The Role of the Church in Christian Education

I've been thinking about how American education improvement is possible. As I've been reading more about my denomination's history (OPC), I keep coming back to the same issue: what is the role of the church in Christian education?

This is a difficult question. Different stations in life require different standards of education. Of course, to grow in grace and knowledge, all people need some education. The layman will need education sufficient to understand the word of God when it is preached to him or her. A pastor will need much more education than this: he needs to know the needs of his flock to pray for them, he needs to know how to meet certain of those needs, he needs to know how to administer the sacraments, he needs to know what to preach and how preach it, he needs to know how to discipline his flock, and so on. 

Let's take a specific case: a young man who wants to become a pastor. From whom should he receive the sort of education mentioned above? Typically, he goes to seminary. Now, in Doug Douma's The Presbyterian Philosopher, a footnote to chapter 6 reads as follows:

That it was Clark’s opinion that a seminary should be under the authority of a church, not an independent institution, is confirmed by a recollection of Genevieve Long, widow of Clark’s friend Howard Long.—Email to the author from Ellen Schulze, daughter of Genevieve Long

Why does it matter whether seminaries can be legitimately independent institutions? Consider the history of American Presbyterianism. In Gary North's Crossed Fingers, he notes:

The ideology of academic freedom rests on a lie: the idea that the professor's pursuit of truth is sovereign, irrespective of the intent of those who finance this pursuit. This lie is undergirded by another lie: that truth exists independently of the hierarchical authority associated with biblical covenantalism. That is to say, there is supposedly some self-existing, religiously neutral, universal system or methodology of truth that exists apart from the self-revelation of God in the Bible. Academic freedom rests, in short, on the myth of religious neutrality... 

The problem with a seminary is that it trains candidates for the preaching ministry. A seminary screens access to ordination. It can be outside the ecclesiastical chain of command, yet its authority to accept men as students and to graduate only some of them makes it functionally part of the system. In Presbyterianism, the seminary becomes the most important part, for its professors possess great though informal authority, and its graduates inherit denominational authority over time. 

No Presbyterian seminary was ever under extensive ecclesiastical authority, not even Princeton, which was the most subordinate of all the seminaries. The reunion of 1869 did lead to the establishment of veto power over new faculty appointments by the General Assembly. The denomination had only until the next General Assembly meeting to veto any professorial appointment. After that meeting ended, the professor was safe for the remainder of his academic career, even if subsequently de-frocked. By continuing to extend the positive sanction of institutional acceptability to Union Seminary after its secession in 1892, the denomination transferred its inheritance to the mortal enemies of both Calvinism and the Westminster Confession. This transfer was completed in 1936.

North writes more about this topic than I intend to reproduce here. For that reason, his book is much more thoughtful and engaging than, say, Fighting the Good Fight, by OPC historians John Muether and Darryl Hart. This is not to say the latter book is without value.

To observant readers, Muether and Hart beg the same questions as North raises without explicitly asking (let alone answering) them. In describing how Machen's formation of an Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions - pushback against the increasingly liberal PCUSA Board of Foreign Missions in the 1930s - was not unanimously approved amongst conservatives, Muether and Hart insightfully analogize the situation to Machen's formation of Westminster Theological Seminary:

A more troubling concern for Machen and the supporters of the board was the division the board provoked within the conservative cause. Many conservatives within the church, especially some members of Westminster Seminary’s faculty and administration, equally opposed to modernism, argued that the Independent Board was too antagonistic and that it did not serve the best interests of the cause of orthodoxy. Sadly, some of these allies deserted the cause over disagreement on strategy. The irony was that these supporters had gone along with the founding of Westminster, an independent Presbyterian institution. From Machen’s perspective, organizing the Independent Board was no different from establishing Westminster Seminary. Emergency situations required unusual tactics.

...while uncomfortable with the board’s independence, Machen believed the dire situation in the church required an emergency measure. According to Robert Churchill, the Independent Board was never intended to be permanent. It would be dissolved if and when the official board reformed. The Independent Board was a temporary effort to address the desperate state of missions in the church. Moreover, the centralization and bureaucratization of many of the Presbyterian Church’s ministries, missions being only one example, severely restricted efforts to reform denominational agencies by removing them from the more immediate supervision of church courts. (link)

Muether and Hart later discuss how the question of the Independent Board of Foreign Missions was resolved:

Even though the independence of the board from ecclesiastical oversight suggested that the conservative missions agency condoned non-Presbyterian forms of church government, the board’s constitution stated that it would support only those missionaries who vowed to conduct and establish missions based on the Westminster Confession and “the fundamental principles of Presbyterian Church government.” The board’s independence at its founding in 1933, then, was merely a temporary measure to protest the desperate state of the mainline denomination’s missions enterprise. In other words, despite its independence, the board was committed to establishing and conducting Presbyterian, not independent, missions.

Conspicuous in its absence, however, Muether and Hart never return to discuss the permanence of the independency of seminaries... although this too is a question that has been discussed in OPC history. The OPC's Committee on Theological Education - elected by the 11th general assembly - wrote:

The commission given by God to His church requires the conduct on the part of the church of certain forms of theological education. There are, however, strict limits to the scope of the theological education that may properly be undertaken by the church. These limits do not allow for the inclusion in the programme of theological education undertaken by the church of such a curriculum of theological studies as is necessary to equip men for a competent discharge of the Gospel ministry. Since the church must not exceed the terms of its commission and must limit itself to those activities which Holy Scripture establishes as the proper function of the church, it is the judgment of the Committee that it would be a usurpation of authority and a violation of the order which Christ has instituted in His church for the church to undertake the conduct of the comprehensive theological education which is ordinarily and properly undertaken by theological seminaries or by theological faculties in universities...

A church thus certainly may conduct theological education for the training of its ministry. The question now arises whether, in the present historical situation of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the church must conduct theological education. Successive general assemblies have judged that Westminster Theological Seminary is providing adequate theological education in accordance with the standards of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church. This committee believes that the judgment of the successive assemblies in this matter is sound, and that Westminster is providing the necessary theological education for prospective ministers of our church. The committee believes that it is thus not necessary for The Orthodox Presbyterian Church to establish a seminary of its own. 

As a layman in the OPC - a denomination I love - this utterly baffles me! I am open to persuasion on this subject, but seminaries and universities didn't even exist for the first millennium following Christ's ascension (see below). Who trained prospective ministers during that time? Do the "terms" of the commission of the church not include discipleship, or would the above committee have argued that one who suggests discipleship ought to include educating prospective ministers would be somehow suggesting a "usurpation of authority," "a violation of the order which Christ has instituted in His church"? 

As an aside, the committee who wrote this (and the below conclusion) was comprised of five men, all of whom were either founding faculty members of WTS or former WTS students (one of whom further went on to become the executive secretary for WTS). Is it not a conflict of interest for people so invested in WTS to be asked to investigate whether WTS is providing "the necessary theological education for prospective ministers of our church," let alone whether the OPC ought to "establish a seminary of its own"? 

In a ReformedForum podcast on The Role of the Seminary in Today's World, Al Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, said the following:

A theological seminary bears a stewardship that is absolutely unprecedented. There’s no New Testament seminary. There’s not a seminary found in the New Testament. What you do have is someone - in particular, the example of the apostle Paul - who is teaching Timothy, helping to correct Apollos, being a part of working out the theological formation of those churches and of its teaching office. And the seminary better be that writ large.

Peter Lillback, President of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, observed:

As goes the pulpit, so goes the church. As goes the church, so goes the pulpit. As goes the seminary, so goes the pulpit. What's whispered in the seminary will be preached in the pulpit.

Strong language. Mohler follows:

I look at the wall of every doctor I go to visit. I want lots of good framed certificates from places I recognize. If I’m going to place my life in your hand, I want medical schools that sound legit: Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, they sound great. But why is it when people think about what’s even more important – which is the care of souls – all of a sudden they think someone can do with something less than the best? I want students who know they’re going to be holding the care of souls in their hands, and thus they need the highest standard of education. I don’t want anyone who’s looking for less than that.

How about students who are looking for more than that? How about students who are looking for schools which want to be held accountable before God’s people for the education they provide precisely because that education is supposed to be designed to be the best means by which students learn to care for souls?

To be clear, I have considered going to seminary, and in the right season of life, I might. I'm all for the idea that Christians take the riches of the world and reappropriate them for Christ. It is often the case that secularists make advancements before God's people do, only for God's people to plunder them. That secular universities preceded seminaries does not mean we should commit a genetic fallacy about the potential good of a seminary. At the same time, reappropriation entails reconsideration of the ways in which the goods can and should be put to use. That includes to whom a seminary and faculty is accountable.

I do not pretend to have answers to every question which could be raised on this point. However, I would not think that the education of prospective fathers within a denomination should be outsourced to those who are not accountable to the hierarchical structure of the denomination. Fathers are responsible for the instruction of their children (Ephesians 6), children who may grow up to themselves be fathers. As in earthly matters, so too, one would think, in heavenly matters. After all, God taught Adam so that Adam could teach his family.

In drawing that analogy, I'm not suggesting that all education must be performed by direct instruction from a father (see below). One might take that as reason to suppose that an independent seminary can perform the work of educating prospective ministers just as a teacher can perform the work of educating one's child. 

However, if I'm not personally teaching my son something, I am nevertheless responsible for who teaches him, how they teach him, and what they teach to him. If I learned nothing else from North's book, I learned the importance of negative sanctions. If someone is teaching my son badly or wrongly, it is my responsibility to rectify the problem, and I have legitimate authority to do so. That might involve correcting the teacher directly, bypassing the teacher's authority (assuming there is someone over him), or removing my son from the charge of the teacher. If I do nothing, I will have failed my son and myself. North describes the consequence of [a failure to impose] sanctions in terms of inheritance. If one is not careful, plunder can work the other way around: Satan looks to plunder our Christian progeny, after all.

Now, what negative sanctions can a denomination currently impose on an independent seminary? A denomination could, through a committee (say), follow the father-son-teacher illustration in the preceding paragraph to a certain extent. In a case that a seminarian exposes a teacher teaching badly or wrongly, a committee could confront a teacher directly. They could also bypass the teacher by speaking to his authorities, i.e. the administration of the seminary. 

But in case neither of those options cause change, what negative sanctions can a denomination really impose? If the seminary is independent, the denomination cannot remove the teacher. Economic sanctions seem to be the one and only remaining option: a denomination might rule out or minimize ordaining those from a seminary whose teachers and teaching don't align with the standards of the denomination.

In one sense, this sanction threatens prospective candidates. That threat might deter prospective candidates from attending said independent seminary... conversely, it might drive prospective candidates into ministering for other denominations. Separately, the sanction also threatens the seminary. But in the case of a relatively smaller denomination such as the OPC, economic sanctions are less likely to make an impact on the policies of an independent seminary.

For economic sanctions to become an effective threat against an independent seminary, a smaller denomination would have to first expand. This leads to an irony: a smaller denomination which prioritizes power through economic sanctions is driven to grow its church to an extent its voice can only be ignored with difficulty. In turn, this renders the denomination more susceptible to the temptation of artificial growth through confessional drift or compromise, the very thing to be avoided. 

In fact, there is already an inherent tension for a denomination to even believe that an independent seminary upon which it relies for pulpit supply is primarily driven by economics. There is less reason to suppose that such a seminary would in the first place remain motivated to confessional stability (as opposed to lucre) while the denomination attempts to grow its own economic leverage.

Under this scenario, then, should the idea of economic sanctions be abandoned? Perhaps the needle can be threaded, but predicating the success of relations between church and seminaries on economics appears challenging. If a denomination or an independent seminary upon which a denomination relies buy that "money talks," prospective ministers are somewhere being taught a bad object lesson. 

Granted, economic considerations cannot be entirely avoided. If an overemphasis on economic considerations might make difficult the relationship between smaller denominations and independent seminaries, one should not underemphasize economic considerations for smaller denominations who might desire the responsibility of overseeing an ecclesiastically accountable seminary but would have difficulty funding one. There are obvious complexities, especially in initial coordination. 

Short of the formation of a denominational seminary - which, by the way, needn't imply that a denomination should always rule out consideration of candidates from independent seminaries - I think the OPC has been wise to invest in MTIOPC (link). I pray MTIOPC continues to bear fruit and might even be a stepping stone.

For those interested in more context to and qualifications of the foregoing thoughts, I recommend James S. Gidley's essay "Faith and Learning in the Presbyterian Ministry" in Confident of Better Things for an even-handed treatment of "whether it is time to develop a new system of ministerial education, and if so, what form it should take" (pg. 265). Gidley is also right to conclude that 1) "neither the educational process nor the educational institution produces ministers" as well as that 2) "institutional arrangements for attaining the end of sound preparation for the gospel ministry are secondary to the preparation itself." While the focus of this post thus far has been on "institutional arrangements," I do agree with Gidley.

Broadening now the scope of the topic, is the education of members and, particularly, covenant children any business of the church? Unlike the prospective ministers, this initial question is less about whether the church is (or is not) responsible for providing the education itself. That becomes relevant only if this initial question should be answered affirmatively. 

If it were to be answered affirmatively, we would have to push the following logic: if the education of covenant children is some business of the church, suppose parents or guardians were negligent in the education of their children. Would it be an overstep for a session to address that? If the negligence persists, would it be an overstep for a session to view it as a disciplinary issue?

While uncomfortable, these are questions that require careful consideration. It might be easier to set them aside altogether. However, a shepherd is responsible for the well-being of his sheep. Can one's education be divorced from one's well-being? 

Allowing this, there is certainly room for freedom when discussing the concrete form in which one's education takes shape. What constitutes "negligence" could be a slippery slope, and I would not argue that the general assembly, presbyteries, or location congregations must be the educators of covenant children for all subject matters. 

Even so, are there lessons to be learned from controversies involving parachurch organizations (e.g. Peniel conferences)? Should the Committee for Christian Education restrict itself to "Sunday school" matters? Does not the OPC have a history of understanding that Christian education requires Christian educators who consciously work from and within a confessional, Christian worldview? 

While the who and how of Christian education should be a matter of liberty, then, it is prudent to consider means by which such education might be made more accessible. How to fund specific types of Christian education is a separate (albeit important) question. Enrolling one's child in a Christian school is a good option - as I was blessed to have attended a Christian school from elementary through high school, I can attest to its benefits - but infeasible for many (cost, scarcity, etc.). 

Homeschooling is another option. Even this, though, isn't workable for all families. As a public school teacher at a Title I school, I'm all too aware of difficulties in terms of childcare. Further, I specialize in teaching just one area of math. I can recall being a new teacher struggling to keep my head above water: I've had to learn how to manage behavior and time, master content, effectively communicate that content, check for understanding, etc. It's one thing for me to do that given my background and that it's for a specific math course (and with peer assistance). I can easily understand how home-schooling can be overwhelming for parents when kids, ages, and subjects are multiplied - not to mention the parental priority of providing basic means of living. That is, for some, public schooling is unavoidable.

The question, then, turns to whether and how a church can help. Analogous to the function of MTIOPC, I know of some local churches who offer supplemental, cohort education. For congregations that can realistically do it, this is a valuable, small scale possibility.

On a larger scale, the OPC has thousands of members. NAPARC has hundreds of thousands. Might it not be possible to form an online network that offers educational options suited to various needs, are freely accessible to all members, and has oversight? Under this scenario, members would actually be modeling what I argue seminaries should be doing. Options could range from weekly tutoring hours to asynchronous lesson videos, each contextualized within a Christian framework.

Is this hopelessly ideal? Undeniably, we live in an individualistic culture, one which approves of the path of least responsibility. But I think there is a place for an online platform with a specific vision to prospective members who are already linked in a concrete way, even if the members don't know each other personally (e.g. if they are members of the same denomination, NAPARC, etc.). 

Even if a petition for oversight was rejected, the idea itself could be implemented. In that case, though, it might require word of mouth to gain traction. I find it theoretically attractive, if practically knotty.