When you discourage seminary, young church leaders miss out on at least one important thing: history. Throughout the last year of my life, I have had the privilege of sitting down with female evangelical seminarians to ask them one simple question: why are you here? These opportunities emerged out of my doctoral research, which investigated the experience of evangelical women who “made it” to seminary. It is my conviction that women with a call to ministry should consider cultivating their gifts through seminary education, but few choose this path. The Association of Theological Schools reports that women constitute only 20% of students in evangelical M.Div. programs, so I sat down with evangelical women in seminary to find out what worked. What encouraged them to pursue the M.Div. degree when so many of their peers do not? The path to seminary is full of obstacles for evangelical women. Between complex gender dynamics and a lack of available jobs, women must overcome a lot. However, there is an additional dynamic discouraging evangelical women from seminary, one that transcends gender. According to a study conducted by The Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education, evangelical seminary enrollment has been on the decline over the last ten years. For both men and women. This decline could reflect a larger decline among evangelical church membership, but I suspect it’s also a symptom of a common mindset in evangelical churches: seminary, many believe, isn’t practical. Some evangelical churches are ambivalent about seminary; they could take it or leave it. Others are downright skeptical of seminary. I once attended a church that treated seminary as though it was a liability, rather than an asset to its leaders. Better not to attend seminary, they concluded. Although I attended ... Continue reading... #Sydney #News #Aus
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 16:54:21 +0000
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