Debunking Seminary myths

It seems that lately I’ve come across a pretty large group of people (most of them fellow Christians, and many of them from my own church family) who have some fairly strong negative opinions about seminary that don’t appear to be grounded in their own personal experience or really anything else.

Myth 1: Going to seminary takes away your passion for ministering in the Kingdom of God and replaces it with sterile, lifeless academic study about the Bible.

This myth usually manifests itself in some snide comment to me like, “Well don’t let seminary ruin your faith,” or this actual example, “Like my dad always said, ‘There are an awful lot of people who know a whole lot but they don’t really get it. Make sure you get it.’” That’s all fine, I suppose, except that these comments imply that seminary is the only place on the planet where one’s faith can be shaken. The idea that seminary can “ruin your faith” is no more true than the idea that a Christian college can, or working for Focus on the Family can, or ATTENDING A CHURCH can.

Professors at the seminary I attend have mentioned that they’ve had students who have gone through the program there and earned their degrees who do end up “falling away” from the faith. Far more often, however, that is NOT the case. I think of friends of mine who went to Young Life with me every week in high school. I look on their facebook pages today to realize that that Christian teaching didn’t exactly stick for them (or so it would seem). The same could be said of college friends who were very active in InterVarsity and Campus Ministries. I’m sure most of us could think of an adult or two who used to attend a church regularly and profess to be a Christian, but has since experienced some kind of frustration and no longer claims Christ.

The vast majority of my classmates at seminary are anything but lifeless. You don’t spend the kind of money we’re spending on a Christian education if you don’t believe anything you’re being taught. These people truly desire to serve the Lord through vocational ministry and believe that intense study of the Bible and theology and philosophy and leadership will better equip them for doing so. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Almost all of the MDiv students I know have internships, part-time, even full-time ministry jobs at local churches in addition to their class load. Many of them have already had ministry jobs for years and have now been called to seminary to grow in their abilities so that they can graduate and then go back to ministry jobs. Sterile? Lifeless? Hardly.

Myth 2: Seminary is overrated and unnecessary.

I hesitate to call this one false, though I’d like to clarify it a little. First I would say that in my opinion it is NOT overrated, simply because in my experience it doesn’t really even seem to be rated! Unnecessary might be true depending on how you’re using it. If you mean unnecessary in the sense that the very idea of a seminary is unnecessary, I would argue with you. If you just mean that it’s not always necessary for pastors at every level to have attended an accredited institution and earned an MDiv, I absolutely agree.

I tend to think that good, true, fruit-bearing ministry can be done by just about anyone, regardless of education level. I do believe, however, that it is important for our head pastors and preaching pastors to have a solid biblical and pastoral education (just like I would also think it important for a college history professor to have a solid foundation in history and education). Whether that’s done in a seminary or in a different venue makes little difference. I recently read a really interesting article on how much more beneficial it would be to the church if our congregations provided solid biblical education classes to up-and-coming pastors, rather than sending them away to a seminary for a few years where they would be 1) disconnected from that congregation for that period, and 2) probably going into debt. I’m not against that idea, but as long as that’s not happening in congregations across the country, it seems like seminary is a fine alternative.

Myth 3: Seminary is filled with academics who have all kinds of grand theories and Bible knowledge, but know nothing about real life down-and-dirty ministry.

First, a word of clarification: Not everyone attending seminary is doing so with a call to the pastorate on their hearts. The biggest program at the seminary I attend is actually its MA in Counseling. I’m working on an MA in Biblical Studies (an academic degree designed primarily for those looking to continue on in Ph.D. work and/or enter  a teaching field). We also have MAs in Philosophy of Religion, Theology, Leadership, Christian Studies, and more. The degree that most future pastors are working toward is an MDiv. I think it’s important to start with this understanding.

Of course there are academics in seminary. It’s graduate school. Pretty much every level of education beyond high school is filled with what we call “academics.” Many of the academics at my seminary are former pastors. Some are current pastors. Almost all of them preach AND teach regularly at local churches, and ALL are at least involved in local church ministries. Probably the most “academic” professor on campus is an active member of an inner-city Denver church where the ministry couldn’t be more “down and dirty.” Even if this weren’t the case, though, many of the classes a student takes at seminary are not primarily geared toward the practices of pastoral ministry. I hope we can agree that it’s good to have an “academic” teaching New Testament Greek (assuming you’d like to learn it well). Same with Church History. Same with the Gospels and Acts, Biblical Interpretation, and the Epistles and Revelation. Any of these courses could be taught and taught quite well at a secular graduate school. The fact that my graduate school is an evangelical seminary just makes it even better, because the academics that teach them have pastoral hearts and are full of grace and love.

There’s probably some truth to the idea that some professors lack a few pieces of “real world” sense. I’m sure it’s true that many pastoral theories don’t completely work in every situation. But that’s also true everywhere else in all of education. You simply have to take solid teaching for what it is, and rely on your own experience and the experience and advice of your mentors in the field for many of the curveballs that lie ahead of you. It’s naive and more than a little silly to think that seminary students and professors believe that with the right classroom education they’ll be able to step into any church in the world and run it flawlessly with no messes or mistakes.