Are Seminaries Putting Their Blue Days Behind Them?

America’s mainline Protestant seminaries are in crisis, but so far they seem to be spending more energy dodging tough choices than preparing for the future. A recent article at Inside Higher Ed describes the enrollment collapse at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. Luther is one of the most important Lutheran seminaries in the country, but its status wasn’t enough to insulate it from the forces upending seminaries everywhere. Enrollment fell off sharply, and the institution ”was running multimillion-dollar deficits, spending down its endowment and relying on loans.”

The seminary’s response? It’s making some painful cuts, letting go of some staff and reducing the number of degree programs it offers. Luther isn’t alone; seminaries all over the country are facing tough choices.

In many cases, survival has required selling off property or losing independence. More seminarians enroll later in life than in the past, meaning that seminaries often don’t need buildings filled with dorms and apartments. Others have worked to develop online programs, requiring less of a physical footprint, and selling or leasing their additional facilities.

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An avalanche is coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead

'Our belief is that deep, radical and urgent transformation is required in higher education as much as it is in school systems. Our fear is that, perhaps as a result of complacency, caution or anxiety, or a combination of all three, the pace of change is too slow and the nature of change too incremental.'

Download full publication: http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2013/04/avalanche-is-coming_Mar2013_10432.pdf

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Discussion Points on the Seminary of the Future

Source: http://future.fuller.edu/Discussion_Points/Discussions/

DISCUSSION POINT #1: The Ecosystem of Theological Education

Ecologists call the complex systems within which living things exist “ecosystems.” In a well-functioning ecosystem, resources are abundant, toxins are efficiently filtered and removed, and a rich diversity of life finds niches for flourishing. You could define an ecosystem as a living system for channeling energy to sustain abundance. read more

DISCUSSION POINT #2: The Core and the Edge 

There are three core components to any seminary curriculum that no seminary can do without, and that make a seminary what it is—biblical studies, theology, and history. No other educational institution addresses these three fields in the comprehensive and interrelated way that seminaries seek to do. These are not the only important, or even unique, areas that seminaries address—but they are at the very heart of what a seminary education provides, a three-legged stool that is the foundation of graduate theological education... read more

DISCUSSION POINT #3: Rethinking Vocation

Two generations ago, it was clear who theological education was for. It was for people preparing for ordained ministry or, possibly, missionary service. An overwhelming majority of M.Div. students went on to work as clergy in a Christian denomination. Seminary, like many other professional schools—of law or medicine or business—gave individuals a specific credential for a specific career... read more

DISCUSSION POINT #4a: Generational Transitions in Ethnic Minority Culture

A tremendous amount of vitality in North American Christianity is concentrated in ethnic minority and immigrant communities. Globally, the same could be said for the new Christian movements, only two or three generations old at most, in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The growth of these movements is surely one of the great moves of God in our time... read more

DISCUSSION POINT #4b: Generational Transitions in the Dominant Culture

If an institution is defined as an organization that thrives at least two generations beyond its founding, the institutional ambivalence of vast numbers of 30- and 40-somethings foreshadows a very rocky period for everything from new church plants to 250-year-old congregations—not to mention seminaries themselves... read more

DISCUSSION POINT #5: Leadership

A seminary is an academic institution. Yet most of its students do not become academics. Rather, they are preparing for leadership in one or another part of the church and wider society—or are already leaders. Students who become pastors, in particular, are often thrust immediately into positions of authority in organizations of significant complexity and, all too frequently, dysfunction. What does it mean for seminaries to prepare their students to be leaders rather than scholars?... read more

DISCUSSION POINT #6: Augmented Reality: Technology and Personal Presence

There are two understandable reactions to any new technology: enthusiasm and suspicion. There are plenty of both regarding the present and future effects of the Internet generally, and social media specifically, on seminary education... read more

DISCUSSION POINT #7: Training, Indoctrination, Education (coming November 14, 2011)

Whatever else seminaries do, they offer theological education. But just offering it is not enough. Seminaries need to make the case for theological education.Perhaps this has always been true to some extent, but it has certainly never been more true than it is today...

DISCUSSION POINT #8: Adaptive Strategies (coming November 21, 2011)

Responding effectively to adaptive problems always requires growth—as when a patient given a diagnosis of heart disease must make major lifestyle changes, or when a diagnosis of terminal illness challenges not just the patient’s but also the doctor’s ability to face our human limitations...

Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university?

Publishing, music, shopping, journalism – all revolutionised by the internet. Next in line? Education. Now US academics are offering world-class tuition – free – to anyone who can log on, anywhere in the world, is this the end of campus life?

Two years ago, I sat in the back seat of a Toyota Prius in a rooftop car park in California and gripped the door handle as the car roared away from the kerb, headed straight towards the roof's edge and then at the last second sped around a corner without slowing down. There was no one in the driver's seat.

It was the prototype of Google's self-driving car and it felt a bit like being Buck Rogers and catapulted into another century. Later, I listened to Sebastian Thrun, a German-born professor of artificial intelligence at Stanford University, explain how he'd built it, how it had already clocked up 200,000 miles driving around California, and how one day he believed it would mean that there would be no traffic accidents.

A few months later, the New York Times revealed that Thrun was the head of Google's top-secret experimental laboratory Google X, and was developing, among other things, Google Glasses – augmented reality spectacles. And then, a few months after that, I came across Thrun again.

The self-driving car, the glasses, Google X, his prestigious university position – they'd all gone. He'd resigned his tenure from Stanford, and was working just a day a week at Google. He had a new project. Though he didn't call it a project. "It's my mission now," he said. "This is the future. I'm absolutely convinced of it."

The future that Thrun believes in, that has excited him more than self-driving cars, or sci-fi-style gadgets, is education. Specifically, massive online education free to all. The music industry, publishing, transportation, retail – they've all experienced the great technological disruption. Now, says Thrun, it's education's turn.

"It's going to change. There is no doubt about it." Specifically, Thrun believes, higher education is going to change. He has launched Udacity, an online university, and wants to provide mass high quality education for the world. For students in developing countries who can't get it any other way, or for students in the first world, who can but may choose not to. Pay thousands of pounds a year for your education? Or get it free online?

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College Is Dead. Long Live College!

On Sept. 17 [2012], the Pakistani government shut down access to YouTube. The purported reason was to block the anti-Muslim film trailer that was inciting protests around the world.

One little-noticed consequence of this decision was that 215 people in Pakistansuddenly lost their seats in a massive, open online physics course. The free college-level class, created by a Silicon Valley start-up called Udacity, included hundreds of short YouTube videos embedded on its website. Some 23,000 students worldwide had enrolled, including Khadijah Niazi, a pigtailed 11-year-old in Lahore. She was on question six of the final exam when she encountered a curt message saying “this site is unavailable.”

Niazi was devastated. She’d worked hard to master this physics class before her 12th birthday, just one week away. Now what? Niazi posted a lament on the class discussion board: “I am very angry, but I will not quit.”

In every country, education changes so slowly that it can be hard to detect progress. But what happened next was truly different. Within an hour, Maziar Kosarifar, a young man taking the class in Malaysia, began posting detailed descriptions for Niazi of the test questions in each video. Rosa Brigída, a novice physics professor taking the class from Portugal, tried to create a workaround so Niazi could bypass YouTube; it didn’t work. From England, William, 12, promised to help and warned Niazi not to write anything too negative about her government online.

None of these students had met one another in person. The class directory included people from 125 countries. But after weeks in the class, helping one another with Newton’s laws, friction and simple harmonic motion, they’d started to feel as if they shared the same carrel in the library. Together, they’d found a passageway into a rigorous, free, college-level class, and they weren’t about to let anyone lock it up.

By late that night, the Portuguese professor had successfully downloaded all the videos and then uploaded them to an uncensored photo-sharing site. It took her four hours, but it worked. The next day, Niazi passed the final exam with the highest distinction. “Yayyyyyyy,” she wrote in a new post. (Actually, she used 43 y’s, but you get the idea.) She was the youngest girl ever to complete Udacity’s Physics 100 class, a challenging course for the average college freshman.

That same day, Niazi signed up for Computer Science 101 along with her twin brother Muhammad. In England, William began downloading the videos for them.

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Resources for Doctoral Students

Источник: The Fund for Theological Education

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If you are student who is considering or pursuing a PhD in religion, theology or biblical studies, this page is for you. Here you will find resources and tools for the journey through graduate school into the vocation of teaching.

• The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion The Wabash Center supports teachers of religion and theology in higher education through meetings and workshops, grants, a journal and other resources to make accessible the scholarship of teaching and learning. All Wabash Center programs are funded by Lilly Endowment Inc.
• The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: Clergy Education Study The Carnegie Foundation has recently completed a study of the academic preparation of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergy. Through intensive documentation of a cross-section of theological schools, the study sought to understand, broadly, how theological education fosters the development of a pastoral imagination that has the capacity to integrate professional knowledge and skills with moral integrity and religious commitment.
• Auburn: Study of Theological Education Auburn's Center for the Study of Theological Education is the only research institute in the nation focusing specifically and comprehensively on theological education. Established in 1991, it identifies key challenges, explores them in depth, and shares the results with theological schools, religious communities and other educational institutions.
• The Louisville Institute The Louisville Institute is a Lilly Endowment-funded program based at Louisville Seminary supporting those who lead and study American religious institutions. The fundamental mission of the Louisville Institute is to enrich the religious life of American Christians and to encourage the revitalization of their institutions, by bringing together those who lead religious institutions with those who study them, so that the work of each might inform and strengthen the other
• The Association of Theological Schools The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS) is a membership organization of more than 250 graduate schools that conduct post-baccalaureate professional and academic degree programs to educate persons for the practice of ministry and for teaching and research in the theological disciplines. The Commission on Accrediting of ATS accredits the schools and approves the degree programs they offer.
• Hartford Institute for Religion Research Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research has a thirty-two year record of rigorous, policy-relevant research, anticipation of emerging issues and commitment to the creative dissemination of learning. This record has earned the Institute an international reputation as an important bridge between the scholarly community and the practice of faith.
• The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) strives to democratize access to the best data on religion. Founded as the American Religion Data Archive in 1997 and going online in 1998, the initial archive was targeted at researchers interested in American religion. The targeted audience and the data collection have both greatly expanded since 1998, now including American and international collections and developing features for educators, journalists, religious congregations, and researchers.
• Black American Feminisms: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography The multidisciplinary subject bibliography of black American feminist writings that follows is an effort to combat the erasure of black feminist subjectivity and thought through the promotion and use of the literature for the general public, students, scholars and life-long learners seeking information on African American feminism and African American feminist interpretations of a broad range of issues. The bibliography documents and validates an intellectual tradition that is continuously ghettoized within black studies, women's studies and society as a whole. Moreover, the bibliography serves to ensure a place for black American feminist thought in the social change discourse, ensuring its preservation and perpetuation
• The New Testament Gateway The award winning web directory of internet resources on the New Testament, currently being updated daily. Browse or search annotated links on everything from the Greek New Testament to Jesus in Film.
• National Study of Youth and Religion The project is designed to enhance our understanding of the religious lives of American youth from adolescence into young adulthood, using telephone survey and in-depth interview methods. What follows is a more detailed description of the goals and design of the National Study of Youth and Religion.
• Calvin Institute of Christian Worship The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship aims to promote the scholarly study of the theology, history, and practice of Christian worship and the renewal of worship in worshiping communities across North America and beyond.
• Center for Effective Teaching and Learning CETaL promotes excellence in university teaching and learning. UTEP Faculty and other instructors in the region find support here for instructional design, development and evaluation. The Center works with faculty to develop teaching materials that clearly communicate to students how to succeed in completing course requirements and in learning course material.
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Our grant making philosophy is to build, strengthen and sustain institutions and their core capacities, rather than be a source for narrowly defined projects. As such, we develop thoughtful, long-term collaborations with grant recipients and invest sufficient funds for an extended period to accomplish the purpose at hand and achieve meaningful results.
• The Ford Foundation: Grants The vast majority of Ford Foundation grants go to organizations. But individuals may apply for fellowships for advanced degrees in areas of interest to the foundation. Recipients are selected by universities and other organizations that receive grants from the foundation to support fellowships. Here are two such programs.
• Lilly Theological Research Grants The Lilly Theological Research Grants program, inaugurated in 1996 and revised in 2001, is designed to enhance the skill and capacity of faculty in ATS schools as theological researchers and scholars. It supports research efforts of faculty, particularly at junior and non-tenured levels in order to nurture the development of their scholarship; seeks to enlarge the pool of faculty actively engaged as theological researchers; works to increase knowledge about grant seeking and the craft of theological research; and nurtures the habit of research as an ongoing aspect of scholarly life.
• Practicing our Faith This web site is sponsored by the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith, a project whose purpose is to develop resources to help contemporary people live the Christian faith with vitality and integrity in changing times. The Project is ecumenical in orientation and appreciative of the legacies of a range of Christian traditions. We sponsor seminars, books, conferences and web sites for adults and youth.
• Programs for Theological Exploration of Vocation (PTEV) In May 1999, Lilly Endowment Inc. invited a group of outstanding colleges and universities to design programs for this initiative. Schools were asked to establish or strengthen programs that 1) assist students in examining the relationship between faith and vocational choices, 2) provide opportunities for gifted young people to explore Christian ministry, and 3) enhance the capacity of a school's faculty and staff to teach and mentor students effectively in this arena.
• Lilly Endowment, Inc: Religion In recent years Lilly Endowment's religion grant making has been focused on major, interlocking efforts aimed at enhancing and sustaining the quality of ministry in American congregations and parishes. The Endowment has focused on supporting programs and projects that address four broad questions: How do we identify, recruit and call forth a new generation of talented Christian pastors? How do we best prepare and train new ministers for effective and faithful pastoral leadership? How do we improve the skills and sustain the excellence of pastors currently serving congregations? What are basic questions about the current state of the practice of ministry that we need to answer to improve the quality of ministry?
• American Academy of Religion As a learned society and professional association of teachers and research scholars, the American Academy of Religion has over 10,000 members who teach in some 1,500 colleges, universities, seminaries, and schools in North America and abroad. The Academy is dedicated to furthering knowledge of religion and religious institutions in all their forms and manifestations. This is accomplished through Academy-wide and regional conferences and meetings, publications, programs, and membership services.
• The Society of Biblical Literature The Society’s mission to foster biblical scholarship is a simple, comprehensive statement that encompasses the Society’s aspirations. Our vision is to offer members opportunities for mutual support, intellectual growth, and professional development.

*All summaries copied from actual websites’ stated mission.

…духовное образование есть не только сфера профессиональной деятельности, но и истинное искусство…

Руководитель Библиотеки МДА – игумен Дионисий (Шлёнов), кандидат богословия, о состоянии библиотеки МДА:

"В современном мире, духовные основания которого размываются с головокружительной быстротой, особую роль играют центры высокой культуры, напряженного поиска абсолютной Истины, с одной стороны бережно хранящие драгоценное наследие прошлого, а с другой – созидающие на его основе пространство для духовно-нравственного возрастания в ближайшем будущем. Сегодня духовное образование есть не только сфера профессиональной деятельности, но и истинное искусство, высокая миссия.... Несомненно, что собирание без дальнейшего осмысления и надлежащего хранения бесполезно. Осмысление – дело будущего, результат кропотливого учебного процесса и учёного дерзновения. Творческое и ответственное хранение – важнейшая обязанность, лежащая на тех, кто не имеет права зарывать талант в землю подобно нерадивому рабу (Мф. 25, 18). Первому человеку на земле Адаму Бог поручил «хранить и возделывать рай» (Быт. 2, 15), и это хранение и возделывание является, прежде всего, указанием на то, что мы должны внимательно и ответственно относиться к своему духовному становлению и к тому, что этому становлению способствует."

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