There are two words for time in Greek. The first, chronos, refers to chronological time – seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, etc. The second, kairos, refers to a specific moment in time or a specific time in which an activity or incident occurs. For many years, the primary method of theological education has been…
A quick review of taglines for seminaries across North America will reveal a smattering of phrases that use terms like equipping, training, teaching, educating, or transforming. For instance, we see taglines that look something like this, “ABC Seminary: Equipping leaders for service in the Church.” Sioux Falls Seminary is no different. Our current “mission statement”…
For (what seems to be) the first time in a long time, there is a lot of change occurring within schools across ATS. In a recent conversation with an individual from ATS I learned that number of applications for changes that have been submitted to the Board of Commissioners has increased quite significantly. More schools…
I believe many, if not all, of the surface-level issues we see in theological education stem from one deep-rooted cause. We (myself included) often single out challenges like the fact that theological education is prohibitively expensive or that the curriculum is not connected to local contexts as much as it could be. Recently, many have…
If your school retains 80% of its Master of Divinity students from one academic year to the next, that means your graduation rate may somewhere around 41% – which isn’t a great graduation rate. At the ATS CFOS Conference this week, we learned that according to ATS estimations the average MDiv student in an ATS…
I know, my job title identifies me as a “marketer” so the phrase, “marketing is everything” can seem like I am trying to push my own bias and agenda. The phrase is a cliche that many people dismiss as “marketing speak.” However, most of the time, people relegate marketing to only one of the traditional…
As we create new programs, new financial models, or innovative support systems for theological education, we may find that the traditional ways of measuring the financial impact of our programs are not as helpful as they once were. That is exactly what we have found at Northern Seminary. Today I want to look briefly at…
We are facing unprecedented change in theological education. Enrollment is declining, financial models are being challenged, and longtime assumptions are no longer true. Students, accreditors, the federal government, and local ministries are all demanding more from seminaries and the system of theological education. What are we to do? I say it is time to learn…
The primary “competition” for seminaries is simply the decision not to go to seminary. Most data shows that seminaries don’t compete too much with each other. Rather, our primary competition is the option of not going to seminary. I think it is a result of the fact that our “because” is broken. Let’s look at…
I believe we need to make a fundamental shift in how we describe affordable theological education. Over the past few weeks I have had numerous conversations about the cost of education, the changes that are happening and what seminaries can or should be doing about them. Such conversations are obviously much more intricate than one…