Why does this matter? Well. Why is the baseline requirement for Pastoral positions an M.Div. Because I’ve seen accurate Greek scholars and experts in New Testament history get M.Div.’s and rainbow stole wearing gender study majors have them as well. Which is a problem because both with lean hard on that flimsy paper to exhort the other to repentance. Though to be fair, I think the one might have a stronger position to do so from.
But that’s only the icing on the theological education crap cake.
Centuries ago, a religious and theological education would get you the technological equivalent of a free Logos subscription, sans search function. And while I’d be remised to not say it’s much better to know your Bible than to know how to search in your Bible. The equivalency is still there. Modern theological education likes to boast of technological prowess but never actually does anything with the name of Gutenberg, after they’ve stolen it for their clout. We could make seminary free for the church. Or as free as ad revenue would let us. But are we? No. It’s way to institutionally valuable to have alma maters that perpetually ask for funding from its alumni, then to move education online through the decades old practice of online video and the half century old technology of electronic mail. But no. The liberal elites all have dorm rooms and cafeterias and quads to study on, So we must too.
Eventually we need to sit down, methodically, and look at the world we mimic as if that mimicry had consequences and begin asking some very hard comparison questions. Ones like “We all know why we don’t hire liberal arts students from the secular schools. So, why are we so cool with hiring them from the Christian schools? They’re still liberal arts students.” I’m sure the seminaries stop where the transferable credits end. Right? I mean if one school with 120 credit hours produces blockheads with degrees and no common sense or biblical obedience, then we must, by necessity, know that our program that is modeled after them, in almost every fashion, will give us different results and stalwart alumni in the faith afterward.
Guy’s like Musk can say things like “We don’t hire college grads.” But there is a transferable and comparable amount of demonstrated skill in his fields. You can do the work of a programmer on your own demonstrably. You don’t need an institution to say your code works, Your code will show if it works or not. We don’t have that in ministry. We can have fruit from good ministers and things that can be fruit flavoured from ministers who work at big enough churches. Who cares if you have 400 kids in your youth group. Are their 40000 youth within driving distance to your church? That’s not success, that’s demographic percentages. And those demographics are not affected by how many MDiv’s are on staff at the mega church. Even though the Mega church’s hiring standards would suggest so.
But eventually these hums and haws land us in the age of the internet and the dual natured problem of online credentials and online reach shows up. It’s all well and good if a guy at a mega church with an Mdiv. has a popular blog where he flexes his theological muscle a bit. But when the drywaller with a penchant for reformed thought, puts out twice as much content, and garners twice as much a following. What do we do with his lack of a MDiv. ? We can’t just let him do that and hold that kind of persuasion and content generation, as equally valid as writing papers, and doing research on campus, through the internet to sources off campus, can we? The problem with Christians, especially credentialed ones, being online and participating in online discourse, is that this is functionally what is done offline in their houses of credentialing. Or is the theology the drywaller has to contextualize to the painters on his heels somehow made invalid because the right kind of people having followed his twitter account?
Back in 2020 we shut every church down as if it were universal good, moving every bit of our Christian practice onto online platforms with some of the worst theology to date. Theology, I might add, pertains to none of the practices that are currently being done in Christian higher education. There is not mandate, in scripture, to gather weekly for gospels 101 and contemporary worship screen management 302 classes. Yet during the same pandemic that closed the doors to the churches, the colleges asked that students return to their dorms and attend online classes from there.
Why?
Because the institutions needed to stay afloat in the midst of a flood of online engagement that the pandemic brought. And unlike the churches, they need to provide a return on the students tuition. The credentials.
Ask yourself. Are credentials as important as important than online church services? Well they must be. We closed the door of the church and invented new ways to do the Eucharist over Zoom, but heaven forbid our senior pastor not have an actual diploma on the wall of his office. Would a jpeg work so long as he could share it to the entire email prayer chain. Or would he have to commit to helping the Boomers convert it to a PDF.
Here’s my theory.
At the back end of 100 theology books read, 100 sermons/papers written, and 100 hours of bible reading at a grade 12 level. You’ll have everything but the Greek and Hebrew that a modern BA in Theology could muster out of you. Sans, dorm life, cafeteria food and annoying classmates telling girls in the student lounge that God wants them to get a ring by spring. And that Greek and Hebrew can be learned, for free, on YouTube.
Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.
John 4:35-38 KJV