The Lexington Seminar Program
Description of Issues
In the context of theological education, this project reflects the growing need to attend to issues of teaching and learning. For many years, faculty development has centered on strengthening the scholarship of individual faculty members.
While this concern continues to be central for the academy, it is, at the same time, crucial to focus on the faculty as educators-teachers who face increasingly diverse students who are preparing for ministries in a changing church.
Student Issues
Today's theological students come from varied cultural, racial, and social locations. They represent different places on the ideological spectrum. This student diversity is complicated by the wide-ranging educational backgrounds that are contained in any given class. In this regard, the educational problems require more than just supplementing a lack of knowledge in certain fields; rather, a persisting issue for many students is a lack of basic intellectual understanding and conceptual skills. When these factors are combined with difficulties in writing, the theology teacher's responsibility is infinitely more than just communicating a particular area of knowledge. These problems are widespread in higher education, and theological education, in this instance, reflects the larger cultural context.
Such issues in learning are complicated by the growing number of students who arrive at the seminary in need of basic formation in the Christian faith. Protestant theological students often enter seminaries with little experience in the life of a congregation and almost no knowledge of basic biblical and theological traditions. This trend represents a significant departure from a longstanding tradition in which the congregation was seen as the place for formation in faith. For generations, both the church and the seminary assumed that theology students were essentially formed in the practices of the Christian life through their nurture as children and youth in local congregations. They came to the seminary having been shaped by Sunday Schools, youth programs, college chaplains, and continuing family traditions of faith.
In the contemporary culture, however, this pattern is true only for some students since many have not been part of this ecology of Protestant ecclesiastical life. Seminaries are increasingly responsible for spiritual formation as well as academic preparation for ministry. This new reality fundamentally changes the nature of what can be taken for granted in the classroom and raises critical questions about what is required for faithful teaching and learning.
Theological and Ecclesiastical Issues
At the same time that these changes have occurred in student constituencies, there is now on many faculties a kind of theological diversity seldom imagined in a previous generation. The effort to state curricular assumptions and to agree on foundations for theological learning increasingly shapes the work of faculty. All of these educational and
theological issues are set within institutions that are often torn by competing demands. This calls for a new intentionality about the use of faculty time as the seminary tries to respond to the needs of the church, the expectations of the academy, and the changing culture of the school itself. Many of the changes occurring in theological education are happening so quickly that we have only limited understanding of long-term consequences of these new ventures.
Liminality: Change and Transition
One way of describing the location of the denominational seminary is to interpret it as existing within the liminality that so characterizes contemporary culture. The denominational seminary is shaped especially by the restructuring of denominations and local congregations; it is also defined by the shifting character of higher education and the independent sector. Any inquiry into the nature of theological education must take into account this larger context and the way it influences the everyday life of the seminary.
By focusing The Lexington Seminar on educational projects, our hope is to address some of these issues of change and transition in seminaries. The expectation is that by pursuing educational issues located in the specific reality of institutional life, faculties will be encouraged to move toward more direct analysis and response to the changing institutional contexts of their teaching and learning.
The Basic Metaphor: Conversation
The questions we face are made more difficult by the solitary nature of faculty life. While faculty often meet together, the practice of mutual learning is not common. In the midst of the activities of academic life, there is not much evidence of sustained collaborative efforts on fundamental educational questions. In order to address the issues that have been named, however, it is essential that faculty develop a deeper sense of collaboration and mutuality.
The irony is that seminary faculty spend a lot of time together, but this familiarity does not necessarily result in deep
friendship or awareness of colleagues' scholarly commitments. For example, as the role of the various academic guilds has been strengthened in recent years, faculty tend to see others in the same scholarly field as their primary intellectual community.
Michael Oakeshott, the British philosopher, has argued that while academic institutions are not the only places in society where learning occurs, schools have "a special manner of engaging in the pursuit of learning." This special manner is cultivated by the fact that faculty "live in permanent proximity to one another." This proximity helps form individual teachers and scholars as a community in which "a tradition of learning is preserved and extended, and where the necessary apparatus for the pursuit of learning has been gathered together." In effect, the faculty live together in a "home of learning."
At the center of this life together is conversation. "The pursuit of learning," Oakeshott writes, "is not a race in which the competitors jockey for the best place, it is not even an argument or a symposium; it is a conversation."
Within this context, The Lexington Seminar intends to be a place for conversation-a setting which encourages faculty development of more collaborative theological teaching for the church's ministries. The program is built on the assumption that faculties have the resources to identify and respond to the issues they face. The seminar is designed to be a place in which the faculties can do their own work of teaching and learning-the continuing conversation about things that matter.
The desired result of this conversation is collaborative work that addresses key issues in theological education. There are many different opportunities through The Wabash Center and other programs to join a conversation about theology and theological education. The distinctiveness, however, of "The Lexington Seminar: Theological Teaching for the Church's Ministries" is that it is centered in conversations that focus on the work of the faculty in specific institutions.
The assumption throughout the program is that the questions and answers that must be acknowledged in theological education can be addressed by the faculties of the seminaries. It is this local work that is the primary aim of the program.
In the context of theological education, this project reflects the growing need to attend to issues of teaching and learning. For many years, faculty development has centered on strengthening the scholarship of individual faculty members.
While this concern continues to be central for the academy, it is, at the same time, crucial to focus on the faculty as educators-teachers who face increasingly diverse students who are preparing for ministries in a changing church.Student Issues
Today's theological students come from varied cultural, racial, and social locations. They represent different places on the ideological spectrum. This student diversity is complicated by the wide-ranging educational backgrounds that are contained in any given class. In this regard, the educational problems require more than just supplementing a lack of knowledge in certain fields; rather, a persisting issue for many students is a lack of basic intellectual understanding and conceptual skills. When these factors are combined with difficulties in writing, the theology teacher's responsibility is infinitely more than just communicating a particular area of knowledge. These problems are widespread in higher education, and theological education, in this instance, reflects the larger cultural context.
Such issues in learning are complicated by the growing number of students who arrive at the seminary in need of basic formation in the Christian faith. Protestant theological students often enter seminaries with little experience in the life of a congregation and almost no knowledge of basic biblical and theological traditions. This trend represents a significant departure from a longstanding tradition in which the congregation was seen as the place for formation in faith. For generations, both the church and the seminary assumed that theology students were essentially formed in the practices of the Christian life through their nurture as children and youth in local congregations. They came to the seminary having been shaped by Sunday Schools, youth programs, college chaplains, and continuing family traditions of faith.In the contemporary culture, however, this pattern is true only for some students since many have not been part of this ecology of Protestant ecclesiastical life. Seminaries are increasingly responsible for spiritual formation as well as academic preparation for ministry. This new reality fundamentally changes the nature of what can be taken for granted in the classroom and raises critical questions about what is required for faithful teaching and learning.
Theological and Ecclesiastical Issues
At the same time that these changes have occurred in student constituencies, there is now on many faculties a kind of theological diversity seldom imagined in a previous generation. The effort to state curricular assumptions and to agree on foundations for theological learning increasingly shapes the work of faculty. All of these educational and
theological issues are set within institutions that are often torn by competing demands. This calls for a new intentionality about the use of faculty time as the seminary tries to respond to the needs of the church, the expectations of the academy, and the changing culture of the school itself. Many of the changes occurring in theological education are happening so quickly that we have only limited understanding of long-term consequences of these new ventures.Liminality: Change and Transition
One way of describing the location of the denominational seminary is to interpret it as existing within the liminality that so characterizes contemporary culture. The denominational seminary is shaped especially by the restructuring of denominations and local congregations; it is also defined by the shifting character of higher education and the independent sector. Any inquiry into the nature of theological education must take into account this larger context and the way it influences the everyday life of the seminary.
By focusing The Lexington Seminar on educational projects, our hope is to address some of these issues of change and transition in seminaries. The expectation is that by pursuing educational issues located in the specific reality of institutional life, faculties will be encouraged to move toward more direct analysis and response to the changing institutional contexts of their teaching and learning.
The Basic Metaphor: Conversation
The questions we face are made more difficult by the solitary nature of faculty life. While faculty often meet together, the practice of mutual learning is not common. In the midst of the activities of academic life, there is not much evidence of sustained collaborative efforts on fundamental educational questions. In order to address the issues that have been named, however, it is essential that faculty develop a deeper sense of collaboration and mutuality.
The irony is that seminary faculty spend a lot of time together, but this familiarity does not necessarily result in deep
friendship or awareness of colleagues' scholarly commitments. For example, as the role of the various academic guilds has been strengthened in recent years, faculty tend to see others in the same scholarly field as their primary intellectual community.Michael Oakeshott, the British philosopher, has argued that while academic institutions are not the only places in society where learning occurs, schools have "a special manner of engaging in the pursuit of learning." This special manner is cultivated by the fact that faculty "live in permanent proximity to one another." This proximity helps form individual teachers and scholars as a community in which "a tradition of learning is preserved and extended, and where the necessary apparatus for the pursuit of learning has been gathered together." In effect, the faculty live together in a "home of learning."
At the center of this life together is conversation. "The pursuit of learning," Oakeshott writes, "is not a race in which the competitors jockey for the best place, it is not even an argument or a symposium; it is a conversation."
Within this context, The Lexington Seminar intends to be a place for conversation-a setting which encourages faculty development of more collaborative theological teaching for the church's ministries. The program is built on the assumption that faculties have the resources to identify and respond to the issues they face. The seminar is designed to be a place in which the faculties can do their own work of teaching and learning-the continuing conversation about things that matter.
The desired result of this conversation is collaborative work that addresses key issues in theological education. There are many different opportunities through The Wabash Center and other programs to join a conversation about theology and theological education. The distinctiveness, however, of "The Lexington Seminar: Theological Teaching for the Church's Ministries" is that it is centered in conversations that focus on the work of the faculty in specific institutions.
The assumption throughout the program is that the questions and answers that must be acknowledged in theological education can be addressed by the faculties of the seminaries. It is this local work that is the primary aim of the program.