A New Church and A New Seminary: Theological Education Is the Solution
Ebook
Overview
Many churches are “mule churches”–strong for a generation
but unable to reproduce themselves. As a mule comes from a horse
and a donkey, they were the product of demographics and cultural
conditions conducive for a generation of strength but did not
produce many offspring in new church starts or strong candidates
for ministry. Mule churches create a generation or more of
pastors, superintendents, and bishops who think they knew what made
for strong church, who think their approach to ministry is the key
reason for their success. And it produces churches with a
nostalgia for the way things used to be. This makes it hard
for churches to adapt to change.
We’ve been declining for a long time due to
changes in secular and consumer culture, demographics radically
adjusting normative family structure, and a theology based in
consumer marketing rather than mission-driven vitality. Now we
realize that the church is free to not just make the gospel
relevant to life but to make life relevant to the gospel.
Conservative evangelical Christianity was able
to focus on relevance prior to its ascendency on the national
stage. Methodism requires a similar period of confessional
self-definition. We are going through these confessions now
in the debate about our stance toward homosexuality.
Most students and most professors go to
the seminary “to fix the church,” because they realize that the
future of the church and its seminaries are inseparable.
Seminaries provide scholars for the church, who learn how to think,
who learn how to take the long view, who shape identity, who foster
a "culture of calling."
A new kind of Methodist progressive
evangelicalism is regenerating, which lives the great commandment
(love) and the great commission (reproducing disciples) on a global
scale. Before, seminaries prepared pastors to maintain healthy
churches in stable neighborhoods. Now, every neighborhood is
changing and many churches are losing their members and their
confidence. They long for a recovery of their sense of mission and
a new kind of leadership. A new kind of seminary is regenerating to
foster hope, wisdom, creativity, and engagement with the great
issues of our day.