Profs vs. Preachers

I started seminary four years ago because I believed that God had called me to preach the word, endure hardship and do the work of an evangelist. At the time that belief was on life support after having been chewed up and spit out working for a church but it was still there none the less. When seminary began I was excited and was hungry to learn a much as I could so that I could be equipped and prepared for ministry.

What was not anticipated was that each year that I was in seminary my desire to go in to the ministry decreased. Fast forward to my final year. As I anticipated graduation the clear calling I had once felt to preaching had all but vanished and I was exploring either starting my own property investing company or a pursuing a PhD as my two options for life after seminary. What happened?

In their book Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon suggest the following:

"Theology, to be Christian, is by definition practical. Either it serves the formation of the church or it is trivial and inconsequential. Preachers are the acid test of theology that would be Christian. Alas, too much theology today seems to have as its goal the convincing of preachers that they are too dumb to understand real theology. Before preachers buy into that assumption, we would like preachers to ask themselves if the problem lies with theologies that have become inconsequential.

Behind the disempowerment of the ministry through the seminary is the hidden agenda of convincing those in the ministry that they are not smart enough to teach in seminary. That is why those of us who take the trouble to get PhD's are paid to continue to teach in seminaries, where we then disempower new generations of ministers by bringing them to seminary in order to convince them that their vocation is not to be a professor!" (Resident Aliens, 165)

This quote may be difficult to relate to for those who have not gone to seminary with the intent of being equipped for ministry. But when I read this I felt that it put words to what I had experienced. Rather than clarifying and affirming my call to ministry my time in seminary taught me that preachers are second class citizens in the world of theology. The message that is not explicit but implicit on the seminary campus is, "If you have any brains at all they either should be used in pursuit of a PhD or in something challenging like business not wasted in something like being a pastor."

They are shepherds after all and everybody knows it doesn't take any brains to be a shepherd right? In fact the less brains the better because no clear thinking individual would dare to take up shepherding if they first thought carefully about it. Shepherds don't get no respect in academia. Nobody wants to read their books, their sermons are clamoring noise, and they can't possibly have anything to contribute that we have not thought about already. right?

Wrong. Either theology serves the formation of the church or it is not Christian. Since preachers are daily on the front lines of forming the church then it follows that they are theologians of the first order. It is time that they are acknowledged as such and empowered to live out their calling instead of lead to question and doubt its significance.

To be fair the above quote is acknowledged by the authors to be slightly hyperbolic. Seminary professors are as essential for doing theology as the preachers. Instead of fighting over who's calling is more significant both must be reminded that their calling ultimately is to build the church.

"As we said earlier, pastors are significant only because of what needs to happen in the church. Now we add that seminary professors like us are significant only because of who pastors need to be." (Ibid.)