It was the whisper that made me leave my church.
It was the one line that I heard over and over again in the five years that I traveled across the country, first in leading a commission for my denomination and then as a consultant in organizational change.
“Why didn’t seminary prepare me for this?”
I would hear that line echoed in my mind long after each conversation was over. I had a sense that it was going to be shaping my future call. I even wrote a blog post about it in December 2012.
And then a year after I wrote the blog post, I was invited to do something about it. I had already discerned that my next step in ministry was to invest in leadership development for the mission of Christ. I had already announced to my congregation that I would be leaving in the near future to respond to this voice. I had used my sabbatical to work on a book on leadership in “uncharted territory.” I didn’t know where this would lead, but this much was clear:
The world is changing. Rapidly.
Businesses, universities and organizations are being forced to adapt as the old rules and expectations are being cast aside. And now the church realizes the same. For generations, would-be pastors and Christian leaders were all prepared for ministry in the same way, with the same set of expectations. Seminaries gave you the “tools,” and you would quickly find a “calling” in which to use them. And for decades, there were more positions to fill than qualified people to fill them.
Not today. Today, churches are closing, ministries are downsizing, Christian organizations and denominations are looking to the seminary to produce leaders that can integrate their academic learning with wisdom, resilience and deep spiritual maturity. The Christian leaders of today and tomorrow must be more than theologically educated, they must be personally, spiritually, academically and globally formed with the leadership creativity and missional savvy to develop ministry in arenas that are increasingly resistant to the Gospel. Often bivocational, increasingly working in churches that are in need of a “turn around,” the pastor of today is more like a missionary than a chaplain, more like an entrepreneur than a shopkeeper. And the mission of God needs equipped leaders that go far beyond pulpits and pastors’ studies into a myriad of places and settings.
Unfortunately, most seminaries are still equipping students for the church of a generation ago.
But while sitting in the Newark Airport last fall, newly appointed Fuller Theological Seminary President Mark Labberton told me of a significant change taking place at his school. It’s the kind of change that most people say never happens.
The Fuller Faculty changed the curriculum.
Mark told me how the faculty commissioned a team to do an in-depth study, including listening to their students and alumni. And they heard them loud and clear. The students told them that they loved the Seminary but feared the future. The Alumni told the study team that for the church to be relevant in the world, the seminaries must be willing to change the way they prepare Christian leaders for that world.
This team listened and got to work. And when their report came back, the Faculty—that tenured group of highly regarded experts who have everything to lose and little to gain—set aside their well-earned privilege and security to retool the entire project of theological education.
