While I understand and appreciate the financial restrictions on seminary education, I would suggest the Church respond cautiously rather than react hastily in turning to alternative methods of training of clergy. My understanding is that clergy are to be educated more than than trained. I think the distinction is meaningful.
I was fortunate to attend a university for an undergraduate degree in biblical studies, with a biblical and classical Greek emphasis, cramming the equivalent of five years instruction into three and half. I received a fine education. I then attended another university for my M.Div. with the permission of the bishop of the diocese at that time. I took classes at a local Episcopal Church seminary as well, along with classes at a Jesuit theological school and personal studies at a Greek Orthodox seminary. In addition, I benefited from the fact that all the Divinity School classes were university classes, spread across many of the schools of the university. This way, most of the classes were open to and usually attended by university students, not only those of us preparing for ordained ministry. In addition, students from the consortium of theological schools in the area, a total of eight at the time, were able to take many of the classes being offered at each of the schools respectively. It all made the experience much richer.
I then came to Austin and completed a 'finishing year' at the Episcopal seminary here. The differences between the university experience and those of the seminaries, two Episcopalian and one Jesuit, are notable. I found the seminaries to be very much about training first and education second. Comparatively, the seminary here in Austin at that time felt to me much more like a trade school than a school of higher education.
The Diocese of Texas now has something called the Iona School, which provides an alternative training tract for bi-vocational clergy. Effectively, this training takes a year to a year and a half of basic instruction and stretches it out over three years. It in no way approximates even a seminary education, much less a university education. It is very much about training and informing. But I don't think anyone is daring to claim that it provides a truly academic education.
Taking that model, then, I would suggest the Church ask herself in terms of stewardship: 'Is it our responsibility to ensure that our clergy are educated? Or do we choose instead to see merely that people are trained to function liturgically?'
To help in discerning the priorities, we might ask ourselves if we would like to see a physician who has been merely trained via an alternative approach, or one who has been educated? When we are seeking legal advice in matters important to us, do we turn to a paralegal, a person trained in certain aspects of the law, or to an attorney, someone who has been educated deeply and to our satisfaction in those areas of law that pertain to our concerns? Do want a trained medical functionary or an educated physician? Do you prefer a trained legal functionary or an educated attorney?
Similarly, if I am seeking baptism for my child, do I want to find a person trained in the liturgical functions and indoctrinated in the basic teaching around baptism, or do I prefer someone who can help me to reflect upon and integrate the meanings of baptism for myself, my child, my community, and God? What about Holy Matrimony; Reconciliation, Burial?
If we do indeed want merely to train persons to serve officially as deacons and priests but practically as merely liturgical functionaries, then alternative trade-school educations should do nicely. But I suggest we deprive the present and future generations of Episcopalians when we do so.
Rather than seeking alternatives outside the seminaries, I'm wondering why the Church is not prioritizing seminary education for its clergy, and why more of our seminaries themselves are not making it a priority to establish academic inter-relationships with the institutions of higher education in their respective proximities. I'm aware that the seminary here in Austin is within blocks of the University of Texas at Austin, Huston-Tillotson University, Austin Graduate School Of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and is within a few miles of St. Edward's, University. A formal theological consortium among these schools would go a long way in stepping up clergy education at the seminary. If such is not possible, then the seminary itself could make it easier than it currently is for its students to receive credit for courses taken elsewhere. It could do some fact-finding and relationship-building on their behalf, then inform its own students about some courses elsewhere that it would positively encourage them to take for seminary credit.
In addition, if we wish our smaller more rural congregations not to think of themselves as diocesan step-children, and our bi-vocational clergy to take their vocation and preparation duly seriously, rather than as stop-gap measures put in place by a diocesan bureaucracy trying to save money, then is it not a better course to educate them instead or merely training them? Rather than dumbing-down the preparation of our clergy to a trade-school level, rather than shifting from education to training, is it not a better course to insist upon a quality education for the clergy of our Church?
I suggest the better course is to to demonstrate sacrificially the Church's commitment to quality ministry, service, and leadership. The course we chart now has ramifications for the spiritual and intellectual credibility of this Church, both now and into the future.
Jim +
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