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Fanning the Flames: How the Renewal Movement
Has Shaped American Theological Education
James T. Flynn and Wie L. Tjiong
Introduction
Renewal can be a very messy thing. In many cases, it seems to invade a place and time without invitation. When it comes, it tends to upset the balance of everyday life in the church, cause widespread confusion and polarization, and make enemies of the best of friends.1 As messy as it can be, it seems that God, in the sovereign divine plan, tends to schedule reg- ular interruptions in the status quo, reminding us that the church is the Bride of Christ and that Christ superintends over its affairs. Without such interruptions, the church might never change and become the Bride for which Christ will one day return.
Vinson Synan, a noted Pentecostal and Charismatic historian, has called the twentieth century the “Century of the Holy Spirit.”2 In just one cen- tury, over 500 million people have been involved in a massive global revival that is still continuing at this time, with most of them coming to faith in just the last twenty years. The renewal has taken on such stag- gering proportions on an international scale that even people within the movement are not aware of the impact the renewal movement has had.3 As Hollenweger points out, “Pentecostals have failed to understand them- selves, their history, and their experience.”4 If many Pentecostals involved directly in the renewal movement have failed to understand the depth of the current renewal, the significance has not been lost to some outside the movement, such as Harvey Cox at Harvard University.5 Even those outside the mainstream of the current renewal movement, such as Phillip Jenkins at the University of Pennsylvania, acknowledge that the current global renewal has shaped and will continue to shape the face of Christianity in the twenty-first century.6
1
Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 58–78.
2
Vinson Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), ix.
3
Phillip Jenkins, The Next Christendom (New York: Oxford Press, 2002), 1–3.
4
Allan H. Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger, eds., Pentecostals After a Century (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 20–21.
5
Cox, Fire from Heaven, 3–5.
6
Jenkins, The Next Christendom, 1–14.
© 2006 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden pp. 89–103
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The same scenarios are being repeated many times over on a global basis today as renewal is occurring internationally, and at a pace that has no end in sight. As the history of theological education in America is studied, one finds that each successive renewal in the American church has consistently produced change in the way theological education was done. It is no surprise, therefore, that the unprecedented renewal that has occurred over the last one hundred years has brought about the acute awareness of the need for meaningful change in theological education at this time as well.
A study of American church history and renewal in the church clearly shows that as renewal has taken place, American theological education has had to make some major adjustments to capture what God was doing in the particular time of the renewal. Many of these changes have been difficult and imperfect. Nearly all started out as an innovative solution to the new problems that renewal in the church has created. These changes were strongly resisted by established institutions that offered theological education. Still, those pioneering the needed changes in theological training for a church in renewal learned some valuable lessons in making that training relevant and accessible to the emerging leaders of their time. They stand as an example for this generation as it seeks to fan the flames of the current renewal through the process of renewing the way the church trains its emerging leaders. The understanding of how theological training has adapted to past renewal serves as a platform for dialogue on how to change it for this generation as well.
The First Great Awakening and Theological Education
The late 1600s and early 1700s saw considerable controversy develop in the New World over orthodox belief. Many of these controversies cen- tered on the depth of Calvinism to be embraced and church polity. Other more serious controversies, as in the case of the Unitarian Church, revolved around basic orthodox beliefs concerning the Trinity and nature of God. In many cases, developments in theological education were driven by these controversies. Harvard College had a history of escalating theological liberalism, and this in part lead to the establishment of Yale College in 1701 in order to preserve a more conservative form of Calvinism. The liberal trend at Harvard continued and, in 1805, it embraced a Unitarian tradition.7
7
Mary Latimer Gambrell, Ministerial Training in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 57.
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Both Yale and Harvard reacted against the “revivalist” movements spawned by the Great Awakening that occurred between 1735 and 1740.8
The Great Awakening in the colonies in the first half of the 1700s transformed the shape of colonial religion and its religious institutions. The preaching of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield introduced a whole new revivalist paradigm to American religion. In 1720, German Pietist T.J. Frelinghuysen arrived in the Dutch Reformed churches in New Jersey and began preaching a revivalist message, in a movement that even- tually led to one of the first seminaries in America—a Dutch Reformed school now known as New Brunswick Theological Seminary.9 This form of revivalist preaching and evangelism spread to the frontiers of the colonies and was championed by Jonathan Edwards. The effect on the church and the impact of this sort of preaching led to the first Great Awakening in America, which lasted from 1725 until 1770. The emphasis on conversion, a move toward a more Arminian view of salvation, a ten- dency toward progressive millennialism, and a call to “concerts of prayer” for national and worldwide evangelism were some of the distinctives that marked this renewal and those that were to follow.10 Some older scholarly sources outside the renewal movement would attribute the transformation of theological education that resulted from this period of renewal to “breaking off old world connections as a result of independence.”11 While this may have been a factor, the authors would argue that the sheer number of converts, their more conservative renewal distinctives, and the pressing need for numbers of church leaders was a larger factor in the way theological education changed to accommodate renewal.
The Great Awakening seems to have been God’s response to the Age of Enlightenment that was coming upon Europe and making its way into America. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason as the way to acquire knowledge was laying the groundwork for a very rational form of Christianity to take hold in this country. The First Great Awakening pro- duced a different paradigm of Christian faith that was more dependent upon relationship with God than upon reason and the emphasis on a per- sonal experience with God rather than a corporate experience in a church
8
Ibid., 21, 60.
9
William W. Sweet, “The Rise of Theological Schools in America,” Church History 6 (September 1937): 263.
10
Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit, 421; Gambrell, Ministerial Training in the Eighteenth Century, 21.
11
Sweet, “The Rise of Theological Schools in America,” 263.
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setting through the sacraments. This is something akin to a more primal faith, as Cox would describe it.12
The Great Awakening brought traditional doctrine into question in the American colonies and also served to accentuate controversies that were already in place. The churches became ripe for a more Arminian view of salvation that required evidence of actual behavior and a conversion process apart from election that demonstrated salvation. Revivalist preachers began preaching religious conversion as opposed to infant or adult baptism for salvation. The targets of many revivalist sermons were the unconverted in the churches of New England, which naturally angered many of the traditional churches. The preaching also reacted against the deism and Arianism that was gaining acceptance in the denominational churches and schools of that time.13 Before long, there was a cry for a renewal in theological education that would support the new revival that was occurring in the colonies, and for additional clergy to pastor the large numbers of new converts produced by this first Great Awakening.
In his sermon entitled “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry” (1740), Gilbert Tennant called for a new way of educating pastors that would sus- tain the flames of revival sweeping through the colonies:
The most likely method to stock the church with a faithful ministry, in the present situation of things, the public academies being so much corrupted and abused generally, is to encourage private schools, or seminaries of learning, which are under the care of skillful and experienced Christians. . . .14
This call for a new kind of minister was, by definition, a call for renewal in theological education and a reaction against the liberal movement in some of the established schools of the era. It was a distinct call back to the authority of the Scriptures. Additional controversy developed when ministers were raised up to pastor new congregations on the frontier com- posed largely of converts from the revivals. They began to pastor without “proper education,” as was dictated by the standards that existed at that time. Some were denounced and censured. Others were recalled from successful pastorates with orders to acquire a “proper education.” The events surrounding the Great Awakening called into question what was
12
Cox, Fire from Heaven, 81–122.
13
Gambrell, Ministerial Training in the Eighteenth Century, 30.
14
James W. Fraser, Schooling the Preachers: The Development of Protestant Theo- logical Education in the United States, 1740–1875 (Maryland: University Press of America, 1988), 3.
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necessary to constitute a quality theological education that prepared the minister for his calling.15
One of the most important developments in theological education as a result of the Great Awakening was the “Log Cabin College” movement. The Log Cabin College movement began with Gilbert Tennant, whose controversial sermon calling for change in theological education was quoted earlier. Tennant was educated at the University of Edinburgh before coming to the New World in 1706.16 He served as a pastor in New York and Pennsylvania and developed an educational program for his sons patterned after the education received in Scotland. After settling in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, in 1727, he included others in the educational program he had developed for his sons. He purchased additional land in 1735 and began using the log cabin attached to his home for college level instruction, educating two or three ministers a year until his retirement in 1742. George Whitefield himself commented on the effectiveness of the operation, stating that it was “bringing up gracious youths, and sending them out from time to time into the Lord’s vineyard.” Whitefield continued:
The place where the young Men study now is in Contempt call’d The [Log] College. It is a Log-House, about Twenty Feet long, and near as many broad; and to me it seemed to resemble the Schools of the Prophets—For that their habitations were mean, and that they sought not great Things for themselves, is plain from that Passage of Scripture, wherein we are told, that at the Feast of the Sons of the Prophets, one of them put on the Pot whilst others went to fetch some Herbs out of the Field. . . . From this despised Place Seven or Eight worthy Ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth; more are ready to be sent, and a Foundation is now laying for the instruction of many others [sic].17
Whitefield predicted that “The devil will certainly rage against them . . .” and such was the case, especially from the Old Side Presbyterians, who railed against their product as “unqualified.”18 Despite the criticism, the Neshaminy Log Cabin School produced a list of famous graduates who, in turn, became college and academy presidents themselves, as well as a good number of revival-oriented preachers to make the Great Awakening movement a viable force. By 1758, ten of the ninety-eight Presbyterian ministers in the local synod were graduates of this one college.19 By the
15
Ibid., 4, 5.
16
Ibid., 6.
17
Fraser, Schooling the Preachers, 6; Gambrell, Ministerial Training in the Eighteenth Century, 102.
18
Fraser, Schooling the Preachers, 7.
19
Ibid., 6.
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end of the eighteenth century, sixty-five Presbyterian log cabin academies had come into existence, helping to spread the gospel into the Western frontier of the colonies and training a new breed of minister to be pastors in the frontier churches.20
The log cabin colleges were based on an apprenticeship between an experienced pastor (often nicknamed an “Elijah”) and his students. The students would learn by “reading divinity” under the direction of the pastor, and then put what he was learning into immediate practice as they accompanied the pastor in his everyday pastoral duties. This was in sharp contrast to traditional colleges that were already beginning to drift toward liberal and secular philosophies in their curriculum and often lacked any practical application of what was learned.21 The curriculum had a base of Latin and Greek classics, and biblical languages for its superstructure. It seems that even in the midst of revival, there was no move to subtract from the curriculum the Latin and Greek classics that were held in European educational models to be the mark of an “educated gentleman.”22 The pat- tern of “reading divinity” and the classics under the direction of an edu- cated and skilled mentor was ideal for a frontier environment. Multiple faculty members with specialization in training were impractical.23
The Revolutionary War and the drive toward independence in the colonies in 1776 occupied much of the attention and energy of the new country and all but stopped further development in the United States of the schools that delivered theological education in all of their forms.24 By the end of the eighteenth century, the country was ready for a new reli- gious awakening in both the church and theological education. This renewal had left its mark on theological education, however, by introducing a more applied type of theological education that was field-based and contextu- alized for frontier life. It also reintroduced to that education a renewed respect for the authority of the scriptures themselves, as central to theo- logical training.
20
Ibid., 8.
21
Gambrell, Ministerial Training in the Eighteenth Century, 103.
22
Fraser, Schooling the Preachers, 20, 21.
23
John C. Fletcher, The Futures of Protestant Seminaries (Washington, DC: Alban Institute, 1983), 7.
24
Fraser, Schooling the Preachers, 22, 23.
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The Second Great Awakening and the Rise of Theological Seminaries
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, another round of world- wide revivals occurred known as the Second Great Awakening, or simply the “Second Awakening,” which lasted from 1800 to 1840.25 The beginnings of the Second Awakening can be traced to Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Three Presbyterian ministers at the Red River Presbyterian Church in Cane Ridge, James McGready, William Hodges, and John Rankin, led meetings that had as many as 25,000 people in attendance, which were eventually moved into the surrounding forest for lack of space.26 This revival quickly spread to the frontier between 1810 and 1840. The revival movement was accompanied by a renewed religious passion in the church, spiritual man- ifestations that were also common to the first Great Awakening, and a large number of converts. The sheer number of converts forced ministers who had not been formally trained to enter pastoral ministry, thus creating a fresh controversy in the Presbyterian Church over educational require- ments for ordination and ministry.27 These changes in the American church also produced a corresponding change in the way theological education was delivered in America.
The Second Awakening brought with it once again a call for reform in theological education. One of the forces who called for reform was Charles Finney, a former Presbyterian, who became one of the most out- standing revivalists of his day and one of America’s first professional evangelists.28 When Finney was converted, he was convinced he was called to preach. Impatient to get to work in ministry, he wanted to begin his preaching and forego the formal training required in his day.29 Finney’s attitude can be seen in the remarks he made about his presbytery’s call for him to acquire formal theological training:
Some of the ministers urged me to go to Princeton to study theology, but I declined… and when urged to give them my reasons, I plainly told them that I would not put myself under such an influence as they had been under; that I was confident that they had been wrongly educated, and they were not ministers that meet my ideal of what a minister of Christ should be.30
25
Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit, 237, 422. 26
Ibid., 167.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., 167, 168.
29
Fraser, Schooling the Preachers, 57.
30
Ibid.
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This attitude was typical of many during the Second Awakening who grew to distrust formal theological education.
One of the developments in the upheaval caused by division in the theological education community and church was the advent of a new means of training ministers—the theological seminary. The theological seminary began with the founding of Andover Theological Seminary in 1808. The idea of a stand-alone theological seminary was conceived to address the problem of what was perceived to be increasing liberal ten- dencies in the established colleges of the day. University models for the- ological education became increasingly influenced by German ideals originating at the University of Berlin in 1810 that modeled a professional ideal for ministry. The stand-alone seminary allowed theological training to be specifically adapted for denominational distinctives and even more finely tuned for philosophical views such as pro- or anti-revival views. When Harvard College installed a Unitarian president in 1805, Eliphalet Pearson resigned in protest from the faculty. He and several other sup- porters drafted plans for a stand-alone seminary in Andover to counter- balance the perceived heresy at nearby Harvard. Andover Theological Seminary opened on September 28, 1808, with nineteen students waiting for admission and thirty-six the following year.31
Andover Theological Seminary laid down a pattern for formal theo- logical education in America that exists to this day and has been exported globally to many remote locations around the world. Andover affirmed the need for a classic undergraduate education that to this point in his- tory was viewed as an end unto itself in preparing an individual to func- tion in life, and championed the view that a classical undergraduate education was a better form of preparation for further studies and not nec- essarily complete in and of itself.32 Andover became a model for profes- sional education at a graduate level in theology and, in the following years, in law and medicine as well. By 1831, there were a total of twenty- two seminaries registered with the American Education Society.33 Once again with the Second Awakening as with the First Great Awakening, revivalism played a major role in redefining the way theological educa- tion was delivered. This would not be the last time that this happened, as can be seen with the changes that accompanied the Holiness-Pentecostal revivals of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
31
Ibid., 31–35.
32
Ibid., 38.
33
Fletcher, The Futures of Protestant Seminaries, 10.
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Effects of the Holiness-Pentecostal Movements on
Theological Education
The experience of John Wesley is at the heart of the Holiness-Pentecostal experience. It was he who coined the term “new birth” and the idea of a “second blessing” after salvation.34 Wesley’s friend John Fletcher was the first to call this experience “the baptism in the Holy Spirit,” patterned after the experience described in Acts 2.35 This experience was to later become one of the defining distinctives of the renewal movement in the twentieth century. When Agnes Osman received the baptism in the Holy Spirit at Bethel Bible School and Healing Home, in Topeka, Kansas, on January 1, 1901, she was the first of over 500 million individuals to have that experience in the twentieth century. It is interesting to note that this phenomenon originated in a theological training setting. Seymour’s work at Azusa Street in 1906, and the renewal that followed, spawned one of the most important religious events of the twentieth century.36
As was the case with the first Great Awakening and Second Awakening, conservative Christianity in the last half of the nineteenth century began to react against what it perceived to be a liberal slide in the nation’s churches and centers of theological education. Many of the nation’s top universities and some of its seminaries had come under the increasing influence of German higher criticism and thought. At the same time an intense missionary zeal was building as a result of the Holiness move- ments in America and Europe. Traditional university and seminary models for the training and deployment of clergy and missionaries were not con- sidered relevant for the task of training the emerging leaders of that time, and a rapid deployment and training system for ministers was sought. In the 1880s, outstanding leaders such as Simpson, Gordon, and Moody turned their attention to founding schools targeted directly at training lay people in basic Bible knowledge and evangelistic methods.37 The result was the beginning of a more informal kind of theological training with a rapid deployment emphasis—the Bible school and institute.
The Bible schools and institutes that were founded beginning in the 1880s had several common characteristics.38 Most were started by small
34
Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit, 2.
35
Ibid.
36
Cox, Fire from Heaven, 45–65.
37
Virginia Lieson Brereton, Training God’s Army: The American Bible School, 1880–1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 55.
38
Ibid., 39–48.
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groups of individuals in an informal and spontaneous manner, “outside the supervision of educational officialdom.”39 Many of the founders were reformers and highly critical of the coldness of mainline Protestant churches. There was a prominent zeal for missionary work among these reformers that drew them toward models of theological education that were practical and skills-based in nature and that could equip the lay people to do evan- gelistic work at home and abroad.40 These Bible schools were purposely designed to provide less technical theological education and often func- tioned at what was basically a high school level of education.41
The American Bible schools and institutes that began to spring up in America in the 1880s closely followed the pattern established by infor- mal European Bible schools. The East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions (1872), founded by H. Grattan Guiness, had a profound effect on A. B. Simpson.42 The American schools also developed in an American environment of revivalism and the conviction that the laity should be mobilized for evangelistic work. They were primarily mission- specific schools designed to offer to lay people training to carry on a specific role of service. Their programs emphasized “practical skills that could be used by missionaries, evangelists, pastors, Sunday school teach- ers, and Christian workers of other kinds.”43 They have accurately been compared to the log cabin colleges set up by revivalists in the eighteenth century after the first Great Awakening.44
Leaders in the Bible school and institute movement such as D. L. Moody, the founder of Moody Bible Institute, rightly pointed out that this new form of theological education eliminated the removal of the student from their context of ministry.45 Moody and others who founded the Bible schools and institutes over the next sixty years were not all opposed to traditional education—rather, they simply wanted to provide a shorter means of preparation and rapid deployment for the work of service in the church. They also increased access to theological education for many who could not access traditional theological education, such as women and those not able economically or intellectually to meet the challenges of a
39
Ibid., 39.
40
Ibid., 40–45.
41
Ibid., vii, 55.
42
S. A. Witmer, The Bible College Story (New York: Channel Press, 1962), 33. 43
Brereton, Training God’s Army, xvii.
44
Ibid., 35.
45
Ibid., 63.
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four-year classical-based undergraduate and three-year graduate course of study.46
The first such institution for theological training was founded in New York City in 1882 by Albert B. Simpson, who also founded the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination.47 Moody Bible Institute, founded by D. L. Moody and his associates in 1886, became the largest of the Bible institutes founded at this time. Objectives for the school were for- mulated in 1887:
. . . to educate and direct and maintain Christian workers as Bible readers, teachers and evangelists, who shall teach the gospel in Chicago, and its suburbs, especially in neglected fields.48
Moody Bible Institute is a classic example of a three-year Bible institute that issues diplomas for course completion. Nyack Missionary College is an example of a degree-granting Bible college. Both have become accredited as they have continued to develop over the last several decades.49
Several other notable institutes and Bible colleges were founded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Boston Bible School was founded by the Adventist denomination in 1897, later to become Berkshire Christian College. Boston Missionary Training School, later to become Gordon College, was founded in 1889 by the Baptist denomination. Azusa College, founded in 1899, eventually became Azusa Pacific College. The movement picked up speed in the early twentieth century and other Bible institutes and colleges were founded, including The Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola, 1908) and Central Bible Institute (1922) in Springfield, Missouri, which became Central Bible College, the headquarters school of the Assemblies of God. Individual districts within the Assemblies of God sponsored regional schools such as Northwestern Bible College in Washing- ton, Bethany Bible College in California, Southwestern in Texas, North Central Bible College in Minnesota, Northeast Bible College (Valley Forge Christian College) in Pennsylvania, and Southeastern Bible College in Florida. In all, Brereton publishes a “partial list” of schools and institutes naming 106 different ones that came into existence between 1882 and 1945.50
The Bible school movement went through three distinct stages.51 The initial stage (1882–1915) saw a proliferation of informal theological
46
Ibid., 64.
47
Ibid., xvii.
48
Witmer, The Bible College Story, 36. 49
Ibid., 37.
50
Brereton, Training God’s Army, 71–77. 51
Ibid., 79–86.
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education—Bible schools and institutes that had a typical, Bible-centered curriculum that lasted for two years. The Bible school movement entered an expansion phase (1915–1930) dominated by the acquisition of buildings and the availability of more resources. Beginning in 1940, these schools strove for greater academic respectability through accreditation, offering undergraduate degrees, and acquiring advanced degreed teaching staff. Some Bible colleges expanded their curriculum to become liberal arts col- leges and Christian universities. This is evidenced in the metamorphosis of schools such as North Central Bible College into North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Southern California College into Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, California, and Southwestern Bible College into Southwestern University in Waxahachie, Texas. These moves were made in part to provide a sense of stability and permanence to the insti- tutions and to codify their beliefs and teaching to pass on to future gen- erations.52 Some expanded the role of the institution in order to meet the broader educational needs of their constituency. Many of the original Bible institutes and colleges exist today and continue to provide a rapid-deploy- ment means of preparation for ministry to thousands of people in lay and professional ministry.
Effects of the Charismatic Movement on Theological Education
In the 1960s, an unprecedented move of the Holy Spirit began that has resulted in worldwide revival on a scale never before seen in the Christian faith. This movement began in 1960 with spontaneous outpourings of the Holy Spirit within denominational church settings that had been typically resistant to the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The movement has been called the Charismatic Renewal and was originally associated more with the Catholic Church, but it has spread on a global scale to all 150 non- Pentecostal traditions, within 9,000 ethno-linguistic cultures, representing 8,000 languages, and covering 95 percent of the world’s total population. Since 1970, the Charismatic Renewal has taken on a decidedly global nature. Many mainline denominational Christians were not prepared to leave the state churches in Western Europe and Asia to become Pentecostal in the early 1900s. Since 1970, the mainline denominational churches in both Europe and Asia have become massively pentecostalized, with the members remaining within their mainline denominational churches.53
52
Ibid., 14, 32.
53
David Barrett, “The Status of Christianity and Religions in the Modern World,” in World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19.
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The Charismatic and neo-Pentecostal Renewal and some of the para- digm changes that it has created have helped to catalyze a mounting crisis in theological education on a worldwide basis. Through the 1980s and 1990s, a debate has intensified in theological education circles as to how to address the changing situation in the body of Christ and prepare its emerging leaders for ministry. The renewal movement in the twentieth century has progressively blurred the distinction between clergy and laity as distinct classes, continuing the trend started by Luther that recognized the “priesthood of all believers.” This has led to increased demand for theological education that equips both clergy and laity for the work of the ministry, envisioning leaders as part of the church body rather than a separate elite group.54 The rapid expansion of Christianity on a global basis has also produced the need for rapid preparation and deployment models for theological education that are economical and do not require individuals to leave their context of ministry.55 Logistical and economic constraints simply do not permit the investment in relocation, travel, or formal seminary training over a period of seven years that are common in Western theological education. Nor will the economic situation support investment in large stand-alone seminaries with expensive buildings and tenured faculty. Many of the emerging leaders do not have access to the undergraduate education required for graduate level theological education also common in the West. The international cultural, economic, and logis- tical considerations caused by the global renewal movement have led to a growing crisis and created the demand for a revision in theological train- ing that the church and global Christianity are experiencing today. As with the earlier renewal movements, the time seems ripe for new paradigms of theological training that are adapted to the staggering needs of this generation and its renewal.
Lessons from Past Renewal and Patterns for the Future
By examining American church history, its historical revivals, and the changes they have produced in theological education over the last three centuries, several important observations can be made that will help chart the course for change in theological education at this time in church his- tory. The American church and its history are strongly associated with several historical religious revivals that have been instrumental in producing
54
F. Ross Kinsler, The Extension Movement in Theological Education(South Pasadena: William Carey Library, n.d.), 4, 5.
55
Ibid., 6.
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revival in the church every eighty to one hundred years. As can be seen, each of the historical revivals is linked to a corresponding renewal in theological education to equip ministers and laity to serve the Body of Christ along the lines of the new paradigms the revival has produced.
The first Great Awakening produced a new type of “log cabin college” that took the education to the students in the field under the direction of a pastor who served as a field mentor. The same type of field-based edu- cation is needed today in remote global locations where the training of emerging leaders by standard western methods of theological education are impossible, impractical, and/or not affordable. Rather than imposing standard western paradigms for delivery and content, the western world may assume the role of consultant in helping emerging sources of theo- logical training, as “field mentors,” while allowing the delivery system and curriculum to “free-float” as contextual needs warrant.
As with the first Great Awakening, the Second Awakening and the move toward seminary education was a reaction against liberal influences in theological education that compromised the authority and inerrancy of the scriptures. This view of the scriptures has been at the heart of the renewal movements over the last several centuries and is at the heart of the current global renewal as well. It is a revival of a “primal view” of the scriptures, to borrow language from Cox. To think that theological training could have a different view of the scriptures as central to its design seems to miss a key distinctive of the renewal movement and would fall short of training emerging leaders for ministry in today’s global context.
The unprecedented Pentecostal, Charismatic, and neo-Pentecostal renewal movements of the latter twentieth century have produced over 500 million new renewal-oriented believers, which calls for theological education uniquely adapted for these distinctives. The advent of the Bible college and institute movements illustrates the need for accessible and affordable theological training for the clergy as well as the laity. The need for practical and applied skill-based training produced by this movement is a strong consideration in any model of theological training for today’s emerging leaders. Yet, a number of these Bible colleges and institutes that are pursuing a more formal route for training as they grapple with the realities of credibility, transferability, and finance also balance access and praxis with the need for a well-rounded academic curriculum. This pursuit is not a compromise of the original vision, but rather an adjustment on the continuum of informal and formal-based delivery of theological education.
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Fanning the Flames: How the Renewal Movement Has Shaped American Theological Education
Reflection on the link between renewal and theological training opens possible pathways for dialogue. What are the core renewal values that will inform new paradigms for renewal-oriented theological education? What is the role of a theological department within a Christian college or university with respect to pioneering these new paradigms? What is the role of a Christian university in the varied contexts in which theo- logical education is delivered? How can informal church-based, informal institute-based, and formal seminary- and university-based theological training form meaningful partnerships to prepare individuals for their place in the local church? How can more rapid-deployment and application- oriented forms of training be delivered that do not compromise a broad spectrum of knowledge necessary for the minister to function in today’s world? How can the power of the internet and on-line education be used to deliver effective theological education with sufficient mentoring and content? How can renewal values and distinctives be effectively integrated into the life of existing centers of theological education to renew them, without violating their individual calling and distinctives? These are exam- ples of the many critical questions that must be asked at this time in renewal history as it relates to theological education. Lessons learned from the past should not be wasted, nor the future weighed down with old wineskins that are plainly worn out. When revitalized, theological edu- cation will fan the flames of future renewal, capturing lessons from the past and facilitating the flow of the power of the Spirit to the next generation.
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