Some students come to seminary sure of one thing: they want to be a pastor, preaching and serving a congregation. Others, however, are less certain or have a different sense of call. And increasingly, seminaries are offering other courses of study — recognizing that not all who want a seminary education feel led to be pastors, and that a tough job market might inspire (or compel) others to consider alternate paths in ministry.
Brittany Harrold is one of those students. She’s known for years that her calling is in Christian education — not as a pastor — and she has completed the first year of the new Master of Arts in Practical Theology program at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia.
Harrold earned an undergraduate degree in Christian education from Presbyterian College. After college, she said, she considered pastoral ministry — “for about a minute.”
While she feels a strong call to education in the church, “I don’t feel called to pastoral ministry,” she said. “I didn’t feel I should be ordained as a teaching elder just because it was the next step … I felt that would be a lie.”
At the same time, however, Harrold understands the value of seminary training for a Christian educator. “I think it’s invaluable,” she said, to have a grounding in subjects such as polity, Bible and Reformed theology.
“It would make anyone work better in team ministry on a staff. You understand what worship needs to work like, how the programs all flow together … You frame it in a bigger context.”
In response to students who want theological training but don’t necessarily want to pursue traditional pastoral paths, seminaries increasingly are offering diverse degree programs. Among them are the Master of Arts in Missional Christianity at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary; the Master of Arts in Discipleship Development and Master of Arts in Urban Ministry at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago; and the Columbia program in Practical Theology.
This fall, Austin Theological Seminary will begin offering a new Master of Arts in Ministry Practice degree. And other seminaries have specializations within the Master of Divinity degree, such as Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s emphasis in church planting, or San Francisco Theological Seminary’s new specialization in chaplaincy and pastoral care.
Some of these are two-year degree programs — less time-consuming and expensive than a three-year Master of Divinity program. And some say they represent changing views among Presbyterians of what ministry can be — and a challenge to seminaries to prepare students in different ways.
“More and more, there are folks who don’t feel called to pastoral ministry but to intentional Christian ministry of some other sort,” said Bradley Longfield, dean of Dubuque Seminary. They may not want a Master of Divinity degree, “but they do want to think in deeper ways about Christian tradition and Scripture.”
An example: One student currently in Dubuque’s Missional Christianity program is a football coach, who works with more than 100 young men every fall, and who said he wanted “to use that opportunity for the glory of God,” said Amanda Benckhuysen, coordinator of the program and an assistant professor in Old Testament. The coach wanted theological training and to deepen his own spiritual formation, she said, to be a better mentor to the players.
“Young people are embracing the priesthood of all believers — that we all have a call,” Benckhuysen said. “They believe theological education will help sharpen their understanding of how their vocation, whatever it might be, can reflect their Christian identity.”
Churches are changing as well — with smaller and aging congregations increasingly unable to afford full-time pastoral leadership.
“How do we reshape our curriculum to address the changing needs of the church?” asked Christine Vogel, dean of McCormick Seminary. McCormick, for example, serves as many students from other denominations as from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — including some from Baptist, Pentecostal and other traditions where the practice of bivocational ministry is already firmly established.
McCormick is having conversations with a neighboring seminary, the Lutheran School of Theology, about its partnership with Valparaiso University to offer a new Master of Ministry Administration degree, which focuses on leadership and business skills for faith-based organizations or startup churches.
“How do we help our students learn what it means to be an entrepreneurial leader … instead of saying ‘the only thing that is available to you are these traditional paths?’” Vogel asked. The PC(USA) has started relatively few new churches in recent years. Now, some presbyteries are having to think in new ways about entrepreneurial approaches and what constitutes a valid path of ministry.
From Nov. 2-4, Austin Theological Seminary will hold a conference on “Many Vocations, One Calling,” which is being co-hosted by the Presbyterian Association of Tentmakers and will explore ministry possibilities beyond full-time congregationally based work.
Within Christianity, “there’s a venerable tradition of doing something else to pay the bills while you actually do ministry as your reason for being,” said Jason Byassee, who will be the keynote speaker at the Austin conference and is senior pastor of Boone United Methodist Church in Boone, N.C., and a fellow in the Leadership Education program at the Duke Divinity School.
“I guess that goes back to St. Paul and the tentmaking thing, or medieval monasteries or current monasteries,” where monks sell cheese, jam, wine or even caskets to pay the bills, Byassee said. “This is a kind of tradition that has been vibrant in the life of the church, that we’ve gotten nervous about for fear that it sounds too business-y.”
As many mainline congregations grow older and smaller, “educated clergy has gotten so expensive,” Byassee said. Many students graduate from seminary with serious debt, and many congregations can’t afford a full-time pastor. He, however, remains confident — saying “the risen Christ has done ministry with few resources.”
Tight finances bring difficulty but also sometimes innovation. “I sense an openness,” Byassee said, “to more creative forms of ministry.”
In Boone, for example, some small businesses have been started intentionally to raise money for mission work — among them, a coffee roaster and a bakery and a nonprofit organization called Wine to Water, which uses the proceeds from selling wine to fund programs to provide clean, affordable water to people in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Increasingly, seminaries are considering all these questions — and the implications they present for what curriculum and training they should offer. Some students are drawn to social justice ministry; to chaplaincy or nonprofit work; to music ministry or Christian education; to college or camp ministry; to starting something new.
In meeting with prospective students, “I personally am listening for a sense of call that doesn’t necessarily have to have a vocation assigned to it,” said Monica Wedlock, director of admissions and recruitment at Columbia Seminary. She looks for a sense that “I’m being called to something bigger than myself … The economic climate we’re in is creating a generation of individuals who live with uncertainty and change. They’re more adaptable. They’re following their calls and their desires,” not a sense of stability or job certainty.
Some do, however, have a clear sense of vocation — even if the path is untraditional. J.C. Cadwallader, director of master’s level recruitment and admissions at McCormick, said one entering student this year plans to combine urban planning with theological education. A recent Dubuque graduate earned a Master of Divinity degree, then went to medical school — his plan all along.
“For such a long time, we’ve said going into pastoral ministry is — I once heard a colleague of mine say it’s the only valid ministry,” Vogel said. “We need to open up our own understanding and definition of what ministry is. … We’re in a real time of major transition.”
