Several weeks ago I raised the question, “Why seminary?” and I suggested that formal theological education in community remains the ideal strategy for equipping new leaders to shepherd the flock of Jesus Christ. But once an institutional seminary is up and running, and once a critical mass of eager seminarians have inscribed themselves, further questions assert themselves: What should students spend their time on? And how should their activities be structured into an overarching course of study? Or, to professionalize these further: What kind of degree program will be the “bread and butter” of a modern seminary seeking the best way to resource the broader church?
The MDiv: Gold Standard for Modern Ministry Preparation
There are countless ways (as they say) to slice a pie, to peel an orange, to crack an egg, or – if everything else has failed – to skin a cat. Along these lines, there is also more than one way to prepare a candidate for full-time ministry in the church. Presently, since the 1960s and ’70s, the standard degree for forming new ministers in North America has been the Master of Divinity (MDiv). Let me add at the outset here that “divinity” does not, of course, mean “being a deity” but refers rather to those skills and disciplines necessary to the office of a “divine,” that is, a minister of Jesus Christ.
The MDiv is a three-year professional graduate degree that began as a rebrand of the three-year post-baccalaureate Bachelor of Divinity (BD) seminaries had been awarding for hundreds of years. Its goal has been to make a future pastors proficient in each area of study necessary for preaching the gospel faithfully and caring for the health of the church and its members. Meant to follow a prior degree in the arts and sciences, the MDiv traditionally requires students to take a battery of coursework in the Old and New Testament (often including mastery of Greek and Hebrew), Dogmatics and Systematic Theology (including ethics and moral theology), Church History and Historical Theology, and Practical Theology (including preaching, liturgics, counseling, and evangelism).
On top of all this, the capstone project of nearly all MDiv programs is some kind of practical experience – usually an internship at a church or some other ministry placement – rather than the crafting of a thesis.
By the end of those three years, a freshly minted MDiv graduate should be competent to pass a denominational ordination exam and avoid certain catastrophic errors that most typically threaten the efficacy of one’s pastorate.
The Current Trend away from Pursuing an MDiv
However, recent years have seen North American seminarians trending away from pursuing the MDiv degree in favor of other degrees in ministry, theology, and biblical studies that require two years (and sometimes only one) of full-time study. For some it may be a more introductory Master of Theological Studies (MTS), while for others a research-oriented Master of Arts (MA) in religion or theology or an advanced Master of Theology (ThM) might be their preference. But the fact is, for several years now only a minority of students are pursuing the traditional MDiv at seminaries and theological colleges accredited by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). And in response to these shifts in demand, many schools are also opting to reduce the number of credit hours required for completing their MDiv, while also permitting Bachelor-level courses in Bible or theology to count toward this professional Masters degree (see, for example, the accelerated 5-year BA–MDiv combination now being offered at my undergraduate alma mater).
This shift away from what was once the gold standard stems, in part, from financial decisions made by ministry candidates and denominations alike. Gone are the days when large churches and denominations were expected to fund years of study, and these costs are now borne increasingly by students (and, in many cases, their families). Every extra year of study often means a hefty hike in educational debt or a longer path toward graduation and ordination.
Also, because most other graduate theological degrees are oriented toward undertaking research and producing a thesis rather than being formed as a pastor, these alternative Masters programs are more likely to offer a fully online track for non-traditional students who are not prepared to move to a brick-and-mortar seminary. This means that home life and family budgets are less likely to be disrupted by the chaos and cost of relocating.
As a result, because few North American churches are willing to subsidize the cost of pursuing ordained ministry, these bodies are also recognizing the need to “meet people where they are.” There is significant pressure on denominational gatekeepers to recognize a BA, MTS, or MA as sufficient academic preparation for the pastors of tomorrow, many of whom are experiencing financial constraints that their predecessors often did not.
All this is to say that, when I first began looking at seminaries in the early ’00s I did not have to think twice about applying to an MDiv program; today, both ordinands and ordaining bodies are rethinking the utility of a degree that in the late ’20s requires ever more time and sacrifice.
Europe’s Unfamiliarity with the North American MDiv
In addition to the real concerns of churches and seminarians here in North America, I am getting ready to teach in Europe, a place where the MDiv never gained popularity or took root. Most candidates for ministry in the Netherlands, where my family and I will be located, tend to work toward an MA in theology at a wetenschappelijk onderwijs (WO) – that is, a “research university” – before receiving further training under the mentorship of church leaders in their denominations. In this alternate educational system, it can be hard to sell European students who desire to minister the gospel in their local churches on a strange degree with which most are unfamiliar.
In fact, however, I am headed to teach as part of the faculty of Tyndale Theological Seminary, a higher-ed institution classified by the Dutch government as a hoger beroepsonderwijs (HBO) – that is, a “school of applied sciences.” While Tyndale offers a government-accredited Masters of Evangelical Theology (MET), its most popular program by far is an old-school North American-style MDiv. This popularity, moreover, is driven by the fact that a majority of its students come from Africa and Asia, and they have decided that this degree is what will best equip them for their own contextualized ministries at home and around the world. European students are catching enthusiasm for this degree as they study alongside their counterparts from across the globe.
So, I return to the question: Why should a seminary encourage its students to pursue an MDiv? What does this degree program offer that adds value beyond another, shorter Masters program taken through the same institution with the same professors and same resources? If these are just different ways of slicing the same ministry pie or peeling the same pastoral orange, why put such a heavy emphasis on this lengthy and demanding path to a professional degree?
Three Reasons to Pursue an MDiv over the Alternatives
To give something of an answer, let me draw from my experience as a one-time seminarian, ordained pastor, and theologian to offer a few observations on why the MDiv still warrants the pride of place among a seminary’s degree curricula, especially one that seeks to prepare leaders for the church all around the world.
First, an MDiv aims at both breadth and depth. Like the BD of old, this Masters covers the entire field of “divinity,” with the goal that a ministerial candidate might become a “worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). In the view of previous generations, a pastor needed to have achieved genuine mastery of many related, yet independent fields of study. While a two-year Masters program does well creating a specialist – whether in biblical studies, church history, dogmatic theology, or homiletics – the three-year MDiv is designed to birth a generalist in all these areas, yet one who nevertheless has taken all the same classes that a specialist in each area would also have taken and so possesses real professional expertise in each.
As you can imagine, this results in a demanding, supersized curriculum that presumes prior baccalaureate formation in the humanities. My own MDiv curriculum expected 110 credit hours of study from us: 20 credit hours of Greek and Hebrew, 26 of biblical studies, 24 of systematic theology, 10 of church history, and 23 of practical theology – with only 7 credit hours reserved for electives. What is more, these courses were intended to be taken while we were undergoing internships at local churches! Although ATS requires only 72 credit hours for an accredited MDiv (the average sits around 90) most seminaries retain the same goal as mine had: those headed for leadership in the church should be expert generalists in her scriptures, theology, history, and practices.
And my experience in pastoral ministry – in North America and also in the developing world – has shown me that this comprehensive expertise is what is needed in churches today. Any academic degree is only a beginning, of course, and an MDiv does not pretend to transmit all the information that an ordained leader might need for decades of ministry in the pulpit or in the streets. But being forced to read broadly and engage critically with primary sources, to read the Old and New Testaments closely, to take on research and write within different disciplines, to speak publicly with a wide range of audiences and occasions in view, and to master multiple languages at the same time: all these academic tasks help form the mind – and, hopefully, the heart – of the one who would want to “rightly handle the word of truth.” Without early, broad exposure to the depths of scripture, theology, and history, and without consistent drilling in the disciplines of preaching, counseling, and leading worship, there will be gaps that decrease a minister’s effectiveness in the Christian ministry in the long run. A good MDiv program can do exactly this – and more.
Second, an MDiv intentionally bridges academic theory and interpersonal praxis. Beyond the breadth and length of study, what sets an MDiv apart from other degree programs is the requirement that students undertake an internship at a church. While it is true that students can (and often will) receive mentorship and supervision in their ministry placements following graduation, it is crucial that students get a picture of the practical importance of their studies while they are still studying.
It is so easy to assume that what happens in the seminary classroom stays in the classroom; that parsing verbs and splitting theological hairs has little-to-no relevance for the lives of ordinary Christians – let alone non-Christians. Many ordinands have wondered if seminary is something to be endured only for the sake of pleasing Man – or an ornery committee of Men – rather than pleasing God who may very well consider such endless scholarly volumes and their countless footnotes as but filthy rags before him.
But the basic assumption of the MDiv’s internship requirement (and, ideally, of the classes themselves) is that these academic disciplines are always relevant – whether directly or indirectly – to the scope of what a minister of God’s Word is called to administer on God’s behalf. The corollary to this is that it is a minister “in the wild,” an imperfect pastor of an imperfect church, who ought to mentor these burgeoning practical theologians as they are being formed. Only in this way will they perceive the vital “whys” that lie behind the seemingly irrelevant debates taking place in their course readings and in the student lounge.
This involves too a recognition that it is not good enough to have good teachers in the seminary itself: the formation of clergy in the church is a task of the whole church. This strategic partnership in the MDiv between gown and town, at least as it has usually been thought out for a capstone internship, carries with it the possibility of mirroring the practical bent of all theological inquiry and the academic methods in which aspirants to ministry are being trained.
Third and finally, an MDiv forges resilience through real community and common worship. We as faculty hope that the weight of all these academic and practical requirements will push students together, each helping the other to develop the disciplines needed to withstand the future pressures of pastoral ministry. That is, the stress of an MDiv is a feature, not a bug, of the curriculum. Think about it: ministry candidates studying at seminary confront the difficulty of averaging more than 18 credit hours per term, with graduate-level reading and writing expected across multiple academic disciplines, all while juggling an internship at a local church. This requires MDiv students not only to get good at budgeting their time and energy, but also to acquire new skills for maintaining spiritually equilibrium in this midst of these demands.
Such skills are are best developed as part of the worshipping community that historically was always the frame of the traditional MDiv curriculum. To return to my hobbyhorse from last month, seminaries work best when students are living close and worshipping regularly with one another. Situated in this kind of community, students are forced by circumstance and necessity to turn to one another for companionship, encouragement, correction, and advice, just as they are positioned in prayer to turn their hearts and minds to the Lord as they pass through the storms of papers and final exams.
This is not to say that other theological degrees cannot be difficult, stressful, and sanctifying in their own ways (I just completed my PhD at Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto, after all!). But the MDiv, more than any other degree of which I am aware, requires a student who is living and praying with other students to erect a massive obstacle course of academic and professional obligations while simultaneously clearing a direct path toward spiritual maturity – if students choose to take it. For this reason, when MDiv students are absent from refectory meals or chapel services, they end up missing out on an essential component of their degree program.
The Global Demand for the North American MDiv
These three reasons, I think, lie behind the demand that students from around the Global South have shown for Tyndale’s MDiv. Churches everywhere are hungry for leaders who are well formed in every aspect of ministry. Tyndale puts this general expertise and professional proficiency front and center in its own MDiv curriculum, which remains quite traditional when compared with its competitors. While North Americans are watering down their MDiv programs and theological curricula, churches in the developing world are seeking out the formational legacy of this old-school North American preparation for ministry.
What is more, as an academically rigorous HBO (school of applied sciences), Tyndale is committed to combining theory and practice in all its degrees, but first and foremost in its MDiv. African and Asian students are discovering new insights through their internships in churches across the Netherlands, just as they are constantly challenged to assess the local relevance of what they are learning in the classroom for their ministries in the countries of origin to which they are committed to returning.
International students at Tyndale benefit too from the normative requirement (uncommon these days) that they will attend class entirely in person, that they will live, dine, and fellowship on campus, and that their lives will be shared with one another as they pull all-nighters in the library. This mutual ministry goes hand-in-hand with the planned intensity of Tyndale’s MDiv curriculum that my wife and I witnessed firsthand, as students burrowed into the library for late night studying in the middle of term. Although the faculty regularly reassess the school’s curriculum to ensure it does not overly challenge learners for whom English is their second or third language, the seminary has not shied away from the combining curriculum stress with community support and corporate worship to mold its students during their three years in residence.
The proof of this philosophy of professional ministerial development at Tyndale can be found not only in these global students’ desire to undertake an MDiv on campus in the Netherlands, but also because these same students often leave with the intention of replicating this same model of education in their home churches and communities – even to the point of founding new seminaries. They may not expect to confer a formal MDiv – there is, after all, more than one way to slice a pie! – but the formation they received at Tyndale is now continuing on in how they then form their own students.
Whatever name you give it – whether a BD, an MDiv, an in-house certificate, or something else entirely – I firmly believe that this kind of education, formation, and preparation is desperately needed in churches around the world to equip leaders for a new generation of Christ’s body. This is why my family and I are investing ourselves in Tyndale Theological Seminary and raising the support through SAMS and IATW to serve on the faculty there.
And this is why I also believe that, despite the crises being experienced across higher education today, despite the strains on denominations, and despite the sacrifices demanded of students, the MDiv should continue to be a degree of choice for Americans, Canadians, and Europeans who are interested in connecting not only with the Christian heritage of their heirloom churches, but with the fullness of Christ’s body as it lives and breathes around the world.