The mentor’s changing role in seminary education

The role of the mentor is changing in seminary education.

Yesterday’s seminary student probably reported to a field supervisor (at least a semester) who then reported to the seminary. Since yesterday’s seminary student typically had little ministry experience, a supervisor was useful and, frankly, often needed. 

Today’s seminary student is different- more likely to have ministry experience and little need for a field supervisor assigned by the seminary. What the student does need, however, is a coaching mentor to provide support for the learning journey; in seminary and following graduation.

Coaching mentors can provide a seminary student:

• Wisdom and discernment
• Life and ministry experience
• Timely advice
• New methods
• Skills
• Principles
• Important values and lessons

The emphasis yesterday was on empowering a field supervisor to provide feedback to the seminary on the progress of the student. 

The emphasis today is on empowering a seminary student to learn and grow from the feedback provided by a coaching mentor. 

Here’s how Paul Stanley and Robert Clinton describe the process in Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need To Succeed in Life:

Coaching is a process of imparting encouragement and skills … empowerment of the mentoree is the result. A key to good coaching is observation (when possible), feedback, and evaluation. An experienced coach does not try to control the player (or mentoree), but rather seeks to inspire and equip him with the necessary motivation, perspective, and skills to enable him to excellent performance and effectiveness. A coach understands that experience is the teaching vehicle, but a wise coach knows the power of evaluated experience.

Can Seminaries CHANGE to a Deploy-and-Debrief Model?

Is it possible for seminaries to change from train-and-deploy to the deploy-and-debrief approach that Reggie McNeal calls for in Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church? Here’s McNeal’s thinking:

Reggie McNeal calls seminaries to a deploy-and-debrief approach

The typical practice for preparing church leaders for their ministry roles proves woefully inadequate for developing kingdom movement leaders. Standard approaches to leadership training for clergy not only ignore biblical patterns but also violate even the most basic understanding of how people (and leaders) develop. The current preparation methodology follows a classroom and pretested certification model. How absurd! There is no correlation between earning high marks on academic tests and being able to lead people. Again, don’t hear what I’m not saying. I have studied some myself and think we need more, not less, theological emphasis. But it’s all a matter of how and when it’s delivered. And to whom. Of course, some seminary grads turn out to be leaders. But by and large, they were leaders when they entered. Seminary training enhanced their skills but didn’t provide them. We can no longer rely on the low percentage of leaders who make it through and the pathetic results we are reaping. We must abandon the train-and-deploy method. 

How did Jesus train leaders for the movement? He used the deploy-and-debrief method. This approach allowed him to take some pretty unpromising and in some cases mercurial candidates and turn them into movement leaders. He invited them to observe what he did, promising them on occasion that they would and could do what they saw him doing. After long hours of ministry, he routinely debriefed the day’s events and teachings. He sent his disciples out on assignments before they were ready, knowing they would make mistakes. He would then debrief their experiences to help them learn from those experiences. …

Questions created teaching moments. Occasionally, he pulled his leaders aside for more extensive briefing. “Come away with me” was not an invitation to a deeper devotional life but a leadership summons to discuss the successes and failures of an early mission trip. 

Movement leaders can and must still be prepared this way. Let’s start with the seminary clergy-training level. Eventually, the strangulating hold of accreditation will further relax to allow training regimens to be offered alongside deployment, employing deliver systems that permit people to stay put in their communities of relationship and leadership influence. Those wanting theological education to prepare for church leadership roles will no longer have to disrupt their families, move and live as transients for three to five years to secure their academic prize, and then have to try to reestablish life and relationships in some new place. Online technology is already creating nonresidential alternatives to the typical approach of residential studies. Seminaries will still offer a residential track for those who prefer it, but the main delivery will shift to nonresidential students who access online teaching at their own pace while integrating what they learn into their everyday life and ministry. This will greatly increase the scope of theological education. … Credentialing will certify a proven leader, not just a wannabe. 

Is it possible for seminaries to change to a deploy-and-debrief approach? Yes, I believe it is! How to make this change was one of the major design questions that had to be answered when planning the launch of the 100% online Rockbridge Seminary in 2003. Here are 5 design features we incorporated to move us closer to the deploy-and-debrief approach championed by Reggie McNeal:

1. Asking applicants to confirm they have a ministry role and church leaders to affirm their support for the applicant, both a requirement for admission
2. Designing learning exercises that utilize and build on a student’s sphere of ministry influence
3. Offering frequent, interactive forums that build a learning community of peers globally, wrestling with difficult ministry issues
4. Involving local ministry coaches who debrief and support students
5. Requiring students to build a ministry portfolio that demonstrates competency development

Is Rockbridge Seminary there yet? No. We are a work in progress.

Re-engineering seminary education is a journey that will need to be traveled over a generation.

The difference between 75% online & 100% online

Carol Twigg, executive director of  The National Center for Academic Transformation, spoke at a conference I attended several years back and used the invention of the ATM to describe real innovation in online learning: 

The first ATM was located inside a bank and was available only during banking hours. Real innovation did not occur until ATMs were placed outside the bank, as well as in malls, grocery stores, and airports, and became available 24 hours a day. ¹

A growing number of seminaries offer online courses, something that could hardly be considered innovative today. So where is the innovation? Not in the “online” but in the “learning.” 

Fully online seminary education allows students to STAY where God planted them. That means that the learning can be designed with the assumption that each student has a ministry learning platform. In other words, field education is no longer a component of seminary – it IS seminary. How does this change seminary design?

The design of course assignments and projects can assume that each student completes them within an actual ministry setting and under the guidance of a local mentor. The ivory tower is dismantled. Application of learning can happen immediately and in an authentic ministry context. 

The design of course discussion can assume that each student is able to contribute real-life perspective. Gone is the naivety and idealism of course discussions where no more than a few of the students actually serve in an authentic ministry role. 

The selection of faculty is no longer restricted by geography. A potential professor (assuming academic credentials) can be engaged in a ministry role anywhere and still be available to teach seminary students. 

As long as a seminary offers only 25%, 50%, or 75% of  a degree program online and requires students to complete the remaining courses in a face-to-face, traditional classroom, the ATM is still inside the bank. 

 

¹  Carol Twigg used the same illustration in this interview with The Technology Source

The Emerging Seminary Student

Matt Chandler, Pastor of The Village Church (Dallas), shared blog thoughts recently about the importance of seminary. If anyone thinks that the topic of seminary education no longer interests anyone, take a look at the blog comments that followed. 

Matt’s comments are on target … Seminary can be important, but is not necessary … New paradigm churches like The Village Church are more concerned about how well a person is equipped than how many degrees he has earned … Seminary offers a process of learning that has the structure and forces the discipline that is difficult for most ministers to maintain on their own.

The emerging seminary student

What I don’t see in Matt’s comments is the broader discussion about ministry development, the focus of a new type of seminary student that has captured my attention. 

The emerging seminary student that I see on the horizon:

1. Already has life and ministry experience, a sense of God’s call, and the need to find a learning partner. 
2. Comes to the classroom with perspective, questions, focus, and learning readiness.
3. Wants to integrate the “academic” with the “practical” and apply what is learned immediately. 
4. Is already thinking strategically about ministry. 
5. Is ready to engage and participate in the learning process rather than sit back passively and be taught.  
6. Thrives in a learning community. 

Can Seminary Students Learn Ministry without a Ministry?

I have heard the criticism for years. Someone completes a seminary degree, takes a position at a church, and doesn’t know how to minister. Sometimes the criticism was fair. Sometimes not. After all, seminaries make convenient targets on which to blame a multitude of sins. But it did lead me to this question:

Should a seminary require someone to be in ministry?

How can a seminary teach someone to be a minister if the student is not engaged in ministry?

My conclusion? Not very well, if at all. I remember my fellow seminary students who were engaged in ministry while completing their seminary education. Having a ministry platform on which to apply and test what they were learning in the classroom made them a completely different kind of student. I have found the same to be true with the thousands of seminary students I have taught over the last two decades:

1. They searched for answers while other students didn’t even know the questions.
2. They had learning focus while other students wandered around in an intellectual wilderness fascinated with issues that have no relevance to actual ministry.
3. They knew something about leading people while other students didn’t have a clue.

When Rockbridge Seminary launched, we made the decision that applicants MUST be engaged in a ministry (whether volunteer or vocational) and have confirmation from a church leader where they serve. Consequently, we were able to build learning exercises and assessment instruments into every Rockbridge Seminary course with the assumption that a student has a ministry platform on which to learn.

And yes, we have rejected applicants who didn’t meet this requirement.

Why Online Seminary?

It’s a fair question. But not the question I started with. Twenty years ago I started asking a more basic question: Why seminary? My conclusion was that the seminary exists for the church (not the other way around). That means that the burden is on the seminary to adapt to the changing needs of churches.

So, why online seminary? Because of a major shift in the way churches hire staff.

Thirty years ago, most students went to seminary to get their credentials so a church would hire them. Today, a growing number of students go to seminary to sharpen their ministry skills so they can be more effective in the church position they already hold. Why the change? More churches fill staff positions from within their own church.

Before: seminary, then church position
Now: church position, then seminary

Once someone is plugged into a church staff position, seminary options are few unless a seminary campus is nearby. Answer? A seminary program that is totally, completely, 100% online.