often, they end up marginalized.
I was looking at a week from one of our online courses starting this Fall. Three features of this week jumped out at me because these are assignments his seminary couldn't assign even if they wanted to!
- Do Action Research assessing the “human needs” of both the immediate context of your church, as well as any target areas on which you believe your church should focus (50 points).
- Review and evaluate the demographic research you did for the Cultural Contexts of Ministry course.
- Explore the biblical question, “Who is my neighbor?” in relation to your local context.
First, since you are on location in a church, you don't just explore in the abstract what the possible human needs of a community might be. You actually explore the needs of your community, of your church's community, the place where you are ministering. Other seminaries can't do this, because they don't require you to be at a church!
Second, you bring something from a previous course into this one. With the possible exception of Bethel, other seminaries just aren't sequenced so intentionally to where you build like this from one course to the next. From the discussions we've had with accrediting bodies, they'll crown us king just for this alone. NO seminary anywhere maps out the curriculum in the detail we have.
Finally, his seminary might have a class where you do exegetical work on Luke 10, the final bullet above. If you're lucky, they have a class on Luke you can take. If you're lucky, you'll have a Bible prof who is interested not only in what scholars of Luke have said and their own pet projects but in applying the text to today.
What they do not have is a Bible prof "dropping into" a missional class. Some at least have "missional" courses, rather than old style evangelism classes. And it is possible that a practical prof might do a class on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, maybe. But no seminary brings a Biblehead into the same class (so to speak) with a Missional prof with as much intentionality and integration as our program does.
If you thought IWU was being picked on by a big gun, don't feel bad. In my honest opinion, there's simply no seminary pedagogical design that comes close to what we're proposing. May we be good stewards of what God has entrusted us with...
... and of course, we don't expect to be the only ones for long. This is too good for others not to borrow! Purists like our detractor will be fighting the visionaries in their own faculties in the days to come, not to mention their own administrations urging them to get with the program!
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Seminary Vision (7-2-09): Leading Edge
The final of the IWU Seminary videos is "leading edge." I've been providing further commentary along with the videos. Here are the links to the commentary, and each video on YouTube is further linked there:
Missional
Communal
Integrated
Spiritually Enriching
Personalized
Economical
The final video is on the Leading Edge aspect to our degree.
1. As I thought about what is leading edge about our seminary, really, all of the items on the above list fall into that category. A couple of them are now fairly common, although they weren't 10 years ago. For example, the fact that you don't have to move somewhere for three years--or even for one--is a new innovation that has saved the very existence of seminaries. You can do 2/3 of the degree online and the other third by coming to campus for 1 week intensives. Thanks to Asbury for pioneering much of this.
2. Asbury gives good training to its online profs. By the same token, Indiana Wesleyan has really perfected adult education both online and at satellite sites. We use the cohort model, where you take a sequence of courses in a particular order with the same group of fellow students. The model of course creation is usually three stage: 1) course content is generated by content experts, 2) the content is put into instructional form by pedagogical experts, which then is 3) taught by good facilitators.
This process in itself is a leading edge process. Most schools focus on getting content experts with name recognition. This makes a school look good, and it does privilege a group of students who are on the same wavelength with that professor.
But in practice, world renown content experts are rarely spectacular teachers. The majority of students thus do not benefit as much from having a world class professor as they would from a less brilliant scholar who is a more brilliant teacher. This is an interesting irony and self-defeating aspect of most educational institutions. That which is most valued--spectacular names--more often than not undermines the very reason for most educational institutions' existence: to teach.
A unique curricular process has evolved in the design of our seminary at IWU. Yes, our online courses with syllabus, grading process, and specific assignments are preset in a template in Blackboard, regardless of the particular professor. This is potentially discouraging to the maverick prof but is student oriented. It ensures the best pedagogy with the best content.
The content is generated collaboratively, not by a single content expert but by a half dozen brilliant minds. The pedagogy has also been generated collaboratively, by a group of people including several with significant online teaching. We have changed the standard format of Blackboard. I didn't use to like Blackboard, but I realized the reason was more than anything the way they generally package and promote its format. A small tweak--making each of the left hand buttons correspond to one week's assignments and discussion forums--and all is good. I'm left dumbfounded at who these Blackboard people that they have promoted such a counterintuitive format all these years in so many different institutions!
I have concluded that, really, big name scholars are best reserved most of the time for one week intensive formats. For the long haul, you want a good facilitator. Good education is not the transmission of information. The lecture in itself is the most inefficient form of teaching. Learning that is most retained and appropriate is learner generated, and thus the best teacher is one who designs a learning experience that leads a student to generate his or her own understanding. And it will hit multiple learning styles.
The teaching of individual courses will also include a collaborative element, where the course is led by a practitioner, but you receive some feedback from Bible and theology/church history professors, and other professors will feel free to drop in and comment too. We are thus trying to set up a true learning community, rather than a bunch of lone ranger superheroes like you get at other seminaries.
The seminary at IWU has also convinced IWU to add the Blackboard Community add on, making it possible for students across various cohorts to interact with one another. Asbury had this with its Cafe that so irked its board of trustees during the presidential crisis a few years back. But it was a great thing to create across the seminary cohesiveness and camaraderie. We will implement something like this as well, including alumni of IWU's MA program so they can keep in touch.
3. You can see from the process of course creation that integration has been a primary concern. It has been a challenge, but we have managed to meet in the middle on course design. There have been differences. One person wants a book that is just too long and too much for one element of a course. Some of the debates we've had as course designers have made their way into discussions for the course.
Is the missional movement wrong when it opposes thinking about attracting people to your church? Does your church community have to include the community immediately surrounding it or can your church be located in an area with which it has little interaction? We've debated and disagreed and finally made these discussions things for students themselves to make up their minds up in the course.
We've mentioned already how we bring Bible, theology, and church history to bear on topics. I'm excited for a couple weeks in the missional course where students will look at social justice in the prophets one week and study Rauschenbush and the early twentieth century social gospel in the next.
And as we've said, it is the leading edge of seminary education for training to be done in ministry, on the job. Students in our MDIV have to get in a church if they are not. We will be refining and retrofitting our MA degrees for those not in local church ministry. We haven't abandoned you in the parachurch or you lay leaders or you ministers wanting to beef up a particular skill set. But the MDIV is on the job training, "take your church to seminary."
4. The attention to spiritual formation is not unique to our program, but it is unusual. Tht we require it across the curriculm is fairly unique. And the robust way in which we address it is fairly unique. We look at the process of real change rather than the less productive--go and pray approach. And when you look at some other programs in spiritual formation, they usually myopically focus on the personal dimension, when in fact the corporate dimension must be present for the personal dimension to flourish. This is a blind spot of Western individualism that shows up even in the most noted spiritual formation programs in the US.
5. Finally, we have designed a program that is both faith-full and mature in its understanding. We are in the Wesleyan tradition, which means we are most interested in life change more than adding a set of mental widgets or skills. We are interested in you being able to do ministry more than in you knowing things. To be sure, knowing things is good and important, but we are getting the priorities of seminary education straight.
We are hermeneutically mature, especially for evangelicals. Most evangelical seminaries play a game here--if I learn Greek, diagram the sentences of the Bible, study a little historical background, then I will somehow mysteriously and almost automatically know God's will for today. We're seeing this paradigm unravelling before our very eyes. God has as often as not used the words of the Bible in ways other than their original sense and intent. This fact in itself undermines a curricular program at most seminaries that dedicates as much as a third of the curriculum to the pursuit of the original meanings of individual biblical books.
And of course, very little attention is spent in this typical curriculum to teaching what to do with that original meaning once you think you have it. How do I get from that time to this time. For that matter, how do I get from my class in Romans to my class in pastoral care and counseling, let alone to my class in preaching?
I have mentioned elsewhere that this is a great time for the Wesleyan tradition because of currents in the intellectual flow today. And as such, this is a great time to be starting a Wesleyan seminary!
Missional
Communal
Integrated
Spiritually Enriching
Personalized
Economical
The final video is on the Leading Edge aspect to our degree.
1. As I thought about what is leading edge about our seminary, really, all of the items on the above list fall into that category. A couple of them are now fairly common, although they weren't 10 years ago. For example, the fact that you don't have to move somewhere for three years--or even for one--is a new innovation that has saved the very existence of seminaries. You can do 2/3 of the degree online and the other third by coming to campus for 1 week intensives. Thanks to Asbury for pioneering much of this.
2. Asbury gives good training to its online profs. By the same token, Indiana Wesleyan has really perfected adult education both online and at satellite sites. We use the cohort model, where you take a sequence of courses in a particular order with the same group of fellow students. The model of course creation is usually three stage: 1) course content is generated by content experts, 2) the content is put into instructional form by pedagogical experts, which then is 3) taught by good facilitators.
This process in itself is a leading edge process. Most schools focus on getting content experts with name recognition. This makes a school look good, and it does privilege a group of students who are on the same wavelength with that professor.
But in practice, world renown content experts are rarely spectacular teachers. The majority of students thus do not benefit as much from having a world class professor as they would from a less brilliant scholar who is a more brilliant teacher. This is an interesting irony and self-defeating aspect of most educational institutions. That which is most valued--spectacular names--more often than not undermines the very reason for most educational institutions' existence: to teach.
A unique curricular process has evolved in the design of our seminary at IWU. Yes, our online courses with syllabus, grading process, and specific assignments are preset in a template in Blackboard, regardless of the particular professor. This is potentially discouraging to the maverick prof but is student oriented. It ensures the best pedagogy with the best content.
The content is generated collaboratively, not by a single content expert but by a half dozen brilliant minds. The pedagogy has also been generated collaboratively, by a group of people including several with significant online teaching. We have changed the standard format of Blackboard. I didn't use to like Blackboard, but I realized the reason was more than anything the way they generally package and promote its format. A small tweak--making each of the left hand buttons correspond to one week's assignments and discussion forums--and all is good. I'm left dumbfounded at who these Blackboard people that they have promoted such a counterintuitive format all these years in so many different institutions!
I have concluded that, really, big name scholars are best reserved most of the time for one week intensive formats. For the long haul, you want a good facilitator. Good education is not the transmission of information. The lecture in itself is the most inefficient form of teaching. Learning that is most retained and appropriate is learner generated, and thus the best teacher is one who designs a learning experience that leads a student to generate his or her own understanding. And it will hit multiple learning styles.
The teaching of individual courses will also include a collaborative element, where the course is led by a practitioner, but you receive some feedback from Bible and theology/church history professors, and other professors will feel free to drop in and comment too. We are thus trying to set up a true learning community, rather than a bunch of lone ranger superheroes like you get at other seminaries.
The seminary at IWU has also convinced IWU to add the Blackboard Community add on, making it possible for students across various cohorts to interact with one another. Asbury had this with its Cafe that so irked its board of trustees during the presidential crisis a few years back. But it was a great thing to create across the seminary cohesiveness and camaraderie. We will implement something like this as well, including alumni of IWU's MA program so they can keep in touch.
3. You can see from the process of course creation that integration has been a primary concern. It has been a challenge, but we have managed to meet in the middle on course design. There have been differences. One person wants a book that is just too long and too much for one element of a course. Some of the debates we've had as course designers have made their way into discussions for the course.
Is the missional movement wrong when it opposes thinking about attracting people to your church? Does your church community have to include the community immediately surrounding it or can your church be located in an area with which it has little interaction? We've debated and disagreed and finally made these discussions things for students themselves to make up their minds up in the course.
We've mentioned already how we bring Bible, theology, and church history to bear on topics. I'm excited for a couple weeks in the missional course where students will look at social justice in the prophets one week and study Rauschenbush and the early twentieth century social gospel in the next.
And as we've said, it is the leading edge of seminary education for training to be done in ministry, on the job. Students in our MDIV have to get in a church if they are not. We will be refining and retrofitting our MA degrees for those not in local church ministry. We haven't abandoned you in the parachurch or you lay leaders or you ministers wanting to beef up a particular skill set. But the MDIV is on the job training, "take your church to seminary."
4. The attention to spiritual formation is not unique to our program, but it is unusual. Tht we require it across the curriculm is fairly unique. And the robust way in which we address it is fairly unique. We look at the process of real change rather than the less productive--go and pray approach. And when you look at some other programs in spiritual formation, they usually myopically focus on the personal dimension, when in fact the corporate dimension must be present for the personal dimension to flourish. This is a blind spot of Western individualism that shows up even in the most noted spiritual formation programs in the US.
5. Finally, we have designed a program that is both faith-full and mature in its understanding. We are in the Wesleyan tradition, which means we are most interested in life change more than adding a set of mental widgets or skills. We are interested in you being able to do ministry more than in you knowing things. To be sure, knowing things is good and important, but we are getting the priorities of seminary education straight.
We are hermeneutically mature, especially for evangelicals. Most evangelical seminaries play a game here--if I learn Greek, diagram the sentences of the Bible, study a little historical background, then I will somehow mysteriously and almost automatically know God's will for today. We're seeing this paradigm unravelling before our very eyes. God has as often as not used the words of the Bible in ways other than their original sense and intent. This fact in itself undermines a curricular program at most seminaries that dedicates as much as a third of the curriculum to the pursuit of the original meanings of individual biblical books.
And of course, very little attention is spent in this typical curriculum to teaching what to do with that original meaning once you think you have it. How do I get from that time to this time. For that matter, how do I get from my class in Romans to my class in pastoral care and counseling, let alone to my class in preaching?
I have mentioned elsewhere that this is a great time for the Wesleyan tradition because of currents in the intellectual flow today. And as such, this is a great time to be starting a Wesleyan seminary!
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Seminary Vision (7-1-09): Economical
The public "opening" of the seminary is October 1-2, around the time of homecoming. The practical opening of the seminary is when students show up for classes August 3. But as a quiet note of celebration, today is the technical, legal opening of the seminary (woo-hoo!). Shh, don't tell anyone. Today it officially exists within the structure of the university. Pop, goes the non-alcoholic bottle of champagne.
The next of the IWU Seminary videos is "economical."
So far we've featured the Missional, Communal, Integrated, Spiritually Enriching, and Personalized vidcasts. Today we feature the Economical vidcast.
It's true. If you can get into Princeton or Duke, there's a fair chance their endowment machine will give you some hefty financial aid. That is, at least before the economic crisis.
But as far as evangelical seminaries go, it's going to be hard for anyone to justify going anywhere else but to IWU's new seminary--especially Wesleyans!
The per hour tuition rate for IWU's MDIV is 367 per credit hour. That's respectable. It shows we're affordable but not cheap. We have to put the number somewhere around there so that no one thinks we're the Dollar General of seminaries (P.S. aren't people stupid--that people would pass up real value because it is inexpensive!). Fine. We have a respectable number, 367 a credit hour.
BUT, then we give scholarships. For Wesleyan ministers, it's half off, which brings the number down to $183.50 a credit hour. That's pretty good... certainly beats anything a Wesleyan minister would get from the other institutions Wesleyans usually look at.
THEN, because we are now the only denominationally owned seminary of the Wesleyan Church, we have instantaneously, as of today, equal status in the eyes of the denomination to Asbury. That means all Wesleyan ministers who take our MDIV will get the same amount of denominational loan grant that only on campus Wesleyan students at Asbury get. I don't know the exact number, but it's about 80 dollars a credit hour, a fifth of which is "forgiven" by the denomination for every year served in ministry.
That brings us down to aroun $103.50 a credit hour for a Wesleyan minister.
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! Many districts have funds for seminary education or matching funds. I believe two years ago one of the Michigan districts gave $85 dollars a credit hour for their ministers to go to seminary. That brings us down to about $20 bucks a credit hour.
So let's see, a Wesleyan minister from that district could do their whole first year, 20 credit hours, for about 500 bucks for the whole year!!!
To be sure, this equation couldn't support a thousand people. But in the meantime, from an economic perspective, you'd have to be crazy as a Wesleyan minister to go to one of the other places Wesleyans typically look at. You'd be like the Sprint commercial with the guy taking a bag of money out with the trash or the woman shoveling her quarters into a public fountain!
The next of the IWU Seminary videos is "economical."
So far we've featured the Missional, Communal, Integrated, Spiritually Enriching, and Personalized vidcasts. Today we feature the Economical vidcast.
It's true. If you can get into Princeton or Duke, there's a fair chance their endowment machine will give you some hefty financial aid. That is, at least before the economic crisis.
But as far as evangelical seminaries go, it's going to be hard for anyone to justify going anywhere else but to IWU's new seminary--especially Wesleyans!
The per hour tuition rate for IWU's MDIV is 367 per credit hour. That's respectable. It shows we're affordable but not cheap. We have to put the number somewhere around there so that no one thinks we're the Dollar General of seminaries (P.S. aren't people stupid--that people would pass up real value because it is inexpensive!). Fine. We have a respectable number, 367 a credit hour.
BUT, then we give scholarships. For Wesleyan ministers, it's half off, which brings the number down to $183.50 a credit hour. That's pretty good... certainly beats anything a Wesleyan minister would get from the other institutions Wesleyans usually look at.
THEN, because we are now the only denominationally owned seminary of the Wesleyan Church, we have instantaneously, as of today, equal status in the eyes of the denomination to Asbury. That means all Wesleyan ministers who take our MDIV will get the same amount of denominational loan grant that only on campus Wesleyan students at Asbury get. I don't know the exact number, but it's about 80 dollars a credit hour, a fifth of which is "forgiven" by the denomination for every year served in ministry.
That brings us down to aroun $103.50 a credit hour for a Wesleyan minister.
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! Many districts have funds for seminary education or matching funds. I believe two years ago one of the Michigan districts gave $85 dollars a credit hour for their ministers to go to seminary. That brings us down to about $20 bucks a credit hour.
So let's see, a Wesleyan minister from that district could do their whole first year, 20 credit hours, for about 500 bucks for the whole year!!!
To be sure, this equation couldn't support a thousand people. But in the meantime, from an economic perspective, you'd have to be crazy as a Wesleyan minister to go to one of the other places Wesleyans typically look at. You'd be like the Sprint commercial with the guy taking a bag of money out with the trash or the woman shoveling her quarters into a public fountain!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Seminary Vision (6-30-09):
The next of the IWU Seminary videos is "personalized."
So far we've featured the Missional, Communal, Integrated, and Spiritually Enriching vidcasts. Today we feature the Personalized one.
Three points immediately come to mind in how the program at IWU is personalized.
1. It requires you to do regular action research on your own congregation, youth group, small group, etc.
The research is thus not primarily hypothetical or case study-ish. It is sociological research you do with your congregation every week. The strategic plans you formulate are plans for a real church. And of course if you mess up, real people get upset with you. That's a personalized education.
2. You do not have to move from where you are.
You can do most of the program online, only coming to campus for two weeks out of the year to satisfy residency. That means you remain in your life space rather than uprooting to a vacuum.
3. You have 15 hours of electives that you can carve into your own specialty.
So far we've featured the Missional, Communal, Integrated, and Spiritually Enriching vidcasts. Today we feature the Personalized one.
Three points immediately come to mind in how the program at IWU is personalized.
1. It requires you to do regular action research on your own congregation, youth group, small group, etc.
The research is thus not primarily hypothetical or case study-ish. It is sociological research you do with your congregation every week. The strategic plans you formulate are plans for a real church. And of course if you mess up, real people get upset with you. That's a personalized education.
2. You do not have to move from where you are.
You can do most of the program online, only coming to campus for two weeks out of the year to satisfy residency. That means you remain in your life space rather than uprooting to a vacuum.
3. You have 15 hours of electives that you can carve into your own specialty.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Seminary Vision (6-29-09): Spiritually Enriching
The next of the IWU Seminary videos is "spiritually enriching."
So far we've featured the Missional, Communal, and Integrated vidcasts. Today's video is the Spiritually Enriching one.
There are two principle ways in which we are consciously attending to the spiritual dimension of the MDIV degree.
1. A one hour spiritual formation course that accompanies each of the six core courses of the curriculum. These are written to lead a person through the actual process of change rather than just sending you off to read the Bible and pray:
a. Change and Transformation--asks how change and transformation take place
b. Self-Awareness and Appraisal--leads you to assess where you are at in your pilgrimage
c. Goal Setting and Accountability--has to do with identifying where you need to move to
d. Mentoring and Spiritual Direction--deals with this important component in getting there
e. Personal and Corporate Disciplines--here we get to the component that so many spiritual formation programs focus exclusively on. Even here, they usually focus only on the personal disciplines. In good Wesleyan fashion, we will bring in the means of grace and corporate disciplines too.
f. Recovery and Deliverance--focuses on the arrival and embodies a tradition that is optimistic about God's power to transform for real.
What a robust approach! Without even realizing it, so much spiritual formation is anemic!
2. The second element of spiritual formation is a philosophy that will work its way through the whole curriculum. There are those who are anti-seminary because they perceive it to be harmful or distracting to faith. Some try to stop their ministers from going for fear it will make them liberal and corrupt them. Others think it gets them out of focus and gets their priorities out of whack.
Is this true or an urban legend? I suspect there is some truth to it. But the problem for me is not that seminaries teach false things. The accusation that they subtly change priorities may have more to it and the rise of home grown seminaries on site at megachurches (e.g., Mars Hill) helps because teaching is done in the ministry setting, as ours will be by requiring them to be in ministry. The potential danger of the onsite church seminary is becoming ingrown, of course... and no church has the infrastructure of a university like IWU that is some 14,000 strong (online, records, support services, etc.).
My sense is that the Bible and philosophy are the main culprits in faith challenge at seminary, and having some expertise in both areas, I can't say that the problem is that these challenges are false. The problem is that our paradigms are not equipped to incorporate the challenges into our faith.
So the approach to these topics we are taking in our MDIV is not to pretend that the issues aren't real (the fundamentalist dodge) but to appropriate some of the great possibilities of theological intepretation. We will not focus on the question issues but when we encounter them, we will be able to keep them in perspective. It is a great privilege to be born at a period when we are finally able to move beyond the dichotomies of the past!
So far we've featured the Missional, Communal, and Integrated vidcasts. Today's video is the Spiritually Enriching one.
There are two principle ways in which we are consciously attending to the spiritual dimension of the MDIV degree.
1. A one hour spiritual formation course that accompanies each of the six core courses of the curriculum. These are written to lead a person through the actual process of change rather than just sending you off to read the Bible and pray:
a. Change and Transformation--asks how change and transformation take place
b. Self-Awareness and Appraisal--leads you to assess where you are at in your pilgrimage
c. Goal Setting and Accountability--has to do with identifying where you need to move to
d. Mentoring and Spiritual Direction--deals with this important component in getting there
e. Personal and Corporate Disciplines--here we get to the component that so many spiritual formation programs focus exclusively on. Even here, they usually focus only on the personal disciplines. In good Wesleyan fashion, we will bring in the means of grace and corporate disciplines too.
f. Recovery and Deliverance--focuses on the arrival and embodies a tradition that is optimistic about God's power to transform for real.
What a robust approach! Without even realizing it, so much spiritual formation is anemic!
2. The second element of spiritual formation is a philosophy that will work its way through the whole curriculum. There are those who are anti-seminary because they perceive it to be harmful or distracting to faith. Some try to stop their ministers from going for fear it will make them liberal and corrupt them. Others think it gets them out of focus and gets their priorities out of whack.
Is this true or an urban legend? I suspect there is some truth to it. But the problem for me is not that seminaries teach false things. The accusation that they subtly change priorities may have more to it and the rise of home grown seminaries on site at megachurches (e.g., Mars Hill) helps because teaching is done in the ministry setting, as ours will be by requiring them to be in ministry. The potential danger of the onsite church seminary is becoming ingrown, of course... and no church has the infrastructure of a university like IWU that is some 14,000 strong (online, records, support services, etc.).
My sense is that the Bible and philosophy are the main culprits in faith challenge at seminary, and having some expertise in both areas, I can't say that the problem is that these challenges are false. The problem is that our paradigms are not equipped to incorporate the challenges into our faith.
So the approach to these topics we are taking in our MDIV is not to pretend that the issues aren't real (the fundamentalist dodge) but to appropriate some of the great possibilities of theological intepretation. We will not focus on the question issues but when we encounter them, we will be able to keep them in perspective. It is a great privilege to be born at a period when we are finally able to move beyond the dichotomies of the past!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Seminary Vision (6-28-09): Integrated
I've been featuring the IWU Seminary videos. So far I've looked at the Missional and Communal emphases of our new MDIV.
Today I want to feature the Integrated vidcast.
Don't get me wrong, a "disciplinary" approach has its place. Indeed, there is a possible world in which we have OxBridge style MAs in Bible, theology, and Church history up and running in a year's time. In them, you would be able to plum the depths of the most obscure and minute topic... if you can find a professor willing to advise you :-)
But what pastors need most in ministry is not a depth of knowledge in particular subjects. What they need most is the skill to integrate knowledge and skills in specific, concrete ministry situations, guided by godly and effective dispositions. It's hard to teach this skill, because it needs to be used in such diverse situations that you can really only model and practice it in general in preparation. The variety of specific outworkings of integration in ministry come at you like a pitcher with a wicked curve ball you've never faced before.
So we are convinced that the "siloed" approach to seminary education--each discipline separate and in its own place--has the significant weakness of forcing you to do all the integration of things together on your own. And little attention is paid to developing this essential skill.
The Bible means nothing to anyone today--or it means the wrong thing to people today--if you have not developed the skill of appropriating it to practice with integrity. Similarly, so much of the pop banter you read about flows nicely from a shallow understanding of Church history. And what good is theology other than a hobby if you don't know how to apply it?
Of course a similar problem exists with some practical courses in seminary. It is one thing to study anatomy and physiology in a textbook. It is a significantly different thing to find these things in a corpse. And it is quite a different thing yet to know what to do with a living person on an operating table. Most seminaries these days at least have you do practicums--that's like dissecting the corpse. We'll study while you're in a ministry capacity at your church.
So there are two key features of our program that ensure that integration takes place:
1. It is an "in ministry" degree. You have to be working in a local church at least 20 hours a week to be in our program. You will do action research with members of your youth group or congregation every week. "When would you say you were 'converted'?" "What was it about this church that convinced you to try it out?" "If these are the stages of a church's life cycle, where would you say we are?" "If these are the four types of forces that cause change in a local church, which one or ones would you say are most in play right now?"
2. Bible, theology, and Church history are incorporated into every week of the course, and there is an iconic Integration Paper in which you run a specific church problem through biblical exegesis, theology and Church history.
For example, in the same week you are looking at institutionalization as a phase of a church's life cycle, you will read a piece by Bud Bence in defense of Constantine. In the same week as you are talking about strategizing for mobilization, you will read excerpts from John Calvin and John Wesley and then compare and contrast classical predestination with Wesley's prevenient grace--how if at all does it affect who can be reached?
In this way, the various disciplines of theory across the board are presented in the context of practice.
Today I want to feature the Integrated vidcast.
Don't get me wrong, a "disciplinary" approach has its place. Indeed, there is a possible world in which we have OxBridge style MAs in Bible, theology, and Church history up and running in a year's time. In them, you would be able to plum the depths of the most obscure and minute topic... if you can find a professor willing to advise you :-)
But what pastors need most in ministry is not a depth of knowledge in particular subjects. What they need most is the skill to integrate knowledge and skills in specific, concrete ministry situations, guided by godly and effective dispositions. It's hard to teach this skill, because it needs to be used in such diverse situations that you can really only model and practice it in general in preparation. The variety of specific outworkings of integration in ministry come at you like a pitcher with a wicked curve ball you've never faced before.
So we are convinced that the "siloed" approach to seminary education--each discipline separate and in its own place--has the significant weakness of forcing you to do all the integration of things together on your own. And little attention is paid to developing this essential skill.
The Bible means nothing to anyone today--or it means the wrong thing to people today--if you have not developed the skill of appropriating it to practice with integrity. Similarly, so much of the pop banter you read about flows nicely from a shallow understanding of Church history. And what good is theology other than a hobby if you don't know how to apply it?
Of course a similar problem exists with some practical courses in seminary. It is one thing to study anatomy and physiology in a textbook. It is a significantly different thing to find these things in a corpse. And it is quite a different thing yet to know what to do with a living person on an operating table. Most seminaries these days at least have you do practicums--that's like dissecting the corpse. We'll study while you're in a ministry capacity at your church.
So there are two key features of our program that ensure that integration takes place:
1. It is an "in ministry" degree. You have to be working in a local church at least 20 hours a week to be in our program. You will do action research with members of your youth group or congregation every week. "When would you say you were 'converted'?" "What was it about this church that convinced you to try it out?" "If these are the stages of a church's life cycle, where would you say we are?" "If these are the four types of forces that cause change in a local church, which one or ones would you say are most in play right now?"
2. Bible, theology, and Church history are incorporated into every week of the course, and there is an iconic Integration Paper in which you run a specific church problem through biblical exegesis, theology and Church history.
For example, in the same week you are looking at institutionalization as a phase of a church's life cycle, you will read a piece by Bud Bence in defense of Constantine. In the same week as you are talking about strategizing for mobilization, you will read excerpts from John Calvin and John Wesley and then compare and contrast classical predestination with Wesley's prevenient grace--how if at all does it affect who can be reached?
In this way, the various disciplines of theory across the board are presented in the context of practice.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Seminary Vision (6-27-09): Communal
I've been featuring the IWU Seminary videos. Yesterday I featured the short video on the Missional orientation of our new MDIV.
Today, I want to feature the Communal video. Some people are natural extraverts. They will make connections with the people around them without help. Others of us are quite as happy to stay in our own cacoons.
Building community is an important feature of any Christian group. This is particularly a concern if your learning group is primarily online. We've incorporated a number of features to our seminary to facilitate this element in the equation:
1. It is a cohort model.
... which means that you will take the bulk of your courses with the same group of 10-20 individuals. You will know each other well--and each other's churches--by the time you are finished.
2. Spiritual formation throughout.
Not only are you in a cohort with a small group throughout but you are in a sequence of spiritual formation classes together throughout. More on this later.
3. Yearly convocation
Every year in August, the entirety of the seminary faculty and student body will gather together to worship and fellowship together at the Marion campus. For some, this will eventually be the time of graduation.
4. Blackboard Community
The seminary has pushed for IWU to add the community function to its Blackboard platform and the university has agreed. We will therefore be facilitating interaction between students in different cohorts with each other in between convocations throughout the year.
Today, I want to feature the Communal video. Some people are natural extraverts. They will make connections with the people around them without help. Others of us are quite as happy to stay in our own cacoons.
Building community is an important feature of any Christian group. This is particularly a concern if your learning group is primarily online. We've incorporated a number of features to our seminary to facilitate this element in the equation:
1. It is a cohort model.
... which means that you will take the bulk of your courses with the same group of 10-20 individuals. You will know each other well--and each other's churches--by the time you are finished.
2. Spiritual formation throughout.
Not only are you in a cohort with a small group throughout but you are in a sequence of spiritual formation classes together throughout. More on this later.
3. Yearly convocation
Every year in August, the entirety of the seminary faculty and student body will gather together to worship and fellowship together at the Marion campus. For some, this will eventually be the time of graduation.
4. Blackboard Community
The seminary has pushed for IWU to add the community function to its Blackboard platform and the university has agreed. We will therefore be facilitating interaction between students in different cohorts with each other in between convocations throughout the year.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Seminary Vision (6-26-09): Missional
For the next few days, I want to feature one of the IWU Seminary videos, in addition to any other posts I make here.
Today, I want to feature the short video on the Missional orientation of our new MDIV.
The first major 6hr course in our new curriculum is called the Missional Church (there are two shorter 3hr one week intensives prior to this first course: an orientation to the MDIV and to ministry called the Pastor, Church, and World and a second course focusing on the varied layers of Cultural Contexts of Ministry).
The Missional Church course has been designed, not only by Norm Wilson--a career missionary and long time leader among Wesleyan Global partners... not only by an instructional design team including key people like Keith Drury, Russ Gunsalus, Dave Smith, and myself... not only with input from Bible, theology, and church history experts like Steve Lennox, Chris Bounds, and Bud Bence... but it will be taught this Fall by church growth experts Chip Arn (online) and Bob Whitesel (onsite), who have also been heavily involved in the specific form the course has taken online.
Books for the course include such titles as Treasure in Clay Jars, Missional Church, The Missional Leader, and The Master's Plan for Making Disciples. It covers topics like social justice, evangelism, church growth-health-planting-multiplication, and traditional missions. Action research includes assignments assessing where your church is in its life cycle and enabling you to strategize on how to connect with your community and close the "back doors" of your church.
Bible widgets look at a missional hermeneutic, the prophets and social justice, the Great Commandment by way of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Great Commission of Matthew 28, and the expansion of the gospel in the book of Acts. Theology widgets include readings in people like John Wesley and John Calvin. Church history widgets include a look at Constantine and St. Patrick.
Racing to get the online version fully in place by the time the first online course opens August 21!
Today, I want to feature the short video on the Missional orientation of our new MDIV.
The first major 6hr course in our new curriculum is called the Missional Church (there are two shorter 3hr one week intensives prior to this first course: an orientation to the MDIV and to ministry called the Pastor, Church, and World and a second course focusing on the varied layers of Cultural Contexts of Ministry).
The Missional Church course has been designed, not only by Norm Wilson--a career missionary and long time leader among Wesleyan Global partners... not only by an instructional design team including key people like Keith Drury, Russ Gunsalus, Dave Smith, and myself... not only with input from Bible, theology, and church history experts like Steve Lennox, Chris Bounds, and Bud Bence... but it will be taught this Fall by church growth experts Chip Arn (online) and Bob Whitesel (onsite), who have also been heavily involved in the specific form the course has taken online.
Books for the course include such titles as Treasure in Clay Jars, Missional Church, The Missional Leader, and The Master's Plan for Making Disciples. It covers topics like social justice, evangelism, church growth-health-planting-multiplication, and traditional missions. Action research includes assignments assessing where your church is in its life cycle and enabling you to strategize on how to connect with your community and close the "back doors" of your church.
Bible widgets look at a missional hermeneutic, the prophets and social justice, the Great Commandment by way of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Great Commission of Matthew 28, and the expansion of the gospel in the book of Acts. Theology widgets include readings in people like John Wesley and John Calvin. Church history widgets include a look at Constantine and St. Patrick.
Racing to get the online version fully in place by the time the first online course opens August 21!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
IWU Seminary on Video!
Here are some great videos sharing the vision of the new seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University.
If you don't want to go through them all, here are the individual vids:
Introduction
Missional
Communal
Integrated
Spiritually Enriching
Personalized
Economical
Leading Edge
If you don't want to go through them all, here are the individual vids:
Introduction
Missional
Communal
Integrated
Spiritually Enriching
Personalized
Economical
Leading Edge
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Seminary (6-10-09): Cultural Contexts of Ministry
Trying to finalize the textbooks for the second intensive class of the seminary, onsite in Marion Aug. 3-7: Cultural Contexts of Ministry. We try to keep textbook costs for any 3 hour class down to $150 or less.
And if you're in the class, don't worry, we only read/skim lighter books in their entirety. The thick and deep ones should be savored selectively, and the reference tools are for sampling :-) Remember, this is not your father's seminary where a bunch of books are dumped in your lap to read from cover to cover, then the professor lectures through the same material in his or her own way in class all over again.
Here they are ($101.73 if you bought them all new):
For cross-cultural theory ($19.80):
Charles Kraft: Christianity in Culture (be sure and get the revised edition, not sure if the link below is it--the picture is the older edition)
For our postmodern context in dialog with evangelicalism ($17.16):
Robert Webber, The Younger Evangelicals
For our current global context ($10.17):
Peter Jenkins, The Next Christendom
For the city, poverty, and race ($23.10):
Harvey Conn et al, Urban Ministry.
For sampling American church context ($31.50):
Robert Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada
And if you're in the class, don't worry, we only read/skim lighter books in their entirety. The thick and deep ones should be savored selectively, and the reference tools are for sampling :-) Remember, this is not your father's seminary where a bunch of books are dumped in your lap to read from cover to cover, then the professor lectures through the same material in his or her own way in class all over again.
Here they are ($101.73 if you bought them all new):
For cross-cultural theory ($19.80):
Charles Kraft: Christianity in Culture (be sure and get the revised edition, not sure if the link below is it--the picture is the older edition)
For our postmodern context in dialog with evangelicalism ($17.16):
Robert Webber, The Younger Evangelicals
For our current global context ($10.17):
Peter Jenkins, The Next Christendom
For the city, poverty, and race ($23.10):
Harvey Conn et al, Urban Ministry.
For sampling American church context ($31.50):
Robert Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada
Monday, June 01, 2009
Seminary Vision (6-1-09)
In these posts, I'm not just giving updates on seminary development. I'm also trying to capture what I think is unique about what we are designing here. I think these sorts of things apply to educational theory in general, an area in which I am an experienced novice. They could really be written into a revolutionary book (and already have, at least in pieces).
Here's another one. We had a playful discussion about whether we should structure courses in terms of "ready, aim, fire" or "fire, aim, ready" or "fire, ready, aim." It seems obvious that you do the first...
BUT, that's exactly what the traditional seminary does in the extreme. You go off for three years to get ready. Then in theory you go to a local congregation, aim at it, and fire.
Here are some problems with this approach:
1. To a very large extent, teaching on getting ready won't stick with 80% of people unless they see what they are aiming at first. The vast majority of seminary stuff doesn't stick. It isn't that it all isn't relevant--at least I don't believe that. It's that most students can't see its relevance because they really have no real idea of what they are going to aim at.
In fact, to a very large extent, most people don't know how to ready themselves and aim at something until they have fired and missed a few times. People in seminary who have pastored a little before they came recognize to a much greater extent the usefulness of what they are learning because they have missed a few shots already.
A pastor will never misfire a certain way again if they shoot the wrong target once. On the other hand, they might misfire twenty times on a classroom test about taking that shot before it sinks in. This of course is the brilliance of our "in ministry" model. You are not in a practicum or a supervised ministry. You mess up; you're fired.
2. Most people will learn more, better if they have learned it a little wrong to begin with. This is especially the case with children. It's better to tell them: "An atom is the smallest thing there is" and then later correct it, "Well, actually there are these things called protons, electrons, and neutrons that are smaller." And then later, "Well, actually protons and neutrons are probably both made of quarks and gluons."
An approach that would try to teach all the exhaustive theory of firing before ever letting a person try a shot is bound for failure. They need to fire a little, even if not quite rightly, and then perfect later.
I leave you with two YouTube links that come to my mind often these days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t39EAeE8ehc
Here's another one. We had a playful discussion about whether we should structure courses in terms of "ready, aim, fire" or "fire, aim, ready" or "fire, ready, aim." It seems obvious that you do the first...
BUT, that's exactly what the traditional seminary does in the extreme. You go off for three years to get ready. Then in theory you go to a local congregation, aim at it, and fire.
Here are some problems with this approach:
1. To a very large extent, teaching on getting ready won't stick with 80% of people unless they see what they are aiming at first. The vast majority of seminary stuff doesn't stick. It isn't that it all isn't relevant--at least I don't believe that. It's that most students can't see its relevance because they really have no real idea of what they are going to aim at.
In fact, to a very large extent, most people don't know how to ready themselves and aim at something until they have fired and missed a few times. People in seminary who have pastored a little before they came recognize to a much greater extent the usefulness of what they are learning because they have missed a few shots already.
A pastor will never misfire a certain way again if they shoot the wrong target once. On the other hand, they might misfire twenty times on a classroom test about taking that shot before it sinks in. This of course is the brilliance of our "in ministry" model. You are not in a practicum or a supervised ministry. You mess up; you're fired.
2. Most people will learn more, better if they have learned it a little wrong to begin with. This is especially the case with children. It's better to tell them: "An atom is the smallest thing there is" and then later correct it, "Well, actually there are these things called protons, electrons, and neutrons that are smaller." And then later, "Well, actually protons and neutrons are probably both made of quarks and gluons."
An approach that would try to teach all the exhaustive theory of firing before ever letting a person try a shot is bound for failure. They need to fire a little, even if not quite rightly, and then perfect later.
I leave you with two YouTube links that come to my mind often these days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t39EAeE8ehc
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