So, Laura Mendenhall headed to the Big Tent event downtown Atlanta to give her valedictory address. After serving for nine years as president of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., Mendenhall had accumulated a few thoughts about the need for a transformation in seminary-church relations. Her steady, temperate voice did not hide the pointed challenges — perhaps even a laying down the gauntlet — that demand a new kind of partnership between churches and seminaries.
Her opening thoughts were pointed: “We live in a time of unprecedented change.” Her list included:
·Economic recession
·Declining religious affiliations (with “nothing in particular” being the only grouping presently seeing growth)
·The pastor’s role more complex and less predictable
·The best and brightest skipping seminary in favor of med or law or business school
·The culture valuing large economy of scale — Walmart and mega-churches — while seminaries dismiss those churches as entrepreneurial and those churches dismiss the seminaries for “preparing students for a ministry of the past.”
“The need to keep up with change is URGENT,” she warned. “We are at the ‘tipping point.’” We cannot keep doing the same things — even if in better ways — and expect different results. “Our task is not to keep the ‘old thing’ going but to keep up with the ‘new thing’ God is doing.”
She did reassure: “The whole of Scripture is the story of God’s redemptive work, in the Flood, crossing the Sea, bringing the Exiles home, sending Jesus and then the Holy Spirit. This is the Good News: God is always in the business of bringing life into situations of death.
And, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to be part of what God is doing here and now.”
In fact, she spun a different interpretation of the troubling situation at hand. The
Economic downturn is providing an opportunity for churches and institutions “to evaluate, assess, re-imagine ways we best engage with God’s work.” Through the years we all have accumulated programs and activities that we perpetuate long past their effectiveness. Lean seasons become pruning seasons. And pruning is necessary for plants to keep from getting “spindly and less productive.” Hinting about the painful trimming of staff and programs undertaken recently at most seminaries, she said, “We evaluate, assess, and prune programs and staff, not because they are not healthy, but for the sake of the future of Christ’s mission.”
Pressing the horticultural analogy further, she pointed out a needed graft — between seminaries and churches. “The seminary should be working directly for the church’s health and productivity, anticipating the church’s changing needs.”
We are long overdue to bring church and seminary together to shape their shared future. For example, how can seminaries realistically set their curriculum “without direct input from pastors and church leaders regarding the church’s needs?” Should tenure be awarded professors simply according to criteria of the academic guilds without input from pastors and other church leaders? “Pastoral intelligence” needs to be emphasized in theological education.
And how is it that when churches send their best and brightest to seminary to prepare them to be effective pastors that the faculty then encourage them to continue post-graduate studies, thereby keeping them away from pulpits and pews? In contrast to law, medical, and business schools, “in the higher education model, [seminary] faculty are being asked to teach and mentor for a vocation that is not their own.”
“Unless things change, seminaries will not survive.”
She turned the challenge in the other direction, calling upon the church to take seriously the need to be selective in recommending leaders to attend seminary. “If we are not grafting the healthiest stock into the plant, we cannot expect growth and productivity. The church must be discerning.”
“The church needs leaders. As the church and the seminary are grafted more firmly together in this climate change, we need serious discernment on everyone’s part, driven by Christ’s call to join in the coming of Christ’s reign. AND, when the church sends a leader to seminary, stay in touch with that person, give them financial support, continue to give them leadership opportunities, help them through their first call, and encourage that first congregation to see itself as a teaching-congregation. We’re all in this together.”
Advocacy groups then came under scrutiny. “We all identify with advocacy groups,” she acknowledged, adding that they generally have been organized around worthy convictions. “However, it borders on narcissism to believe that what we know to be true is all of the truth.” We all need to hear voices outside our circles, not only ideological but geographical, cultural, generational, etc. Rather, “in our grafting we must stay focused on Jesus Christ as the center.”
In all of this, Mendenhall expressed great hope as small churches fight for survival leads them “become something else, letting go of sacred familiarity …”; as larger churches welcome more diverse members and do more with trimmed staffs; as seminaries provide training through new delivery systems such as online courses, extension programs, and varying languages; as the Association of Theological Schools “changes accreditation standards to hold seminaries accountable for the church’s vitality,” identifying “pastoral intelligences” as key.
“We are in an era of hope as we prune and graft in this changing climate, as we water and feed sacramentally, as we find our identity and mission in the Creator through worship, prayer, Scripture that we might be a faithful, effective part of what God is doing now to redeem God’s own beloved creation. God still cares about the world, the Gospel, the church. God has not and will not leave us without leaders. We offer God our best. And God will take our climate change and our poor soil and do exceedingly more than we can ask or think to the glory of Christ’s church, for all generations. Thanks be to God!”
Mendenhall returned to the president’s residence on Columbia Seminary’s campus for her final night there. She is moving to Austin, Texas; she will be an associate with the Texas Presbyterian Foundation.
