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Welcome to our feature interview for Insights, the faculty journal of Austin Seminary. I am William Greenway, editor of Insights and professor of philosophical theology here at Austin Seminary. The author of our lead essay for the spring 2025 issue of Insights is the Reverend Dr. Timothy Lincoln.

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Dr. Lincoln is Library Director Emeritus and Research Professor in Theological Education Emeritus at Austin Seminary, where he worked from 1994 to 2024, serving as Director of the Library, Research Professor in Theological Education, and Accreditation Liaison for the Association of Theological Schools and SACS, the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities. For many years, all three at once. Dr.

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Lincoln received the BA in History and Classics from Concordia College in Morehead, Minnesota, the Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, a Master of Library Science at Simmons College, and a PhD in Higher Education Administration at the University of Texas. He worked on numerous accreditation teams across the country for the Association of Theological Schools, and served on the board of directors, and is the president of ATLA, the premier association of theological librarians. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles related to theological education and librarianship, and one book, Qualitative Research, A Field Manual for Ministry Students. He is a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is married to Laura Lincoln.

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They have two children, now adults, and three granddaughters. He and Laura now live in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Did I say that right, Tim? Eau Claire.

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French again. Eau Claire. Eau Claire, Wisconsin. An abbreviated written version of this discussion will appear in this issue of Insights.

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Professor Lincoln decided to dedicate this issue of insights to the topic of the future of theological education. The title of Professor Lincoln's essay, which we will discuss today, is The End and Afterlife of Theological Education. Welcome, Professor Lincoln. We look forward to learning from your insights.

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Thanks, Bill. It's great to be interviewed. So to begin, why did you decide to focus upon the future of theological education for this issue of insights? I chose the topic for a couple of reasons.

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First, progressive Protestant congregations and denominations are in a state of flux right now, and so are their seminaries. So I think it's a timely topic, and it's one that Smith has been thinking about for quite some time in his book, too. And the second reason is theological education has been kind of my main research interest going back to when I first started working as a librarian in seminaries. They're kind of interesting places and they don't work exactly the same way as colleges or universities.

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And so they've always been interesting to me. So following Ted Smith, who wrote a book on this? What's the title of his book again? The End of Theological Education.

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Okay, so the title is related to your topic here directly, The End of Theological Education. So following Ted Smith, you say the rise of expressive individualism creates a context wherein we should no longer think of ministry as a profession, and I'm quoting now, as a profession in theological education as professional education. How does the rise of expressive individualism lead to this conclusion?

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Right, the argument has sort of three steps. Smith argues that expressive individualism leads to less denominational loyalty than we used to have in the early 20th century. And the reason for that is that as expressive individuals, we can build meaningful lives without tying ourselves down to being lifelong Lutherans or Presbyterians like our ancestors did. The expressive individual has to build their own identity.

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It's sort of the Disney princess follow your heart kind of thing writ large. So if I can be an authentic human being without being part of a voluntary association, I don't need to do that. So that's sort of the first step.

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Step 2 is that Smith has a very precise understanding of what he means by professional education. The kind of theological education that I got at Yale years ago was intended to train ministers who were professionals in this sense. Upon graduation, they would be able to have respect and middle-class careers serving stable congregations, that is, voluntary associations.

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That's what the model was built to do. Then the third step is that nowadays there are fewer and fewer congregations that support calling leaders who meet Smith's criteria to be professional. Why? Because people aren't coming to church as much.

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They don't feel the church helps them shape their identity, perhaps in ways that they used to. And because of all this, Master of Divinity enrollments have been declining for quite some time. Now, one final point is not in the essay.

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I think a factor that Smith should have talked more about is economics. His analysis would be stronger if he also thought about the hollowing out of the middle class. Because if more mainline denominations had more financial resources, I think we'd feel very differently about this time.

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So in summary, Smith thinks we shouldn't call theological education professional education, because that's just a little bit misleading. There are fewer jobs for those kind of pastors. Now, I think in the future, there will continue to be some professional ministers, as Smith defines it, just not as many as there were in, say, the year 2000 or 1980.

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So Smith wants seminaries to reject professional education as their business plan. And he wants to change the training of church leaders, not to emphasize the leadership of voluntary organizations like congregations as much. My next question builds on that. So again, following Smith, this repeats kind of what you said, seminaries were established to produce full-time MDiv-certified pension-earning professional pastors who were visibly authentic in their personal faith and identity.

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And you joined Smith in calling for an all-in renunciation of that model. Then you say theological education could more directly focus on the mystery of God rather than being useful. Could you unpack a bit more, and you might be exploring this as we move forward, what is being renounced and what will replace it? Right, So the first point to make is that Smith and I are not renouncing academic or formational

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rigor. What's being renounced is that is a business plan premise that seminaries should imagine that almost all of their MDiv graduates will have those full-time professional jobs with pensions and health insurance. I want to reiterate something that I said in the article. I think

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Virtually every professor I've ever met who works in the mainline seminary cares deeply about the mystery of God. And they are not just concerned with sort of technical matters or with what preaches. So at that point, I think Smith's setting up a contrast, but it's sort of a straw man kind of an argument. So then, you know, the big question is what comes next?

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What replaces the professional model? I think we don't know, and I think that's why so many people are anxious. A given seminary might do any number of things by way of institutional emphasis, and Smith talks about these. They might become a contemplative retreat center, or they might become a think tank like Auburn Seminary, or they might

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focus exclusively on training bi-vocational pastors or lay pastors. Now, some of those things don't feel like what seminaries do now, but Smith's arguing that maybe it would be more fitting to the times if some seminaries did more of that and less of training people who are going to serve the larger, well-heeled congregations as their pastors. And I guess you have some qualifications there that I don't remember in the essay. Maybe they were there and I'm just forgetting with the sum.

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Because when you said, that for Smith, seminaries should go all in on renouncing this model, it sounded more wholesale. The pastor's expert professional model, which is embodied, which we should move away from. And the concern there, and I guess the sum would qualify that.

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But if we're moving away from this credentialing folks with expertise in these areas, do you think there'd be a real loss there in terms of church leaders who, I mean, what exactly is being envisioned? So the impression I had from the article is this is a wholesale shift, which is going to produce a new sort of church leader, but who are no longer going to be credentialed to be expert in these areas of theology, Bible, pastoral care, counseling, preaching, and the like. So is that what Smith is saying is a wholesale recommendation?

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And what would be the implications of that? sort of a loss of qualifications of leadership? And do you see that as a real loss? Something might be necessary, but a real loss?

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Or do you actually see it as some sort of a positive move? Right. I think Smith is not entirely consistent in his essay, because you can find him saying in several places, of course there will be people with these MDiv skills. Well, where will they be trained, right?

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So the first thing I want to say about leadership and congregations, and I don't think I said this in the essay, all mainline congregations have sessions and church councils who are responsible for the ministries of their local church. And to use the Lutheran kind of language, all of the baptized make church happen and bear witness and strive for justice and peace in their communities, not just somebody with a clerical title. So the pastor isn't the only leader.

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So I want to make that clear. So here's what I think is going to happen. I think we're going to bump along for the next decade or so with three tiers of congregations. And this is a bad kind of hierarchy, in my opinion.

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Congregations with enough money are going to call pastors who have an MDiv or an MA And those pastors will have full-time calls. They'll be professionals in Smith's sense. And these graduates will have the kind of expertise that Austin Seminary provides students now in an MDiv program.

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Then there's the second tier of congregations. They will also have leaders who will have professional MDiv or MA degrees, but they will work less than full-time. And that's because of money. They'll have other ways to earn a living, or they'll be sort of well off enough that they can be semi-retired as pastors.

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And these are the bi-vocational ministers that you're reading about now. And once again, these people will have a relatively high level of expertise. However, there's the third tier congregations will have leaders that don't have a seminary degree, and they will be called lay ministers or certified ruling elders or synodically authorized ministers.

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Some places in my church, we call them that. This is already the case for hundreds of small Methodist and Lutheran and Presbyterian in Episcopal congregations. And not just in Texas, it's everywhere. So it's my understanding that such leaders focus mostly on conducting worship services and giving pastoral care

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to members. And the training they have will be quite diverse, because the credentials and levels of training for them will be decided by the policies of each denomination. It strikes me that in some ways, what you're talking about has been happening in a very significant fashion already. In other words, we hear in the main line about how there's fewer and fewer churches.

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But that's actually only true if you're only looking at traditional mainline churches. I think it was 2022 when the first time, was the first time, and just by a bit, that more churches closed than opened in the United States ever. So this long period of what's looked like decline from

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the traditional mainline churches has actually been accompanied by a matching, actually an increase of the numbers of congregations of this sort, right? House churches, small churches, bi-vocational leaders. And in fact, we have a number of students who come to the seminary who are pastors of those churches who are looking to get seminary training. So they're qualified to do their job.

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And so that's why I like what you say about the missing piece about the economic piece. And I guess it leads me back to the question of, is there a sense of loss? So, we're seeing a parallel kind of move in some ways in journalism.

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where the traditional forums for journalism, the traditional credentials, those are all going away. But the quest for news is not going away. It's being replaced by all sorts of different people, many of whom have none of the credential. And maybe there's something productive about that, but I also think there's a good, significant loss there in having

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the credentialed sort of standards and the expertise. And I guess I would see that in the same way here. So I guess that's what I want to ask, is this something you're seeing as inevitable and so adapt to it, and maybe you and in terms of Smith's vision, or which was not clear to me reading the essay, or is this something where you think this really signifies a loss? it's nice to say everyone's a leader in the church, but if you don't have any expertise in these areas, people are doing counseling or biblical interpretation or theology, and they have no training, that strikes me as a real loss.

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Is that sense there for Smith and for you, or is it more of a sense that this is actually a good thing? Is it more inevitable or good? Yeah. I think the argument that Smith makes, I mean, he says it's a loss, but he does kind of say it's a loss with kind of a nostalgia to it.

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So I think it's a loss. So even with people who are trained the way that Austin Seminary trains people, we still find examples of ministers and priests who commit who do horrible things and abuse their power. I mean, the clergy sex abuse scandal, you know, all kinds of things.

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I'm a recovering ex-evangelical, you know. Even the professionally trained person can be a bad practitioner. I do see it as a loss. I mean, I see it as a loss because I have certain values and I don't want

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And part of the values is when you're trying to minister to someone in crisis, that you respect them as a human being, and you don't say certain things, even though you think that they are true, because someone who's done this over and over again knows that when someone is grieving, they need to grieve. And you don't say certain things that maybe two years from now, that person would say, well, you know, Grandma was really old and all that kind of thing. So yeah, I think this is a loss.

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I think Smith thinks it's a loss too. He just doesn't articulate that in the book. And I don't think Smith's against people being authentic, even though it's fun to make fun of the the skinny jeans and expensive eyeglasses of the evangelical pastor or of certain Lutheran pastors I know as well.

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I mean, going back to the 60s, sociologists were noticing that sort of the, I respect a pastor because of their office had been so much on the decline that you just can't show up and say, I have an MDiv degree and I was ordained by the Presbytery. When I say something, you'll defer to it. People haven't, American Protestants haven't acted that way, I don't think, as a group in a very long time.

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They will push back, regardless of your credentialing. But if you have expertise, you'll be able to understand why some of that is, and you'll be able to work with those folks, and you'll be able to find a way to help be a leader with them. So yeah, it's a loss.

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You work closely with the Association of Theological Schools, including as an accreditor. What is the vision, if of ATS, the Association of Theological Schools, in comparison to the vision you and Smith articulate? And if, as you suggested at one point, the mainline seminaries of the future are maybe not concerned about degrees and accreditation, you know, is there a future for the Association of Theological Schools? Sure.

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Well, ATS was invented to work with graduate level theological schools. If you don't have at least one degree that is a graduate degree, ATS won't credit you. That's just their current policy.

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As far as my foggy crystal ball can see, ATS is going to continue to work with seminaries. Because that's their business, first of all. And as you pointed out, there are all kinds of people who want that expertise and they want a graduate theological degree. They just might have been a pastor for a while and then they go and get it.

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In some traditions, that's perfectly, perfectly fine. I don't see all the mainline seminaries deciding that Smith is the guru. and we're going to do everything Smith suggests in the book. I very much doubt that's going to happen.

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So there's going to be lots of mainline seminaries that value accreditation. And there are also a lot of evangelical and Catholic seminaries that work with ATS and benefit from being part of an association that cares about, you know, what Dan Elshire used to say, the schoolish parts of theological education. that I think are going to be with us going forward. And let me just ask for a word of clarification because you focus on mainline seminaries, but I guess the question is, that your and Smith's exclusive focus or is, you know, I mean, ATS, as you say,

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they're involved with all seminaries of all different, Catholic seminaries, conservative seminaries, fundamentalist seminaries, progressive seminaries, liberal seminaries, all of them. Is what you're describing here something you see as happening across the board, or is this really something more focused on the mainline seminaries? Right. So Smith says in the book, and on a close reading, his analysis is about mainline seminaries only.

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He has no facts or figures about the number of priesthood candidates in the Catholic Church. He says almost nothing about the revivifying effect that immigration has had on American Christianity. You know, if it weren't for immigration, the number of white Catholics, you know, if it were just white people in the Catholic Church, their numbers would be profoundly lower than they are. If it weren't for

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for immigrants from Korea and Nigeria and Central America, a lot of mainline Protestant denominations would, their vibrancy would be different. I mean, immigrant religion historically is revivifying and it also changes stuff for the people who are already there. So Part of what's hyperbole about Smith's book, besides the title, is he's looking at one of the three wedges of theological education.

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As ATS talks about it, kind of have a mainline wedge, a Catholic wedge, and then you have free church non-denominational wedges. ATS standards have gotten more and more flexible over the years, primarily because the evangelical folks wanted more flexibility in how they ran their schools. And as they joined, they got an increasing number of votes.

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So the next time the standards are going to change, they'll reflect more flexibility than sort of the way that the Columbia and Austin Seminary wanted things to work in 1960. You know, the mainline people started ATS and they were the backbone. But now because it's so diverse, the standards bless a fair bit of flexibility, and that's by that's by design.

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You appear to recommend a move from residential to hybrid or online education for seminaries. We used to hear online education would be just as good or better than in-person education, but then we all had to do it for a year or so. And we have this massive international data set that taught us, you know, that it's not as effective and also that we don't like it as much. And accordingly, top flight graduate schools in law, medicine, engineering, social work continue to be residential.

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Now, there's no doubt there's a place for online education. And thank goodness we were technically capable of making the transition during COVID. And in some cases where online is the only option available, it should be utilized and celebrated. And I just want to say I've had some very

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good experiences teaching online, even though there is definitely a loss in some ways. There's still lots that can be accomplished with it. But I'm not sure of the precise nature of your recommendation. Do you prefer a non-residential model?

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Are you suggesting residential theological education is not worth the money? Or are you more suggesting that seminaries simply are going to be forced to work with fewer resources? So For instance, ditching libraries and campuses is unfortunate, but they're best move.

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Or are you thinking along different lines entirely? Right, So my wise counsel to the extent that I'm wise is that schools use whatever pedagogy and modalities are best suited for the vision they have for a given program. And that could be hybrid, traditional, online, residential, or intensive. Of course, schools have to be able to afford the modalities that they choose.

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There are mainline seminaries that currently offer degrees using all the methods I just mentioned. Completely online, hybrid, traditional, residential. Methisto in Ohio, you can come to school one day a week, Tuesday, and take all of your classes to get an MDiv by just freeing up your calendar so you can be there on Tuesday.

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That's tough duty, but that's what they decided they needed to do to meet the needs of people in the Methodist, the Methodist communities that they're serving in the Midwest there. So think about, Bill, our Master of Arts in Youth Ministry program. We did that not thinking that those people really should move to Austin and be a full-time student.

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That was this stay in your place, work some, and then go to school simultaneously, and then there's a nice interchange between those two things. That's A distinctive modality. And I would say it's done some good things for us. It's clearly not the same as moving to Austin and living on in-campus housing.

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and arguing about barred over breakfast with your friends, you know. So, back to the money piece. I do think, I mean, I think it's just a fact that mainline seminaries have fewer resources now than they used to, and they're making decisions so that they can stay in business. Just recently, both McCormick and the Lutheran School of Theology

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sold their buildings, and they moved out of Hyde Park. They'd been there for a long time. They moved in with the Catholics in a cheaper part of town at the Catholic Theological Union. Why?

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Resource constraints combined with declining enrollments. And then what's your analysis of why they're declining enrollments? There are fewer jobs for that kind of trained individual, perhaps. So, you know,

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You have to be able to afford to do what you want to do. Now, some PC USA, especially in UMC theological schools, have more options about education modality and what they want to do because of the strength of their endowments. That's an extraordinarily helpful circumstance for those schools to be in. Yeah.

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And let me say, I've had terrific experiences teaching the MAYM courses, which are hybrid courses. So that was part of what I had in mind when I said I've had some good experiences with them. Yeah, those are very interesting, interesting students. to teach.

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And I had very positive experience going out to Nashville and teaching, one of the intensive kind of things. Yeah. And it's a distinct philosophy too, because they're working half time, the students have time, they're doing this. So it's a completely different but well thought out pedagogy, not just a move of what you get as an MDiv,

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online. I think that's one of the things that helps it to be, to have its own distinctive strengths and its own distinctive weaknesses, just like any program. And places like Wartburg have kind of tinkered around with that kind of methodology for their MDiv. So they have, they call it the distributive mode of education, where there's some on campus in Dubuque, but a lot of it, you are, you're kind of

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you have a ministry, they call it a ministry context where you're actually living in South Dakota or Iowa or wherever. And that kind of comes to class with you, which frankly was a bit different from when I was getting my MDiv. I was working in a church part-time, but the engagement I had with the congregation was at a much more modest level than some of these other kind of programs. And like you say, it's a distinctive philosophy, but when thoughtfully

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carried out, I think it's fruitful and good and produces expertise, right? You were for many years the director of the library at Austin Seminary. And you played a major role in helping to raise money for and to envision our new, recently completed and beautiful library. I work in there all the time.

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And you say in your article that your conclusions about libraries isn't going to gain you friends among your fellow librarians. And so with all of that and what you're saying in your essay, about the costs associated just with having a research library, let alone investing in new and brick order libraries. You know, how did that play a role?

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And of course, your thinking may have evolved over the years. How did that play a role in your thinking about the library in Austin Seminary or thinking about, you know, libraries like that generally? Sure. Right.

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So The the rule with with any library. and with any seminaries. A seminary should have a library that fits its mission and its way of doing things.

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So in our case, the Wright Center was designed to be a good academic library, because we know we needed that, and to have a lot of flexibility in the building. That's why there aren't as many walls in it as you might have imagined. And that's why there are some wide open spaces, That's why the top floor is a multi-purpose room.

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That's why there are spaces dedicated to using technology, spaces for individual study, and space for print books. But like a good academic library nowadays, a lot of the collection is digital and it lives in the cloud. Why? That serves students well.

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Students We can have students who don't live and work within driving distance of campus. So that's all to the good. And I think the school's leadership made good decisions about the design for the building.

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And I think it's gonna serve the faculty and students well for years to come. And full disclosure, kind of repeating what you said in the question, Bill, yes, I was involved in, it felt like hundreds and hundreds of hours of discussions about the design for the building. And so was the current library director, Christy Sorensen.

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Not all librarians get asked what they think about the new library. We were, and it was very clear that some things were tweaked when we pointed out problems from the point of view of staff or people who like to work in the building every day. And we were taken very seriously. So if we imagine a seminary that's kind of become a gospel according to Smith, and they're moving away from graduate theological education entirely, and they hired me as a consultant, I'd say, what do you want to do?

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And then let's think up what kind of library you need to do that. When Lexington Theological Seminary became completely online, they sold all of their books because they knew they didn't need physical books anymore. They became an online library because that was their mission. And that makes a lot of sense.

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But clearly it wouldn't make sense for Austin Seminary to do because we have residential theological education and we need to have all the affordances that the Wright Center provides. You say Smith's ideas would also require a fundamental change in the kind of persons invited to serve as faculty members. Could you explain the transition you have in mind in more detail? What would the faculty you envision look like?

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Sure. There are some faculties that act the way that Smith is talking about, especially in Catholic seminaries. I just want to put that out there.

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But to kind of embrace the Smith argument here. So it seems to me that what he's saying is that faculty members would be every bit as concerned about the state of your soul as they were about how you were doing wrestling with Schleiermacher, or the historical critical method, or anything else that's in the end of program. And for the kind of professor Smith is talking about, if you were someone's mentor, you'd have a holistic relationship with them, and it would be far more than academic advising going on.

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So I've thought about the metaphor here, Smith's faculty member would be like a Swiss army knife, combination of a scholar, a listener, a role model, and a guru. And Hardesmith's point, I think, is that everyone in the faculty would be doing this. It wouldn't be that, well, some professors are more deeply engaged in the lives of students than others.

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I think it would be like the group ethos would move that way. Now, an important question here for schools is where do I find faculty who can do all of that, right? What doctoral programs would do that?

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It stretches my brain to think that a doctoral program would give a newly minted PhD all of those tools in their toolkit. But I can imagine doctoral programs kind of saying, well, like, let's say we're Princeton. Here at Princeton Seminary in our doctoral program, you have a major, and you have a minor.

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Now, your major is theology or New Testament, but your minor is something like spiritual direction or counseling. Because when you go to this Smithian Seminary, you're going to kind of have more than one job, and you're going to need to be able to meet all of those expectations. So we're helping you do that by building that in to our doctoral program. Sidebar.

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My doctoral program in higher education administration was great. It mostly taught me how to be a good researcher. There was no attention to how to be a good professor if I were going to be hired in school and have to teach a bunch of courses. There was like nothing that would have helped me do that other than imitating the kind of courses that I had.

00:38:58.720 - 00:39:28.480

So I mean, doctoral education, as one of my library school professors says, tends to make you the deepest expert on the smallest possible topic, right? And I think Smith is kind of going against that towards this more holistic kind of kind of approach, which ironically, Bill, makes these professors even more authentic than they were before. I guess it strikes me as curious.

00:39:28.480 - 00:40:05.040

In some ways, it feels to me like there's a university div school versus seminary divide in the background here. Because so many of us at the seminary, but certainly not everyone who's teaching at seminaries or divinity schools, but many of us have MDivs, in which we've had extensive training in pastoral care and counseling in all these different areas in spiritual direction have served as pastors. A significant number of us have served in that way.

00:40:05.040 - 00:40:36.080

That is not necessarily common at many, especially university-related divinity schools, but it almost feels to me like a caricature of faculty. And so I certainly have expertise, which is as neural as you say, but I also have six years serving as a youth minister, a year serving at a church overseas, and a master of divinity in all these areas with placements throughout. And it strikes me that many faculty have that.

00:40:36.080 - 00:41:06.880

Is Smith not a, I mean, what's, that's where Smith's vision seems to me to be accurate to maybe, not even here, but accurate to, maybe faculty teaching PhDs in religion programs at universities, but not so much faculty, many faculty who are teaching at many seminaries. Although a lot of faculty at seminaries coming out of those university programs maybe don't have the MDiv. Can you comment on that?

00:41:08.080 - 00:41:57.760

Yeah. I think in one of the footnotes, I argue, I cite the, Athens versus Berlin literature, which is another tension that exists in some schools more than others, But I think you're right. And I think this is another example of where Smith is to make a contrast, he's not delving deeply into what, you know, he's not, he has not done an analysis of the credentials of people who teach in mainline seminaries, for example, because I think, as you know, you will discover, I bet you 75% of them have MDivs.

00:41:59.120 - 00:42:24.240

And that gives them some of these habits and skills that Smith says that they ought to have. And then, of course, the scholar who thinks things are interesting because they're interesting, well, that's the whole, why don't professors care about the mystery of God? Well, I think they do. Many of them.

00:42:25.440 - 00:42:41.520

So I think that's a... You said Schleiermacher. For me, engaging Schleiermacher is about thinking intensely about one's soul in the mystery of God. Right, So I think, well, maybe we'll get to this question about when you write your book critiquing Smith.

00:42:41.760 - 00:43:01.600

But some of these arguments, some of these arguments are like, are you in favor of apple pie and ice cream? Yeah, you know. And I don't know anyone who really doesn't, right? So, I mean, he's trying to draw this sharp, this kind of contrast.

00:43:07.320 - 00:43:35.360

Yeah, I think we both have kind of hit that nail. Okay. Near the end of your article, you take a moment to explicitly applaud the Lilly Endowment. which spends literally, I mean, I think literally, 10s, maybe even hundreds of millions, but 10s of millions of dollars funding programs in, I think, not just mainline seminaries, but all sorts of seminaries across America and maybe beyond.

00:43:36.160 - 00:44:29.200

Can you explain in more detail what Lilly is doing, which you find to be so promising for the end and for the afterlife of theological education? I think the main thing is that they are able to fund experiments. And if everything were fine, we wouldn't need to be funding experiments about how to improve, Some of, I don't know how they decide to fund Project X versus Project Y either. But, we've gotten

00:44:31.040 - 00:44:43.440

The 2020 grant for Houses of Hope was almost $1,000,000 that Lily is funding. Dr. Carolyn Helsel has gotten the Faithful Preaching Grant more recently. That's also a large grant.

00:44:43.760 - 00:45:24.240

So, you know, Lily is also caring about how to inform congregational life, if you will, as well as the pathways forward programs with seminaries, to figure out how seminaries will change themselves to be both viable and make a difference to church and world. I mean, that's kind of a short, that's kind of a short answer to that. But doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result is insanity.

00:45:24.320 - 00:45:39.040

Allegedly, Einstein said that. You know, if we don't like the vibrancy of our mainline congregations, what can we do to address some of that experimentation? I think that's all.

00:45:40.320 - 00:45:59.440

That's why That's a very positive thing that Lilly does with us and with seminaries like ours. You're saying your closing lines, you're not talking about the end of theological education. And in both your title and your closing line, you refer to an afterlife for theological education.

00:46:00.880 - 00:46:40.480

And... But it sounds to me like now you're... It's more like a plural, almost, after your lives for theological education. So reading the article, it looked more like you were envisioning a more of a singular future for a theological education, which is non-residential, non-credentialed, non-degreed, non-professional in the degree, since it doesn't prepare one for a job, non-technical in the sense of not requiring technical studies in the classic biblical and theological disciplines,

00:46:41.680 - 00:47:29.440

responsive to the desires of expressive individualism, and taught by faculty who are, more mentors than, or gurus than kind of traditional professors, using that kind of line. So from what you said in our discussion, it sounds much more nuanced in what you're kind of envisioning. So maybe you could just clarify kind of what is the afterlife that you're picturing? And maybe, again, what's you raised near the very beginning of our talk, and it's reappeared the degree to which the

00:47:31.560 - 00:47:47.920

the moves you see are a response to economic necessity. So not ideal, not what we would hope for, but things we need to do, just given the realities. At other times, it sounds like, no, this is something that's been missing. This is a problem.

00:47:47.920 - 00:48:15.760

This is going to be better. So maybe you could say not just what you think the afterlife will be, and maybe you'll say that, but then also what you would hope for if it weren't a matter of just responding to the hollowing out of the middle class. Right, So

00:48:21.160 - 00:48:53.520

I think it is plural. I think it is afterlives. If I read Smith accurately, 15 years from now, there would be some mainline seminaries that would say they're a seminary, they would, their primary business plan would not be teaching the MDiv.

00:48:54.280 - 00:49:32.080

I think this is what, I think Smith thinks this would be a great idea. They'd be doing rigorous education, but it would not, their business model wouldn't presume that we are creating MDiv people who will go out and get a a professional, stable career kind of job. I think it is unlikely that any of the PCUSA theological schools would decide to do that for a lot of reasons that we can talk about if you want to.

00:49:33.520 - 00:50:25.200

I think what they probably are going to do is try to do, expand the number of offerings that they do that are in hybrid online, degree and non-degree, and make it clear to constituents and faculty that doing these things is part of our work and how we serve the church and the world. You know, if we could hire, if Austin Seminary could hire a professor who only job was to work with how to do community activism, and most of what she did was not teaching MDiv students.

00:50:25.680 - 00:50:46.000

That's the kind of thing that would be part of the afterlife of theological education, because it's not assuming all the things that the professional education to serve stable kinds of communities of faith. It wouldn't be doing any of that. That's the kind of thing that Smith envisions.

00:50:51.280 - 00:51:21.680

I think seminaries who get out of doing graduate theological education, they will feel like they have failed somehow. And that will, you know, And none of us wants to feel like a failure. So that would be a very long march away from here's what we're doing today to doing something else that also serves church and world.

00:51:24.480 - 00:51:43.280

One of the things I know about organizations is that they're kind of like us older baby boomers. We want to live forever. We don't want to die. So we'll keep trying to do things that ensures our organization continues to live.

00:51:44.000 - 00:52:00.000

The point, of course, is to do things that are faithful to God and meet people's needs and support human thriving and faith. That is a terrible answer, Bill. We should edit that whole thing out. I think it's good.

00:52:00.520 - 00:52:19.360

We'll keep it, I think, in its ambiguity. Let me, though, I mean, so Let me, so I'll get a little more personal here. So I am from a denomination, in many ways, a wonderful denomination and a wonderful church.

00:52:19.400 - 00:52:55.680

I want to be clear about that. But it was also one that didn't require anything but God's call, confirmed by the congregation that you were administered to be ordained. And so in the denomination at large, it was possible for people who were teenagers or who just felt the call of God and convinced their folks that they were, that they were pastors and there was no training required, nothing like ordination exams or anything like that. Two things are interesting about that.

00:52:55.680 - 00:53:25.360

One, it resulted, as you might expect, in what I think could quite almost anyone would say, were some very dubious leaders and movements in the church. The other thing that happened simultaneously was there was extraordinarily high affirmation of the value of education. So the vast majority of pastors and the overwhelming emphasis in the church was actually not to lean into that, but to try to get

00:53:25.920 - 00:54:15.760

as much education as you could, not because you were fulfilling some standard, but because these fields are what were essential to really being good leaders in congregations. And one thing that drew me to Princeton Seminary and then into the Presbyterians was precisely that emphasis upon theological excellence and the place for it. And when I think, you know, historically, you know, from, Paul, with his expert training as a Pharisee, to the Cappadocians, with their expert training in, philosophy, middle Platonism, to Calvin, trained as a lawyer, to Wesley, the Oxford Don, to Schleiermacher, to Bart Gutierrez, you know, Elizabeth Rosemary Ruther, Elizabeth Johnson, Dolores Williams, you know, over millennia,

00:54:17.440 - 00:54:58.320

the rigorous pursuit of theological reflection, which we study in that way, has endured. And that seems to me if schools are doing other things that, it doesn't mean that those schools are failures, but nonetheless, to the degree schools are forced to that for their leadership, the degree that MDiv disappears and we suddenly have clergy who don't have that degree and that education, it feels to me like a real loss. And that's why, you know, Smith's book in ways dismays me.

00:54:58.400 - 00:55:22.600

And the funding initiatives that I understand Lilly makes, which are almost all in kind of that very practical edge, not in the other, tends to dismay me. So I want to affirm that good things are done in other ways and some moves might need to be made, but I still have that sense of loss. And

00:55:24.240 - 00:55:58.560

for years now, because I actually think that this, the reality you're naming is a real, fiscal reality. I mean, just like if I was talking to somebody who was thinking about, when I go into journalism and become a reporter, I might say a very similar thing, as I've said to numerous of my most talented students who've come to me over the past decade or so, I'd say, well, I'm thinking of getting a PhD in theology. And my response has been, not because of their capacities, but because of my concerns about this future is to say, you know, if you really want to do

00:55:59.880 - 00:56:38.960

top-level work, academic work in these areas, you need to look at, go into law, go into politics, political theory, go into other areas, because I'm not sure there's a good enough future here for you, just in really practical terms in theology. And that just breaks my heart. And so I guess if you could, could you respond to that a bit and maybe put that, so it's not in terms of failure so much as it's in terms of a sense of a loss. Is that right for me to feel that way, to me have given that, to be giving that recommendation, or do you see that as somehow confused?

00:56:42.560 - 00:57:14.880

Well, I feel, I agree with you. I mean, I think that is a loss. I think it is a loss. And part of why I think that's a loss is because I think pondering holy things is a worth, at one level is what I think all human beings are called to do.

00:57:14.880 - 00:57:46.080

Now, not everyone's called to do that as a vocation. So if there are fewer folks doing that, I certainly think that is a loss. I don't see that all of the little candles are going to be blown out. I mean, I think the future of theology as a discipline in North America is going to reside in some seminaries and in some monasteries and in some religious studies.

00:57:46.400 - 00:58:13.040

department. And frankly, it's probably going to be in places where they have funding to make it so. You know, I tell people on accreditation visits, if the best thing in life is life are free, theological education is not one of the best things because it costs money. You know, that's just a

00:58:14.760 - 00:58:40.320

of fallen world kind of reality. So I'm trying to remember if Alshire said this in, I think I'm just trying to remember. Let me just pause there for one second, Tim, and say that you're referring to Dan Alshire, who was for many years the head of the Association of Theological Schools, just for folks who may not know who that is. Yeah, so go ahead.

00:58:40.720 - 00:59:12.160

Thank you. Yeah, Right. But you know he. sometimes would comment that there was some kind of 20th century analogy between the work of seminaries and monasteries in that both were kind of key preservers of traditions that were not able to be preserved elsewhere, you know.

00:59:12.960 - 00:59:53.200

And those places thought it was their job to keep copying those manuscripts, right, for another generation because it was of enduring value and witness to what God has done to do all of those kinds of things. Yeah. No, I'm in favor of smart people doing smart things. Are there any vital points that you were not able to make in your essay, which you wish you had space to, which you wish you had had space to include?

01:00:00.080 - 01:00:27.120

Yeah, a couple of observations. I think the essay would have been truer to Smith's ideas if I could have talked more about the seven affordances that he discusses, the affordances are these assets that either denominations or seminaries have that can be leveraged so that church life can be reformed and become more vibrant. And I only wrote about a couple of them.

01:00:28.160 - 01:00:58.200

I'm not sure some of them are, but that's another thing. I think I would've liked to have said more about This is a failure. Denominations who have signed full communion agreements and like ecumenism have done a very poor job of partnering with people outside of their own brand to do God's work.

01:00:58.200 - 01:01:18.960

I mean, I saw recently on Facebook that Dr. Amor, our dean, was at a meeting at the seminary of the Southwest, where the topic was small rural Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Lutheran churches. I mean, that's a ecumenism.

01:01:19.560 - 01:01:51.040

Part of the argument of ecumenism was that working together can help us have more vibrancy and a common witness. two schools that I mentioned in Chicago that moved recently are tiny struggling schools. I would rather that there was one slightly bigger struggling school. This makes very little sense to me from my higher education expertise and from my theory of Christian stewardship.

01:01:52.880 - 01:02:12.160

But there's a lot of work to do, all that kind of stuff. So I could have said more about that. And looking at the nature of your line of questioning, Bill, I clearly should have been clear in the essay that I'm in favor of expertise. Just writ large.

01:02:12.800 - 01:02:26.480

And I really think Smith is too. I think he's sort of taking a stance, you know, And by the way, maybe I should say this too. So we're talking about Ted Smith, and I know him.

01:02:27.040 - 01:03:13.280

He's a great guy. And in other of his works, he's a highly technical expert, a thinker. So let me be careful, I think, for both of us to say this is nothing about him personally or about his scholarship. just some dismay about on my part some dismay um and on your part some critical interaction and also obviously you were completely inspired by his book and made it the focus of your article but um I just wanted to make sure everyone knew this was uh nothing personal um or um specific right oh no no no I like I like Ted too it was it was slightly hilarious that one of the longer quotes in the book at the end is this big one quote

01:03:15.000 - 01:03:26.640

That's great. I love it. I love it. You know, because that was the best tool to use to make the Feuters kind of.

01:03:26.720 - 01:03:43.360

That's great. I know. So final question. What do you hope, and maybe this is reductive, so what would you hope is the major idea or a couple of major ideas that people will take away from your essay, the difference that, you know, it might make?

01:03:46.000 - 01:04:23.920

Sure, sure, sure. Well, I'm just going to say the first one I'm going to mention, it's not because I'm getting royalties, but if you care about this topic, the book is worth arguing with and writing exclamation points in the margins and so on. You know, so I repent of all the ways I've misrepresented Smith in the essay and in this book, please do engage him, engage him directly.

01:04:24.480 - 01:05:06.720

And then the second thing, and this is sort of one of those almost spiritual disciplines at this point for some of us, including me, given the state of the world. But the second point is about hope. And when I was looking at your questions, The lines from a hymn popped into my head and I checked and it's Fred Pratt Green's 1969 hymn, which starts out, The Church of Christ in every age, beset by change but spirit-led, must claim and test its heritage and keep on rising from the dead.

01:05:08.080 - 01:05:29.040

So what's true for the church is true for theological education. So don't lose hope. Tim, thank you very much for this very pertinent and insightful essay and then this very informative discussion.

01:05:29.120 - 01:05:42.880

It's been great to engage you on all this. As always, you are concise and insightful. And thank you for doing this interview. You're welcome.