"HIGHER EDUCATION"
Allow me the privilege of thinking by writing. Writing is a great way to think because writing forces the writer to put precise reflections and concepts down for further consideration and future refinement. Each article posted to my “Ministerial Musings” blog is a reflection, consideration, the development or establishment of a position, or a challenge to convention. Each of them is unfinished.
This contribution to the process is related to my thoughts and reflections on higher education, a subject I am familiar with.
First, I enrolled in Portland State University (then Portland State College) when I was a junior in high school, taking two three-hour courses.
My next school was the United States Air Force Academy. I received a medical discharge and, therefore, did not graduate.
My third exposure to higher education began when I enrolled at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, and I graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
My fourth school was El Camino College in Torrance, CA, while working for Hughes Aircraft Company in El Segundo.
My fifth school was Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College, San Dimas, from which I graduated in 1978.
School number six was the Grace Graduate School of Theology, Long Beach, for a year.
Seventh was the International Seminary in Florida, earning a Th M.
Eighth, was Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA for two years.
Ninth, I graduated with a ThD from Louisiana Baptist Theological Seminary, Shreveport, LA.
Tenth, I enrolled in courses at American Jewish University, Bel Air, CA.
Eleventh, I went back to Louisiana Baptist University, Shreveport, and enrolled in post-graduate Biblical counseling courses (on hold since moving to Greece, with the intention of completing).
Twelfth, I taught for several years at a Baptist Bible college.
I point this out only to establish my familiarity with public colleges and universities, Bible colleges, Christian theological schools, and seminaries. Different schools have different goals, and the same schools have different goals depending on who you are. Parents might have one or two goals, matriculating students' other goals, with the school’s administration having still different goals.
My Portland State coursework was completed while still in high school and living at home. I was then not treated like an adult, and I did not think of myself as an adult at the time, since I was not independent. I was living at home. While at USAFA in Colorado Springs, I was not treated as an adult, but as a sworn member of the Armed Forces of the United States, the closest legal status to slavery allowed under law for someone not incarcerated.
It was after my discharge and subsequent enrollment at Oregon State University that I began to function as an adult, though OSU initially interfered with my efforts, requiring me to live as a college freshman in a dormitory. It took three days for me to escape dorm life and move in with three upper-class men in a two-bedroom apartment. I graduated on time four years later with a bachelor’s in ME.
Since then, I have wondered from time to time how different types of schools get away with treating their students like children, requiring them to live on campus with resident assistants who babysit them. This is accomplished at secular schools (usually for incoming first-year students) and Christian schools (with some Bible colleges getting away with treating all of their single students as children for the entirety of their four years enrolled). I have always wondered what school administrators expect their students to act like when they treat them like children. That is the subject of another “Ministerial Musings.”
Seminaries do not, typically, require students to live in campus housing, though campus housing is a convenience sometimes provided but not mandated for single and married students. The reason for this is easy to understand. Seminarians are a different type of student than is found in a Bible college, with most having an undergraduate degree of some type, usually in a field unrelated to Christian ministry. Thus, seminarians enroll as adults after having attained a level of maturity and academic standing not typically found in university undergraduate programs or Bible colleges. For the most part, seminarians are serious students. The cadets at USAFA are usually also dead serious about their enrollment, having jumped through a number of hoops to get there, in preparation for a career in the Armed Forces.
Undergraduates in public universities are enrolled for a variety of reasons, some of them legitimate. Graduate degree programs (except for the humanities, schools of education, and cultural studies programs, which are not serious academic programs), especially in the STEM areas, require real effort to succeed.
Since I am obviously making no attempt at academic rigor but musing, you will excuse me for making a hard turn here to Bible colleges. Contemporary Bible colleges trace their origin to Dwight L. Moody’s Bible Institute in Chicago. I find this ironic, since Moody never pretended to be a Baptist, #1, but did openly and honestly establish his program for men who were admittedly unprepared or seriously underprepared for what lay ahead of them, the ministry of the Word, #2. His program was a three-year curriculum that resulted in the awarding of the graduate degree in theology, Th G.
Why some Baptists in the mid-twentieth century adopted the Moody approach, while ignoring what some established Baptist groups had been engaged in for a century, I do not pretend to know. Moody’s men knew they were minimally educated. They never pretended to be well educated or thoroughly prepared for the ministry, because they knew they were not. They knew they were beginning their preparation for ministry when they passed through Moody Bible Institute. For the last half of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st, however, too many graduates of those Baptist schools modeled after the Moody pattern (enrolled though only minimally prepared, and almost never flunked out for a failure to measure up) thought when they graduated that they had arrived! Not so!
Understand that my musings are not criticisms, but observations. I have no expectation of being a change agent. Without exploring the entirety of the issue, I have arrived at this stage of my life at certain conclusions:
A surprising number of Bible college presidents and teachers are not academics. If they have written any books at all, they were ghostwritten, and they focus on means and methods rather than on Bible exegesis. Rather, most Bible college presidents and teachers are pastors who are not noted for being theologians, or for being prolific readers, but for managing congregational organizations in a pragmatic fashion.
A surprising number of Bible colleges were not founded to train men for the ministry, but to obtain large numbers of workers who, though enrolled in the school, are really there for the work they do on Saturdays and Sundays to make the church bigger. And they actually pay the church (through tuition payments to the school) for the privilege of putting in many hours of work on weekends.
A surprising number of Bible college presidents are quite willing for their students to either drop out or graduate but not enter the ministry, in the hope that they will continue to live nearby and continue attending the church where they went to school. That is why the emphasis is for them to “Try out Bible college for a year.” Never before in Christian history has such a thing as that been suggested.
A surprising number (if not almost all) of Bible colleges teach “How To” courses, such as how to do a bus ministry, how to do a Sunday School, how to do a choir, how to do a youth camp, but do not teach important Bible doctrines. Let me illustrate. Since 2019, I have searched for Bible colleges that teach an ecclesiology course. I have not found a single school that teaches a course on the doctrine of the church!
Pastors back home frequently want their aging youth group to go away to Bible college so that if they stop going to church, they will stop going to church after relocating somewhere else.
Parents want their children to go away to Bible college, and are willing to pay the tuition bill to accomplish it, to get them out of the house, and to get them married. Don’t get me wrong. These are not bad objectives, just typically unstated objectives.
Why do students go to Bible college? Some go for no other reason than not knowing what to do with their lives. Others go to find a spouse. Still others enroll because they do not want to grow up. There are some who attend to train for the ministry, and they will tolerate being treated like children to achieve their goal.
My time for musing has come to an end for now. I have made no accusations. I am not suspecting anyone’s motives. I expect no one to change as a result of reading this. However, I do hope I have dissuaded anyone in the Gospel ministry from thinking that his graduation from Bible college ended his need for study, serious reading, and continual reflection on how to improve in various aspects of the ministry.
