Seminaries, church should work together, professor says
Aug. 22, 2006 News media contact: Linda Green * (615) 7425470* Nashville {499}
NOTE: Photographs and related coverage are available at http://umns.umc.org.
By Linda Green*
CHICAGO (UMNS) - The United Methodist Church must do more than pay lip service to the disciplinary requirements of spiritual formation, said a United Methodist seminary professor.
The Rev. Gennifer Brooks, assistant professor of homiletics at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill., told United Methodist clergywomen that the church must be partners with the academy in developing Christian leaders.
Brooks was part of a multiethnic panel of five theologians answering the question of how the church and seminary can be partners, with particular emphasis on how women leaders can impact the church, nationally and internationally. The Aug.16 panel was part of the 2006 United Methodist International Clergywomen's Consultation.
Brooks said the local church must be responsible for determining the authenticity of a candidate's call to ministry. Seminary is the place that prepares and nurtures people to lead the church; it is not the starting point for the discernment of one's call to ministry, said Brooks.
"No seminary can select students based on their sense of call," she said. The task of helping one discern or confirm his or her call to preach Christ is a responsibility of the local church. Too often, seminaries are blamed for the ineffectiveness or lack of success of pastors, she said.
"Seminaries exist to provide knowledge, mind, not heart, not spirit," she said. She also noted that it is too late for churches to wait until after students graduate from seminaries to assess their suitability for ministry. Seminaries cannot be made to "shoulder the blame" for people who should never have been encouraged to seek ordination, she said.
Students must have experienced the "heart-warming change" before they come to seminary, Brooks said. They must be prepared spiritually before beginning study, and they should have learned about spiritual discernment in Sunday school classes. "So they won't enter seminary hoping by chance to hear a call from God."
"There must be partnership in order to help those persons who come in answer to some kind of call, to engage both mind and spirit that gives witness to the presence and the anointing of God in their lives and prepares them for transformative leadership that is required for vital ministry," said Brooks.
Three key areas
She named three areas essential in the process of developing leaders: identification, preparation and maintenance/spiritual development.
Speaking about preparation, Brooks called it a "a sad state of affairs" and said that too often at the end of a three-year master's program, students and faculty are dissatisfied with a student's preparedness for ministerial leadership, particularly for pastoral ministry.
The problem stems from three interrelated issues - time, money and curriculum, which play a tremendous role in a student's desire to complete seminary as quickly as possible and move into an appointment.
Students enroll in seminary already possessing significant debt from previous degrees and they seldom take courses beyond the core requirements because each class is an added cost, she said. Scholarships are affected by grades, and students look for elective courses and professors they consider to be easy, she added.
"The very subject matter they need to improve is the one they avoid taking because the work is considered too onerous," she said.
Brooks suggested that seminaries and churches work together to define the key subjects and content required for courses to prepare a higher standard of leaders in the future and collaborate on what the church needs in the area of leadership for the 21st century.
"The church must do more than pay lip service to the disciplinary requirement that its leaders remain lifelong learners through continuing education."
Every seminary, she said, must provide opportunities for church leaders to develop academically and spiritually. The church, "must hold its leaders' feet to the fire" so they cannot shirk the opportunity to grow in mind and spirit.
"You can't only read the Bible to prepare a sermon," Brooks said.
Engage the community
The Rev. Cristian De La Rosa, who describes herself as a theologian in transition, is the new director of the Mexican American program at Perkins School of Theology, Dallas. She told the consultation that partnership between church and academy in the 21st century is "a unique place and space," where together they engage in disciple-making tasks.
One cannot talk about a meaningful and relevant partnership between the church and the academy without engaging the community, she said. Those who have the greatest need provide the grounding for dialogue and partnership between the church and academy.
"It is from the community where prophetic essence in the power of God is found," she said.
Other panelists included the Rev. Rebecca Parker, president of Starr King School, one of nine schools in the ecumenical and interfaith Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.; the Rev. BoYoung Lee, assistant professor of educational ministries at Pacific School of Religion; and the Rev. Constance Pak, pastor of Sea Cliff (N.Y.) United Methodist Church.
Consultation designers wanted participants to return home "with the understanding that the church of the future will be multiethnic, multigenerational, multinational and multifaceted in the ways it sees itself," said the Rev. Cynthia Belt, a member of the consultation's design team and pastor of Centennial-Caroline United Methodist Church, Baltimore.
"Additionally, the church of the future will need the academy to inform its mission and ministry, even as the academy needs the church to stay grounded in the practicalities of ministry," she said.
*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org
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