Barnabas File

If we are looking toward the future of clergy leadership, a good place to start is with theological education.  Who is in the “pipeline”?  The best source of this information is The Association of Theological Schools (ATS), the accrediting body for seminaries and schools of theology in North America.  Their report on students as of fall 2024, shows that theological education is experiencing a significant demographic and structural shift.     ATS data shows a total enrollment of approximately 76,500 students across member schools, representing a 1.8% increase from the previous year. Here are some trends:   Age and Life Stage.   The student body is getting older, reflecting a surge in mid-career professionals and "second career" seekers.  The average age of an entering student has risen to 40.4 years.   Approximately 14.8% of degree-seeking students are aged 56 or older.   Racial and Ethnic Dive...

If you are involved in a church or denomination, you may has asked the question, “Where are our future clergy leaders?”     Many denominations struggle to find pastors or to bring women and men into the ordination track.     Seminaries address this from the standpoint not only of how they can serve the churches’ needs, but how can they provide theological education and spiritual formation for the society at large.     They ask, “Who is in the next generation of seminary students?”   If I may use the term, here are key “markets” for theological education to consider in the new future:   “Pipeline” clergy.  These are individuals who are active in their congregations and have experienced a vocational call to ministry.  In the past, these tended to be young adults who either came to faith in the church or in a parachurch ministry. There are still many of these folks out there, but increasingly the seminaries are enrolling women and...

You never know what responses you will get when sharing your opinions on a blog.  On my blog—Barnabas File-- I write about things that interest me or get my attention.  Occasionally, they get someone else’s attention, too. In reviewing my posts for the past year, these received the greatest response.   1.   The Church is in Decline:  What a Great Opportunity for the Church!   In this blog, I encouraged churches to get back to the basics—to love God and to love one’s neighbor.  I noted the decline of disciple formation and spiritual practices in churches, but concluded in this way:   Even so, in these days, I see signs of hope for the people of God.  I talk with pastors who love engaging the Word of God and sharing it with their people.   I meet lay leaders who are bright, creative, and open to new ways of doing church.  I work with seminary students--many mid-career folks--who see new opportun...

Every clergy leader has his or her list of learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic.     In a recent webinar sponsored by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), theological educators identified some of the things that seminary students involved in field education during this time are learning.     James Barber, Barbara Blodgett, and Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi have been responsible for supervision of students doing their field work in the last several months.    Here are some of the things they shared. “This isn’t what I signed on for” is a metaphor for ministry.  Perhaps we don’t communicate often enough to seminary students that ministry is messy.  It was chaotic even before the pandemic which has added another current of uncertainty.  Although most of us went into the ministry with a bit of idealism and a model of how each week would unfold, we quickly learned that needs and expectations challenged our preconceptions....

Theological education as we know it is a construct that is relatively new in Christian history. In a recent article in Christian Century , Ryan Bonfiglio points out that the first seminary for clerical training was established by the Roman Catholic Church in 1563.    Since then, other streams of influence--European and American, theological and sociological, ecclesiastical and educational--have shaped the models of theological education with which we are familiar today. In his article, Bonfiglio suggests that we rethink our assumptions about where theological education happens and reconsider the role of the church in ministerial formation.   Bonfiglio’s ideas stimulate us to consider other alternative models for equipping ministers. For example, if we take missional theology seriously, what would a missional seminary look like?  Missional theology challenges us in three ways. First, we should reconsider the context in which we live and r...

The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1980 encouraged states to establish land-grant universities (or colleges) across the United States. The mission of these institutions was to focus on the teaching of agriculture, science, military science, and engineering as well as the liberal arts.     This mission was somewhat in contrast to the historic practice of higher education to focus on a liberal arts curriculum. The Hatch Act of 1887 strengthened the work of these institutions by establishing a system of agriculture experiment stations, and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created a system of cooperative extension to be operated by these schools to educate people across the states--especially in rural areas--about current developments in agriculture, home economics, community development, and related subjects. Growing up in a city, I knew little about this vital part of America’s educational system until I began learning more about the history of higher education and then serving ...

What does VUCA stand for?   This is an acronym introduced by the U. S. Army War College in the early 1990s to describe the world we entered when the Cold War ended--volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.     The term has come to be used to describe the contemporary context in which we live and work.     For example, see Sunnie Giles, The New Science of Radical Innovation   or Bob Johansen,   The New Leadership Literacie s , for strategies to lead and innovate in this environment. Businesses are not the only enterprises affected by this way of perceiving our world.  Theological education, if it is to be effective in the 21 st century, must take volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity into account for this is the world in which ministry takes place. In an  uncertain  world, the most important resources a seminary provides are information and formation.  Theological schools are the custodians of i...

The process for supplying ministerial leaders used to go something like this.     Churches nurtured young people who “responded to the call to ministry.”     After the candidates completed college, the church sent them on to the denominational seminary which not only taught denominational doctrine but were funded by the denomination to do so.     When the student graduated, he (and sometimes she) began candidating through the denomination’s accepted process and found an initial place of service.    This may be a simplified explanation that did not always work as smoothly as stated, but this was the general idea.  The current situation is much more complicated.  Potential seminarians respond to the call later in life—either after an educational hiatus following college or after starting a career and family.    Some don’t have any college education at all.  Denominations are no longer funding...

A study released recently by the American Association of Theological Schools found that enrollment in its member schools had stabilized and even showed a slight increase over the previous year.     Perhaps more interesting are the upward and downward trends in student enrolment over the past decade. In downward trends, the enrolment of white students has decreased by 19 percent.  There was a 6 percent enrolment decline for those under 30 and a 14 percent decrease in those seeking the Master of Divinity degree, the basic theological education program. Upward trends included the following:  ten percent increase in racial/ethnic students, 16 percent increase in students over 50 years of age, and an 11 percent increase in those pursuing professional or academic Master of Arts degrees. I would particularly like to address the upward trends and what they mean for the providers of theological education. First, the increasing number of students...