I am an educator and am a big fan of the Church’s
educational endeavors. I have often quipped that if education is to be rightly
done, it is to be done by the Church. I believe that our theology of humanity,
our theology of revelation, and our theology of Creation allows us to have the
most authentic and humanizing enterprise in teaching and learning.
In the interest of full disclosure, I attended a the best
public schools in Louisiana[1],
then private Baptist universities for my Bachelor’s[2] and
Master’s[3] degrees.
I am currently a student completing the Doctor of Ministry degree at Baylor
University. Further, my wife also attended stellar public schools in Mississippi[4] and
then attended the same two private Baptist universities that I did for her
Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.
Christian educational endeavors are essential, critical, and
necessary for the mission of the Church. Our schools, much like our hospitals[5]
and orphanages[6],
are the intersection of our theological convictions and our missional
expressions of faith. When we educate the unenlightened, nurse the sick, or
feed the hungry we are testifying to our faith in God’s ultimate desire for the
flourishing of human life. The struggle to maintain these ministries should be
a primary concern for our congregations – they are in many ways the very hands
and feet of the Gospel in the community.
Mark Galli has written a piece[7] for
Christianity Today about the relationship between Christian higher education
and the local congregation. He sees a growing divide between the local church
and the not-so-local Christian university. He describes the situation, saying,
“We in the local church tend to think of Christian higher education as a
service industry. We look to it only when we have a student ready for college
or seminary, or when we have a staff opening and need the schools to give us
the names of qualified candidates. Christian higher education is there to grant
accredited degrees and vet pastoral candidates.”[8]
This observation is certainly appropriate for the pastoral
search process in the local congregation, but it is not reflective of what goes
on at our Christian universities. The Christian university is more than a
seminary or preacher factory. When we speak of the university (or the seminary,
for that matter) we are talking about more than the specific church-related
fields. Christian universities are home to mathematicians, biologists,
linguists, lawyers, businesspeople, artists, and athletes. These students and
their professors are incarnating the Gospel by learning and teaching through
the lens of Jesus Christ. The breadth of academic disciplines at most Christian
universities and seminaries is testimony to the breadth of our theology: inasmuch
as there are things to learn and truth to explore, there is the Gospel.
Yes, a university may be a Christian institution, but that
does not imply that the local church’s concern with that institution is only in
terms of finding a new Pastor. Instead, the local church should encourage its
young people to consider that university as a home for their education. I would
not have traded my private Baptist educational experience for anything,
especially for the experiences of my friends who attended public institutions.
I consistently encourage my students and church friends to at least consider
the opportunities available at Christian universities as they consider their
future plans.
Much like a recent NCAA commercial[9],
even though so many people attend Christian universities and seminaries were
people are educated and trained for ministry, “most of us are going pro in
something else.”
Galli’s primary concern is not the nature of Christian
higher education, but rather the cost of that education. It has been well
reported that the costs of higher education are rising much faster than most
families can afford, and that private Christian higher education is already
prohibitively expensive.
To address these financial concerns, Galli recommends that
Christian universities wholly embrace the emerging model of distance education
via online courses and web-based seminars. This trend is already changing the
educational landscape in America at every level, from primary and secondary
education all the way to graduate programs. What is not happening, though, is
the decrease in tuition that Galli anticipates with the proliferation of online
education. It is not enough to remove room and board from student fees, which
is the essential savings in online education. Rather, tuition, books, and
student fees would have to be reduced as well to have any meaningful impact on
a student’s bottom line.
Galli encourages local congregations to do several things to help bridge the gap both in terms of finances and in terms of the congregation’s relationship to the university. He suggests, “…create budget line items to at least once a year fly in a teacher to give a daylong seminar or even a week of classes…consider using some of their benevolence giving to support Christian higher education…begin asking schools for [free or reduced online courses].”[10]
All three of these things are exactly right. The local
congregation should be involved in the teaching and learning involved with
visiting scholars, but usually a local church would have no reason to invite a
professor of anything other than Theology or Biblical Studies. Further, as
Baptists we have supported our denominational and affiliated universities
through our offerings for generations. The call to support these institutions
with line items in the budget or benevolence fund is appropriate for
denominations that have no such structure. May I recommend an alternative?
Instead of giving budgeted or benevolence funds to the university’s general fund,
let us consider developing scholarships for our own students or the students in
our communities that will assist our students with their tuition and housing.
Such scholarships helped me immensely in my education, and were personal,
direct, and loving gestures of the church to further my education.
Finally, permit me to humbly suggest that we need to
reevaluate the nature of higher education in our culture. It is apparent that
“college” has lost all of it meaning: programs so unrelated to the historic
nature of higher education are multiplying and “colleges” are being formed and
grown with little care for the humanizing process of the university setting.
What I’m getting at is this: inasmuch as we have emphasized that college is the
goal for every student we have deteriorated the experience and formation of
higher education. I believe that living on campus, being present with a
professor, and experiencing Christian community in an academic setting are to
be preferred over online education.
I have taught and learned in online settings, and I have
become convinced that personal, face-to-face courses and the community that is
formed by living with and among your colleagues is essential to the nature of
higher education. Online education has its place, but asking our Christian
universities to further erode the formative experience of higher education in
the name of creating a market for cheaper (free?) courses is not helping the
need for Christian education in our churches and nation. When we reduce
education to watching a YouTube video, the schools will “falter, [and] also the
local church.”[11]
[1]
www.wfpsb.org
[2]
www.mc.edu
[3]
www.baylor.edu/truett
[4]
www.ossdms.org
[5] www.mbhs.org
[6]
www.baptistchildrensvillage.com
[7] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/may/higher-ed-at-crossroad.html
[8] Galli
in Christianity Today
[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ltaRIJ0N2o
[10]
Galli in Christianity Today
[11]
Ibid.
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