Calvin Theological Seminary : 1999 Seminar

Keepers of the Heritage 

Background	The faculty decided that the narrative is to be based on the seminary's Strategic Plan Key Result Area two: Common Center for Faculty/Administration (see EDPOL #1143).
Scenario	Provided by the following book, which was part of a Lilly Endowment funded faculty development project: Bolt, John. Stewards of the Word: Challenges in Reformed Theological Education Today. Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin Theological Seminary, 1998.
Case	How to respond well to a letter from four graduates now serving as pastors. An actual letter now before the seminary from four such people to the BOT has been altered to fit the purpose of the case.
Issue	Doing effective, confessionally Reformed theological education today (as opposed to becoming broadly evangelical). How can we redefine a classical, Reformed theological curriculum to provide more effective professional training for contemporary pastors?

It came to pass that the president of Calvin Theological Seminary was working late one night in his office. His schedule during the day had been full, providing no time to open his mail. After a few refreshing rounds of Minesweeper, designed to enhance his problem-solving skills and manual dexterity, he started in on the pile. The first three items were junk mail. The fourth was a letter of appreciation from a graduate for the fine education which he had received, accompanied by a check for twenty-five dollars as his contribution to the seminary's annual fund. Then the president opened the fifth envelope. Inside it he found and read a copy of the following letter addressed to the seminary's board of trustees:

Dear Trustees,

We write as four M.Div. graduates of Calvin Theological Seminary now serving as ministers of the Word in the Christian Reformed Church. We appreciate our seminary training and the dedicated service of the faculty and staff at Calvin. This letter comes to you as constructive criticism which we offer toward improvement of the education which Calvin provides. We do it against a background of discord in the Christian Reformed Church over the last quarter century, particularly over the ordination of women. Between 1985 and 1996 our total membership (total professing and non-professing members) declined from 305,228 to 275,466. We do not want to stir up more disruption. We want to see unity and peace within the denomination. We do want to have our concerns addressed.

We also write out of some frustration. On several occasions while we were students, we addressed the issues discussed below to various faculty and administrators. We regret that nothing came of our discussions.

Our primary concern is that Calvin Theological Seminary is failing in its primary mission of training ministers of the Word for the Christian Reformed Church. Instead, Calvin excels at training people for further graduate education. The seminary offers a first rate Ph.D. program specializing in Systematic Theology and Historical Theology, with concentrations in Reformation studies, post-Reformation Protestant theology, and modern and contemporary theology. In our judgment, it is not providing the best possible training for people who will serve as pastors and in related ministerial roles.

Calvin Theological Seminary provides a comprehensive theological education built around a solid program of required or core courses. The courses in systematic theology follow a traditional arrangement of the loci. A full program of five quarter-length courses is offered in church history. Two years of Greek are required for entrance to the M.Div. And a full academic year of Hebrew is required to complete the degree. The entire Bible receives attention in various survey courses. In contrast to this heavy attention on biblical theology, systematic theology and church history, students are required to take only one course in pastoral care, one course in church education, and one course which deals with the mission of the church in our own society.

We find four problems in the curriculum. First, the proportions are out of step with the knowledge and skills required of a parish pastor. For example, the five-to-one ratio of church history to pastoral care courses appears to us to be out of all proportion to the weight of issues faced daily by pastors.

Second, the content of particular courses does not provide the knowledge and skills needed by pastors to meet the expectations of their congregations for pastoral ministry. Of particular concern to us are courses which teach Biblical languages. In our experience, professors teaching these courses place great emphasis on training students to sight-read Biblical Greek and Hebrew. To perform well in such courses, almost all students have to invest enormous amounts of time memorizing vocabulary and learning the minutiae needed to parse verbs and analyze syntax. From our own experience and from conversations with colleagues, pastors rarely sight-read a passage in the original language or parse without reference to the many print-based and computerized tools available for Biblical study. Why not train pastors for what they will actually do (work from the original languages with the use of tools), rather than prepare them for graduate school language examinations?

Third, the core curriculum does not adequately lead students to wrestle with issues of new church development; the invigoration of older, established churches; leading "troubled" churches back to health; or training church members to reach out in their communities. Dealing with issues in these categories is the daily calling of a pastor. Why not structure the curriculum to train students in the skills which they will actually need in pastoral ministry? Why not begin your thinking about curriculum with the skills needed to do the job of ministry and then to plan courses which will train for those skills?

Finally, we judge that the broader curriculum dealt too much with academic matters. Inadequate attention was given to the identification of a student's spiritual gifts, to spiritual formation, or to training in spiritual disciplines by which pastors can keep fresh their personal spiritual life in the Lord.

The issues, which we raise and the context within which you and we serve, lead to a final concern. The seminary and the Christian Reformed churches do well to clarify the relationship between them. We face a serious, large "alternate routes to ministry" problem. The committee studying this problem may propose solutions to help reduce this problem. However, the problem itself (people entering the ministry of the Word without passing through Calvin, and in some cases without passing through any seminary) will not be solved by synodical pronouncements which plug alternate routes and force people to study at Calvin Seminary. In our judgment, churches care less and less about synodical pronouncements. Why cannot the seminary become a place to which people want to come, not are forced to come? Careful address to our concerns may go far toward making the seminary a place to which people yearn to come. We do not want to see the seminary faculty and board removed from their role as gatekeepers to the office of minister of the Word in the Christian Reformed Church. We fear that if the seminary does not address the concerns identified, the seminary will be removed from the very important place which it has occupied for so long. Because of the long history of very close ties between Calvin Theological Seminary and the Christian Reformed Church; and the historic gate-keeping function of the seminary, what the seminary does or does not do has direct bearing on our lives and ministries. We write out of concern for Calvin Theological Seminary and the ministry of the Christian Reformed Church. What is your response?

Sincerely,
Four signatures

At first the president was puzzled. After all, the M.Div. curriculum did address the various areas of Christian ministry. Students were required to take courses in preaching, education, and pastoral care. Over twenty-five percent of the M.Div. Curriculum was devoted to field education, not to mention the substantial amount of money which the seminary devoted to paying for field education far beyond anything which tuition covered. He also recalled that recently he and his colleagues had engaged in a faculty development project funded by the Lilly Endowment in which they sought to bring integration to the curriculum. For example, courses in the Biblical Division now routinely address the implications for preaching of the exegesis of an assigned passage.

Then the president chuckled. He had heard similar laments from a minority of students in some previous years. Tomorrow the board of trustees would meet. By the postmark on the envelope, he was certain that the letter had reached the board's secretary already. How should he respond? He decided to convene the academic dean and four faculty members early in the morning to help him prepare a response.