Somehow 90+ credits for an MDIV over three years doesn't seem like a missional education structure - we'll lightly touch on content later. But we might ask who we want to educate first. I'd propose that we want to educate three clusters of people, those entering with high school diplomas who are 18 or more, those who have associates or bachelors who are 20 or more, and those with MDIVs who were prepared for institutional service. I'd lump in the MA's and MAR's as well.
But let's look at another degree of freedom for "who": those who want to plant churches, those who want to make or participate in the the making of an established church into a missional church, and "other". Since all institutions have inertia and are inherently conservative/conservators one could imagine a whole lot of others in approved/experimental missional "activities" by a church. In Indiana I met a staff pastor who was bivocational (and took zero money from his suburban church) who had established a church in an urban core, that his church had abandoned 40 years before.
The Missional Education should be "accessible", "affordable", "applicable","partnerable", and "certifiable".
Accessible: hard to imagine driving to some remote location every week, this had better be online in a majoritive sense. But it should also be cohort based, with face to face contact with the educators and the cohort.
Affordable: this can't cost what a graduate degree costs, it has to look to the community college as the metric, that is the most that it should cost. Given the missional nature, there should be a certification that no money was borrowed for this.
Applicable: "Preaching" is an institutional practice of Christendom (philosophically I'd call it a "speech act" as it has an intended understanding for the listener). This is post Christendom, a course in interpersonal communications and conversation is dramatically more important. We have portals into these conversations, I'd prefer each course to have an assigned book from the NewYorkTimes BestSellers list to capstone discussed for 20% of the grade, then a final or paper.
Partnerable: While many seminaries have successfully partnered with denominational institutions and should continue to with this cirriculum, they will have to learn to partner with individual churches that want to participate in this missional turn in post Christendom.
Certifiable: In that partnership the seminary certifies it's half, the church must certifiy its half, this is undoubtedly more than licensing or ordination. It is something else, and ultimately equally important.
A last point, in information theory there are three things that happen with information
CREATION, TRANSFER, USE
For millenium TRANSFER had a high value, and especially in North America through the 20th Century. Our society is moving to a stage where TRANSFER is NOT valued, it is broadly applicable
but even more so to all forms of education. Ultimately all time-domain (time serving) forms of
transfer will die, what is of true interest is mastery. So while the traditional classroom model for
education is dieing, even online cohort is undoubtedly a transitional stage. Mastering community
in this model is going to be very very hard.
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7 comments:
wow dude. That might have been a series of posts. I lot to think about / interact with...
Marty:
Good stuff here. I think the Ft. Wayne conference showed the need for affordable and accessible missional education. I hear you on the transfer idea, but am inclined to think that education is more than information transfer. How do we capture/preserve other important elements of the educational process?
I too believe that education is more than transfer, for one it is certification as mentioned. I am an engineer by education and training so I use broad analogies and figures of merit at will.
I also believe that community educates, and Pastor Jeff of Life on the Vine I concur with, for me the best education I've had to date was from my Family.
I used to teach my employee's "follow people, not institutions", as I believed you mentioned on our trip, modernity's teaching that this was ONLY about rational thought does not accurately describe what goes on. I have affinity for my teachers, Richard Mandelbaum at UofR, Joe Flaherty at RPI, Dave Dorsey and Ken Miller at ETS, and my Boss at BBN who taught me it will never work for anyone if you don't use it yourself.
Losing the affinity of your teachers in this process would be a bad thing. I believe that Socrates said that teaching was friendship.
Ultimately your question is very hard to answer, it requires more laboratory work.
A couple of thoughts. First, while I acknowledge where the culture either is now or is heading toward with regard to educational models, something of Fitch sticks in my mind. It's the observation that we have so much of our identities and proclivities formed by the culture without analysis, and the impending challenge to bring ourselves before the gospel to our desires, methods, preferences, etc. re-shaped, reformed thereby. I wonder--do we just accept the world the way it is, or do we step back and offer an alternative, even if that alternative has been deemed passe, extinct, "modernist" or whatever?
Second, I assume (?) that pastors/leadership are acting as gatekeepers for those who will avail themselves of the remodeled educational opportunities required for the missional work. That is, "call" has already been affirmed before the learner enters the process.
I am both a contrarian investor and a contrarian person according to some. I am not interested in fads at all.
So I would ask, in the past 30 years how many times did you end your pulpit time with someone coming up to you saying the preaching was great, but you pastorally know how far that person is from Kingdom peace, Kingdom actions, or Kingdom disposition.
The fundamental critique here is "doesn't work". This is about what is working or will work. I'm also concerned with WHOM this is not working - the marginalized, the poor, etc.
I'm not sure who the gatekeepers are, in the model of "call" that I think classically is espoused, does that really matter? Did Amos really care what Amaziah had to say, or that he belonged in a school of the prophets?
My friend Joel and I argued against call in our last class together so I'll leave at that.
What is important in the educational discovery phase is the eventual integration into the church.
I want to tell the Story (the meta-Narrative) in a language that is understood, while I believe that the medium can be the message a modicum of care in that area can neutralize it.
But that issue is a two edged sword, can we really believe that the pew based Sunday cultis is working universally? My metaphor is that (statistically) the seminaries are educating the next generation of undertakers for that cultis, they get to close the doors.
I'm going to attempt another posting from the Indiana conversation that is related to this.
Knowing and affirming where your heart is regarding the marginalized, my concern re: educating and gatekeepers has to do with how firm a grasp those proposed for ministry have on the story itself. Someone, at least it seems to me, should be in the role of affirming the readiness, giftedness (let's avoid the c-word for now) of those entering into study for ministry.
Good Point, I forget the ghetto that I live in of long learning, long serving people of the way.
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