Clergy formation

I had an interesting conversation around the dinner table with some seminary professors recently. The on-going topic of assessment related to “ministerial formation” came up, as it often does. Given that this is now an ATS (Association of Theological Schools) component of assessment in the accrediting process it becomes, like every assessment criteria, a point of institutional anxiety. I was struck again at the lack of clarity about what formation is, and about the relationship between formation and context, on the part of theological educators.

That should come as no surprise given that most theological faculty are trained as scholars in a particular discipline and field of knowledge. Most become members of professional “guilds” whose focus becomes (1) the profession (teaching in theological schools) and (2) the advancement of the discipline. Rarely will they study other disciplines or delve into content that is not focused on their discipline–including, congregations, education, or faith formation.

My own opinion on the matter is that seminaries need to give up trying to assess their success at ministerial formation because it’s just something they cannot do. To put it bluntly, the business of the seminary is the seminary, and try as they may seminaries cannot “form” pastors—only a congregation can “form” a pastor. This has to do with the nature of formation, which, like the Gospel, comes in “context and relationships.” My shorthand phrase about formation is that when everything is said and done, “relationships mediate formation.” And relationships are contextual. So, formation happens through relationships in context over time. The relationships in the context of the seminary ensures, enables, and limits the kinds of relationships in that context. And the relationships in the context of the congregation enables and limits the kinds of relationships that happen in that context.

For example, the only place where a pastor learns pastoral preaching is as a pastor in a congregation as he or she practices and lives into the calling and vocation of pastor in the context of a community of faith. A student may learn “about” preaching in seminary–the craft, the science, and the scholarship related to it, certainly. Those are important and has some value to future pastors. But you are formed into a pastoral preacher when you preach out of that relationship to a congregation in that context. There is a qualitative world of difference between seminarian sermon and one delivered by a pastor in a congregation who knows the lives, pains, grieves, fears, hopes, and anxieties of the people in the congregation. Seminaries seem to understand this at some level given their insistence on “pastoral experience” in their faculty searches—although it seems that the issue of the necessity and value of pastoral or ministerial experience gets re-hashed each time a search process begins.

We can underscore the issue by talking about mentoring. Mentoring is a vocational relationship. One pastor can mentor another into the vocation of pastoring, but a seminary professor cannot. A seminary professor can mentor another aspiring professor in the context of the seminary and within the framework of the profession. That “the business of the seminary is the seminary” finds proof enough in the conversations when professors gather at meetings. The topics of conversations rarely, if at all, ever get around to clergy-pastors or the congregation. Seminary professors talk about what is of most interest to them and what they are most concerned about: academe or their areas of discipline. When pastors and clergy gather as a group they talk about what they are most concerned about: their congregations and the challenges of pastoring their members.

Certainly there is a relationship and bond between seminary as academy and church as congregation. Sometimes that relationship is better at certain times than at others. But I’m convinced, given how the process of formation actually happens (through relationships in context over time) that for the seminary to take on the responsibility of the formation of the minister is too much of a stretch and a pragmatic (if not ideological) disconnect. Seminaries do many things well in contributing to the education of clergy—and they should celebrate that and be unapologetic about those things. But to take on the responsibility of the formation of the minister-pastor-clergy may be beyond what they are able to do given their context and the model(s) of education they practice.