|
Priorities.
Standards. What is important to us? Where do our
priorities lie? In our world today, these are questions
often answered solely on the basis of such things as financial
considerations or the world's standards of
"success." Christians know that the Bible is
plain in telling us that we are to do all things to the glory of
God (1 Corinthians 10:31). We are often warned that life is
short, and that only what we do for Christ will have lasting
impact. "Redeeming the time" is no empty
platitude. Life is short---we are just a vapor---so what
we do and how we do it is vitally important.
All of these things are
"givens" for us as individual Christians, yet, they
should likewise be "givens" for us in the church, and
in Christian education as well. The goal of Christian
education must be the same as that of individual believers: the
glory of God. And the standards we use should be the
standards given to us not by the world around us, but by God's
Word.
My Journey in Christian Education
For the conservative
Christian, it is hardly a surprising observation to note that
many schools that once supported God's truth and fearlessly
proclaimed the Bible's message are today doing anything
but. Most of the time, this degradation in schools has been
closely related to the demise of the denomination that owned and
operated the school. As the Word became
"expendable" in the denomination, so too in the
school. Many have wondered if the slide into liberalism
starts in the schools or in the pulpits. Wherever it
starts, the results have been observed over and over again.
Many are not familiar
with the fact that most Christian schools are desperate to obtain
what is known as "accreditation," the almost magical
"acceptance" by a recognized "body" that
allows them to attract the largest body of students. The
cost of becoming "accredited" is high, often running
into the millions of dollars just to be able to offer the most
basic courses. Accrediting criteria are pretty much the
same for all schools in the United States, whether religious or
secular. These have included, for years, the size and
location of the library, classroom building availability, staff
qualifications, etc. Obviously, new or small schools
cannot obtain accreditation very quickly, and any school that
wishes to keep its tuition low either has to forgo the privilege,
or receive some extremely large donations that can offset the
cost.
Obtaining accreditation
also allows schools to participate in government loan programs.
Education is a high-competition area, and without such
programs, many schools are simply unable to compete.
I was raised to believe
that "accreditation" equaled "quality," so
that "non-accreditation" meant "no quality."
It was so much a part of the fabric of my thought that it
never entered my mind to look outside the established
"traditional" accredited schools as far as my own
education was concerned. No, I had never really thought
about what it meant that some "accrediting" body was,
in the final analysis, determining how Christian education should
be done. I had never been challenged to think about such
things.
After completing a B.A.
and an M.A., with honors, in accredited institutions, I entered
into fruitful and important ministry. My ministry did not
allow for a large amount of remuneration---in other words, we
were, like many who seek to honor the Lord in consistently giving
an answer for the hope within us, without a lot of monetary
support. As I looked into doing doctoral work, I began to
put more and more thought into the how's and why's
of Christian education. While I had been in seminary, I
had noted that many of my fellow students were tremendously
confused about what they believed, why they were attending
seminary, and what they were going to do after they got
out. Yet, even in this state of utter confusion, they
graduated, now with "degrees" telling the world that
they were proficient in....what? I discovered, as any other
serious student has discovered, that you get out of a program of
study what you put into it. Even when I had professors who
truly struggled to communicate, if I would try to
understand, and put forth extra effort, I would be
rewarded with understanding and growth. I also learned, as
many others can testify, that I profited the most when I studied
on my own, branching out from class discussions or
readings. Many, many vital areas of Christian thought were
not addressed at all in my core classes, despite my acquiring
over 100 hours of graduate study.
As I looked around at
doctoral programs, I was faced with a few realities. First
and foremost, I would have to close my ministry and uproot my
family. The only doctoral program in my area was at a
secular university, and they made it plain that they didn't care
that I already had a Master's degree that required three
times the number of graduate hours to complete than their
own. I would still have to do another Master's degree with
them if I wanted to pursue a doctorate. Even with that
possibility, it was communicated to me by many who had been there
that I'd better be prepared to keep my mouth shut and "make
no waves" as far as my Christian faith was concerned. Well,
those who know me know that isn't going to work for me.
Outside of my local area,
I could name a number of seminaries that attracted me. But,
none had any programs to work with me where I was. Besides
this, the cost of any such program was incredible. I
recently added up the tuition costs to do a B.A., M.A., and then
Ph.D. program through a local Christian college and then a major
conservative seminary: $92,000 to $98,000 in tuition alone.
That adds up to nearly three years of the total operating budget
of my entire ministry. I started to wonder again about how
this related to Christian education, especially of ministers in
the church. How can a man get such an education and then go
out and pastor a small church with such indebtedness over his
head? It didn't (and still doesn't) make sense.
Of course, I knew how
lots of guys were "doing it." I had already
"missed the boat" as far as this was concerned.
You see, if you are wise, you get your Master's degree, then take
a year to go over to England or Scotland and do a
"dissertation only" Ph.D. Rather than going
through the expensive extra classes required in most programs in
the United States ("accreditation" being a very much
American concept, the Europeans have a very different mindset),
this is the "fast track" to the doctoral level.
European Ph.D.'s are accepted as "accredited" back in
the States. Hence, you spend one year, get to see some of
the world, write your dissertation, and return, ready to enter
into teaching or ministry. There is nothing wrong with
doing this. It just again requires a potential minister to
leave ministry to "get the needed education."
Such a road was not open
to me, and I had to wonder a bit about it anyway. I began
writing books in 1990, and some of my books, like The King
James Only Controversy, are being used as textbooks all
across the nation. I was told by the head of the local
branch of a fully accredited seminary that I should try to find
someone to accept that book as my dissertation and be done with
it. But I didn't do so. I began to see that doing
scholarship might just be a lot more important than the name on
the school you went to, or whether that school could, or could
not, get federal funds or loans. I knew a number of Ph.D.'s
who had never written a book that was read by more than a dozen
people in their life---yet they were "scholars" and I
wasn't? Something wasn't making sense. I began
ordering doctoral dissertations for use in some of my writing
projects and debates, and I discovered that most of these works,
which had been accepted in fully accredited schools, were far
shorter, and far less involved, than many of the books I was
engaged in writing and publishing on a national level.
Eventually I came to the
conclusion that if I was going to invest so much time and energy
in another degree program, I wanted it to count for something
in eternity. Possibly this came from my work as a
hospital chaplain for a few years, possibly just from the process
of "growing up" and realizing how short (and precious)
life is. Most dissertations sit in a dusty closet or on a
shelf somewhere, never read by anyone outside the review
committee, never making a difference in anyone's life. I
began to realize that this attitude did not come from within
the Christian community, but from outside of it.
That is, especially in this area, Christian education should part
ways with secular education in recognizing that the work done in
seminary should benefit the church at large, and the church in
the local setting. Instead, we have adopted the standards
of the world, rather than looking to the standards of the
Scriptures. We want to be "accepted" by the
world's system of thought, and the result has been somewhat
predictable. If I was going to do more work, it would have
to be in such a way as to allow me to combine that work with
ministry, so that the result would be the edification of the
Church, not just the enrichment of an institution. I have
come to a firm conclusion: I am opposed to "Christian
scholarship" simply for the sake of "Christian
scholarship." If your scholarship isn't being used to
glorify God and edify the Church, find another line of
work! That is, if you are gifted by God with intellectual
capacity, you should use that capacity to God's glory, and be
open in thanking Him for it!
That is where Columbia
Evangelical Seminary comes in. Formerly Faraston
Theological Seminary, Columbia is a non-traditional school.
It operates very much like the European "mentoring"
method, where you design a program and work with an individual
scholar on achieving your goals. It does not have a campus
or all the attendant trappings (and costs), hence, the tuition is
about 1/10th to 1/5th of the traditional schools (not free, or
even cheap, but affordable to someone involved in
ministry). It requires you to do a very large amount of
work (many who "sign up" never finish, simply because
the workload is so tough). Most importantly for me, I was
able to design a program around my writing projects, making
classes out of entire books. Of course, when I look back, I
realize that I did far more work for my own program than
I would have had to do in any secular setting, but that's
OK. Everything I did ended up helping others, which made it
seem, to me anyway, like a truly Christian experience of
education.
The greatest example of
this came in my dissertation. Thousands, Lord willing, will
read my doctoral dissertation, as it will be published by a major
Christian publisher. The work is on the doctrine of the
Trinity. Rather than being the "traditional"
dissertation, wherein I have to come up with something
"new" to write on, we did something truly novel: we
decided to write a book that actually defines, and defends, the
Trinity for the person in the pew! I say this is
novel, since there are hardly any such works in existence, but
also because of the fact that (again due to secular influence) it
has become vogue in Christian seminaries to write only
dissertations that touch upon something "new" from some
"unusual angle." No one can argue the result of
this viewpoint: how many reading this article have ever read a
doctoral dissertation? How many have ever been enriched by
such a document? I can thankfully say that I already know
of individuals who have come to know Christ as Savior through
works that I wrote as part of my Columbia work. In the same
way, I know of people who have been kept from great confusion and
deception by those same works. Life is short, so why invest
time in education that won't have such results?
That is not to say that
my dissertation is unscholarly. Instead, I'd
suggest that it takes more scholarship to take a complex
subject like the Trinity, eschew technical jargon, and
instead explain the doctrine in a fashion helpful to the
non-specialist. The work contains a great deal of
scholarship in its endnotes, but it makes that scholarship relevant
to the individual believer. I believe that Christian
scholarship, if it is to be honoring to God, must be directed
toward His glory, and the edification of His Church.
That's what I tried to do with my dissertation.
There was no
"skating by" with Columbia Seminary, and as a result,
I'll pile up the work that I submitted to Columbia against any
person who has a comparable degree from anywhere, with
full confidence that no programs require more than Columbia did.
Th.D. or Ph.D.?
I chose the Doctor of
Theology program (Th.M./Th.D.) versus the Doctor of Philosophy
degree. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with getting
a Ph.D. as a Christian. I chose to pursue the Th.D. so
that there would be nothing ambiguous about my course of studies. It was a specific and conscious choice on my part. As
I looked around, I discovered that many instructors in the
seminaries were actually getting their Ph.D.'s from secular
schools, and then moving into Christian education. The Th.D. was becoming an endangered species. Why? For
some, it is due to the desire to be able to "cross
over" into secular education. A Th.D. isn't going to
get you hired a the local State University, but a Ph.D.
can. While there is nothing wrong with pursuing the Ph.D.,
I would say that there is everything wrong with
Christian education seeking to "cross over" and find
acceptance within the secular world. There is a
fundamental dichotomy between the ultimate goals of God-centered
education and man-centered education, and the more faithful
we are to taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ
in our lives, the more "out of phase" we will be with
the world around us.
If I do another doctoral program (and
I am considering doing one), it would be a D.Min., Doctor of
Ministry, and that for the same reason. That is not to say
that there is anything wrong with anyone who has a Ph.D. I
just chose the Th.D. to "make a statement" regarding
the nature of my studies and scholarship. I would encourage
anyone who has the choice between the Th.D. and Ph.D. (a rare
enough choice these days) to go with the Th.D., simply as a
statement of the reason behind your work.
Detractors Galore
I recognized, when I
enrolled with Columbia, that given the nature of my work in
apologetics, I'd undoubtedly hear attacks upon my school and my
scholarship because Columbia is too young to be
"accredited." Such ad-hominem argumentation is the norm
for many of those with whom I have dealings. It wouldn't matter
where I go, or what school I attend, that kind of attack will
follow. I have experience teaching in accredited schools,
and a Master's degree from Fuller Theological Seminary.
That hasn't stopped such folks from using ad-hominem
argumentation against me. And any person that would be
impressed by such argumentation isn't going to be giving me a
fair hearing anyway, and I can't worry about that. Instead,
the person I'm concerned about is the person who will understand
the following statement: A person's scholarship is not
determined by the name of the school he or she attended, but by
the quality of that person's writing, speaking, and teaching.
Anyone who thinks that just because you went to Yale you must be
a real scholar hasn't put much thought into the subject. I
ask only one thing: look at what I have written, all
that I have written, and ask yourself one question: does the
nature of the writing, the depth of the research, and the
understanding of the subject, indicate a doctoral level of
education? As I said above, anyone who wishes to question
my degree need only stack up his or her published works against
mine and demonstrate that I just haven't done the work. If
they can't, they are reduced to saying that scholarship is
determined by how much you spend in tuition. And anyone who
believes that isn't going to be listening very carefully to what
I say anyway.
In the near future I will add a
discussion of the criteria used for accreditation in our schools
today, and how at this time there is a strong resistance to the
change that is being forced upon us by the advent of CD-ROM
technology and the Internet. Why is there such a
resistance?
|
