Theological education is at the crossroads. Traditional approaches are under serious review and new schemes are being mooted or introduced. A degree of confusion reigns in the minds of ordinary laypeople, particularly where they find themselves called upon to decide between the alternatives.

      This treatment of the issue sets out to critically review the two principal positions and to suggest an alternative approach, which, it is argued, is more comprehensive than either of the current alternatives and which is more closely related to the essence of ministry.

      In this brief examination it will be argued that the central purpose of theological education ought to be, neither the acquisition of vocational skills nor the development of a more comprehensive view of the faith, but rather the spiritual formation of ministry candidates. The formation envisaged, in this approach, is a twofold movement involving the flourishing of our basic humanity and a committed, self-emptying discipleship.

      It will be further contended that the curriculum is best integrated, not around extrinsic vocational goals or around the concept of theologia, as resurrected by Edward Farley, but rather around the formational aim.

      It will also be argued that the task of theological education, centring on spiritual formation and concerned with the whole people of God, necessitates a multifaced approach involving traditional theological colleges, lower-level on-the-job vocational training and the education of laypersons.

      In the 1950's debate on the question of the purpose of theological education focussed on the related issue of the nature of the Church's mission, which ran the gamut from a concern for the salvation of souls to concentration on the redemption of the community.¹ While this debate has continued, the area of concern in theological education has shifted. The central issue for theological colleges today is less a matter of missiological philosophy and more a matter of intra-denominational debate over the question of the organizational function of theological education, a debate affecting both "liberal" and "conservative" institutions. Most local churches and denominational leaders argue that theological colleges should work at producing ministers who can adequately minister to and augment the membership of local congregations. Most theological colleges, for their part, see their primary task, reflected in their curriculum offerings, as increasing the student's capacity for intellectually grasping and arguing the essentials of the faith. While neither position excludes the other, the predominant emphases are clear

      Most theological colleges were set up to furnish an articulate and competent ministry. When inaugurated, the aims of the colleges coincided with those of the churches and of the denominational leadership. Once established, however, theological colleges came to have a life of their own.

      Seeking acceptance in academia, and subject to institutional self-interest and inertia, they soon developed both an independence and a homogeneity relative to other colleges, which appeared to compromise distinctive denominational traditions and to skew their aim in the direction of an over-intellectual orientation. Furthermore, as was discovered early in the history of the People's Republic of China, it is almost impossible to develop personnel who are both expert and uncritically committed to an ideology.²

      Understanding mellows the strident bigotry of the fanatic which gives way to the cautions, perhaps humble, tentativeness of the scholar.

      Threatened with the new language of an intellectual elite, once the servants of the church but now established in their own fiefdoms, the administrative and grassroots leadership of the churches suspect their orthodoxy and their loyalty. This loss of confidence, sometimes married to the threat of economic reprisal, frequently evokes an orgy of self-justification on the part of the colleges, a counter recognition rooted in the common interest and plight of sister institutions across the denominational spectrum.

      This complex of reactions also inhibits institutional self-criticism, giving rise to the curious irony of a body of scholars, purportedly given to rigorous analysis, attempting little, if any, research into the purpose, nature and structure of theological education.³ In Australia, which has a strong tradition of anti-intellectualism, the tension between theological educators and denominational administrators will be further exacerbated in the future by the long term consequences of the recent establishment of Colleges of Divinity in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth and by the linking of an increasing number of Bible Colleges and Institutes with the Australian College of Theology.

      In a situation in which the church is losing ground, and in an atmosphere in which institutions are being increasingly called upon to Justify their existence in functional terms, the question of the functional purpose of

theological education has been forced upon theological educators who have been asked to respond by those communities responsible for their establishment and costly maintenance. The debate, so far, has revealed the two entrenched positions described in the previous paragraph.

      Local churches and denominational leaders argue that theological education should be primarily concerned with practical training for ministry, Churches need effective ministers.

      Farley credits the Pietists, particularly Spener and Francke, with responsibility for this emphasis. In response to an earlier shift of focus from personal formation to familiarization with scholastic-scientific theology, the Pietists argued for a telos beyond the educational process which the latter sub-served, i. e. the tasks of ministry. They were concerned to scotch the notion of the minister as the resident theologian, which was the image the German institutions were developing.⁴ Schleiermacher, who argued that theology was a positive science, like law and medicine, rather than a pure science, and that it should be included in State-supported University offerings on the basis of the need to educate the clerical clientele in the theoria of their indispensable practice, furthered the emphasis of the Pietists.⁵

      Over recent decades the burgeoning of educational and pastoral sub-specialties within the curricula of theological institutions, which have drawn heavily of the behavioural sciences, register a response both to the philosophical and practical challenge of the regnant therapeutic and to the urging of the churches who have demonstrated that they are increasingly preferring graduates with competency in these areas.

      More recently, and particularly within evangelical denominations, an emphasis on Church Growth, traceable to Donald McGavran and Fuller Theological Seminary,⁶ has urged the importance of an acquaintance with business practice in vending the Christian message. The latent ministerial model, premised in the Church Growth literature, is the corporation executive with his lines of authority, office procedure, market research and corporate image.⁷

      While theological education should concern itself, among other things, with tutoring potential ordinands in ministry skills, to argue that such skilfulness ought to be the principle formational element is to propound a mechanistic, manipulative view of ministry. Furthermore, while it has to be admitted that, in one sense, "every pastor of a congregation is the chief executive officer of an organizational structure"⁸ there is something strangely perverse in the image of the minister as a "big operator."⁹

      It has to be admitted that advocates of Church Growth, in their bold reiteration of the evangelistic imperative and in their utilization of the weaponry of the very secular forces that threaten the Church with extinction, have lifted her sights and shaken her out of her timidity. They have helped the Church recover the belief that she has a life and death message for the world, a message requiring a personal decision for or against Christ. They have encouraged her to believe in herself, and in the Christ who is her Head, and to reach caringly into the community with her message of salvation. The enterprise, particularly of the larger, growing churches, has demonstrated that the Church is wrong to despise the entrepreneurs in her midst, the adventuresome risk-takers.

      Despite the contribution of the Church Growth movement, however, certain emphases of its advocates, some of whom have been less cautious than others, has aroused considerable disquiet.

      Using the methodology of the social sciences, Church Growth experts have propounded principles, such as the importance of working with homogeneous groups, that seem, thereby, to have attained the status of quasi-theological imperatives. Certain of these imperatives are antithetical to basic ecclesiological and missiological understandings. The descriptive, legitimate and helpful in its own right, has been made theologically normative.

      A similar reductionism is evident in the cult of bigness. A church may be big and yet deficient in certain of the qualities that ought to distinguish it as a church. Furthermore, while few would deny, as a rough rule of thumb, that growth is good for the church, the Church Growth literature inverts this proposition to argue that goodness is the growth of the Church.¹⁰ The Church's principal goal is thus seen as increasing the congregational membership rather than "an increase among men of the love of God and neighbour."¹¹ Congregational statistics become more important than the quality of lives redeemed.¹²

      Such criticisms are not meant to imply that larger growing churches are necessarily less concerned with the quality of the spiritual life of their members than are smaller congregations. However, their orientation, their size and the fact that to foster the spiritual development of members requires considerable organization and the training of key leaders in the principles of small group leadership means that the temptation to overlook the individual in the interests of the advancement of the church, qua church, is considerable.

      The role of the minister, as the person responsible for guiding the Christian vocation of others,¹³ also gets overlooked. Within the Church Growth context it is also important to be and to be seen to be successful, which places an inordinate strain on both "achievers" and "non-achievers." James Whyte, commenting on the experience of the Church of Scotland as early as 1964, argued that "the criticism that must be made of most of the demands for reform in the theological curriculum is that they aim to produce successful ministers for the minister-centred church."¹⁴ While few would be prepared to go as far as Neuhaus in arguing that "institutional growth is the last refuge of ministries that are spiritually sterile"¹⁵ the perceptive would agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson that to be successful is not so much to have the numbers an the board. It is rather

      "To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a redeemed social condition, or a job well done; To know even one other life has breathed because you lived."¹⁶

      In ecclesiological terms this equates with a servant ministry.

      Such a perspective avoids preacher cults¹⁷ and situations where the "glittering prizes of ministerial "success" are in large part reserved for the most skilled practitioners of the techniques of adjustment."¹⁸ It also avoids the subtle pressure to market oneself, one's church, even God, on the part of clergy who are trapped in the ambiguity of the lure and odium of success."¹⁹

      In one sense, it is impossible to avoid altogether the commercial element in ministry, if one operates within the voluntarist system which has, in North

America, as Richard Niebuhr has argued, tended to transform the officials of the Free Churches into "merchants who offer all sorts of wares so that as many customers as possible may be attracted to their ecclesiastical emporiums."²⁰ Dependent on lay support, clergy within the voluntarist system have "had to learn the arts of popular appeal and business efficiency."²¹ This heteronomous control frustrates "both autonomy and the fulfilment of autonomy through theonomy."²²

      Within a system that rewards the "successful," "the "theologically" oriented graduate may actually be punished by the ecclesiastical system which rewards un- and anti-theological approaches to ministry."²³ Over-responsive to such pressures, theological colleges face the ever-present danger of degenerating into "training establishments for the habituation of apprentices in the skills of the clerical trade."²⁴

      The development of proficiency in ministry skills is an important aspect of the training offered in theological colleges. To argue, however, that the achievement of a technical competence is the central purpose of theological education parodies this truism by inverting it. Elements of distortion are further exaggerated by implicit assumptions underlying Church Growth rhetoric. Criticism of these assumptions, however, is not intended as a blanket derogation of an approach which has breathed new life into the evangelistic imperative.

      The majority of theological colleges see themselves, in conjunction with each other, as the centre of the Church's intellectual life²⁵ where "the discipline of theological study is itself to be understood as amor intellectualis Dei."²⁶ In practical terms, according to Niebuhr, this translates into the exercise of an intellectual love of God and neighbour and the service of the Church's other activities "by bringing reflection and criticism to bear on worship, preaching, teaching and the care of souls."²⁷

      Theological educators highlight the importance of developing the students' ability to understand the Christian message and to relate it to knowledge of the self and of the world as perceived intuitively, fiducially and through rigorous intellectual discipline. Theological Colleges also see themselves in a frontier role which involves them in reflection and exploration.²⁸ Their work is evaluative and experimental as well as pedagogical. Both functions are most adequately carried out where both students and faculty enjoy the maximum intellectual freedom,²⁹ where bibliographic parameters and community reach are broadly ecumenical³⁰ and where the current secular Weltanschauung is seriously encountered.³¹

      One danger of focussing too narrowly on an intellectual appreciation of the faith is that the feeling and volitional aspects of Christian living can be overlooked. It is also possible for theological education to be a totally dispassionate exercise, the processing of observations that are unconnected with personal experience.

      Too great a concentration on cognitive skills, under pressure of undergraduate degree work, can also lead to a displacement or downgrading of those elements of the colleges' programmes that focus on practical training for ministry, a criticism that has given rise to the contention that traditional theological education produces theologians rather than ministers. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that graduates, having been introduced to new ways of

experiencing life and faith, find themselves out of kilter with committed conservatives who form the backbone of local congregations. This predicament is particularly acute in churches boasting a democratic ecclesiology.

      Theological Colleges tend to be criticised on three broad fronts, their academic rather than practical orientation, the loss of faith of their graduates and their failure to inculcate an incisive denominational consciousness. The latter, more pronounced in denominations not far removed from their sectarian beginnings, is a consequence of the breadth of sympathy deriving from the increasingly ecumenical context in which theological education is carried out.

      Tension between theological educators and local and denominational leadership is further exacerbated by what a number see as the superior status afforded members of theological faculties.³² This is rarely a self-perception, particularly in Australia, where lopping tall poppies is a national pastime.

      It is unfortunate that the two elites, thrown up in the course of denominational development, the administrative and the academic leadership, are at odds. Both are concerned with the mission of the Church,³³ and each, to maintain its own balance, needs the dialogical polarity represented by the other.³⁴ There is need for a comprehensive, integrative factor to bring them into fruitful tension.

      The central argument of this chapter is that the primary purpose of theological education is neither the acquisition of knowledge nor the development of ministry skills but the spiritual maturation of students.

      The bogey of Pietism³⁵ has, for almost two centuries, clouded this understanding. The reasons for this are predominantly historical.

      In what Farley describes as the pre-seminary period, from the beginning of the seventeenth century to about 1800, the study of divinity, which, in the English-speaking world, was pursued along with or consequent upon a general educational offered in Protestant universities and which was designed to prepare persons for ministry, was concerned principally with "a personal knowledge of God and the things of God in the context of salvation." It was "an exercise of piety, a dimension of the life of faith."³⁶ Theology, in this context, was an exercise in wisdom.

      However, with a shift in the meaning of theology, from sapientia to theoria, theological education became much more concerned with a scientific appraisal of God and religion. This trend was exaggerated when a developing historical consciousness challenged the notion of the givenness of the Scriptural canon and when the science of theology began to divide into a number of sub-disciplines.³⁷

      In reaction to early developments in this direction, Pietists attempted to restore salvation as the principal end of the study of theology. They criticised approaches to theology that emphasised human effort and talent and stressed the importance of heart commitment and the outworking of belief in practice.³⁸ They argued that the end of theology is Gottseligkeit, personal piety.³⁹ While their initiative contributed, paradoxically, to a shift in emphasis, wherein theologia was no longer regarded as wisdom, but as a means to wisdom, it was obvious that they were arguing, however inadequately, that the

purpose of theological education was the spiritual formation of prospective ministers, which had been the unspoken assumption prior to 1800.

      Reaction against Pietism, and to a saccharin devotionality representative of folksy fundamentalism, has prejudiced, particularly older faculty raised in the classical Liberal tradition⁴⁰ which was heavily biased in the direction of a male logicality,⁴¹ against considering the pristine understanding, resurrected in slightly different guise by the Pietists, that the primary task of theological education is the spiritual development of ministerial students.

      The reiteration of this thesis is not meant to invite a regression to pre-critical assumptions or modes of thought. It is, however, consonant with a developing appreciation of the impoverishment of theological education, and of Church life, resulting, long term, from their incarceration within the exclusively rational-scientific paradigm, a legacy of the Enlightenment.

      At the intuitive fringes of theological endeavour there is evidence of a new exodus. The groundswell has become sufficiently numerous and articulate for its message to be taken seriously.

      The argument of this exploration, set against the background of history and of a contemporary emphasis on spirituality, is that the spiritual formation of theological students ought to be the principal goal of theological education. This contention rests on two presuppositions.

      The first of these is that such an aim is far more comprehensive than either the practical goal of professional formation or the traditional institutional emphasis on the development of a theological sophistication. When spirituality is seen to be concerned with communication, meaning making, human flourishing and faith development, as well as a higher fulfilment through a self-emptying and diaconal service, it can be seen to be foundationally related to both theologia and praxis. It both anticipates and subsumes them. It unites theological education, which is seen to rest on a broadly conceived formational basis, which is its essence, rather than its end, as the Pietists argued, with the practice of ministry, for which it is an essential preparation and which represents its continuation. This conception of the purpose of theological education also promises a rapprochement between the two mutually suspicious elites by rooting the advocacy of both in the generally acknowledged presupposition of all ministry, which, in being taken for granted, is mostly overlooked.

      The second presupposition on which the thesis rests, hinted at in the last sentence, is that mature spirituality is the sine qua non of effective ministry.

      Ray Anderson has argued that the Church's ministry is "first of all Incarnational, then kerygmatic, and finally diaconal."⁴² The primary incarnational aspect of ministry was picked up by Sir Humphrey Mynors, who commented that "the first thing one looks for in one's parish priest is that he is a man of God."⁴³ Leonard Griffith similarly commented that "Men and women who expect to share Christ's ministry . . . must understand that its main motive . . . is to bring God into the experience of men and to bring men into the presence of God."⁴⁴ Dom Bede Frost narrowed the focus even more by arguing that "to pray and to teach souls to pray--it is all, for given this everything else will follow."⁴⁵

      Lack of a vigorous, infectious spirituality hobbles ministry. Krister Stendahl pointed to a "maimedness" resulting from a lack of seriousness about being "anthropoi theou" (1 Tim.).⁴⁶ Those who eloquently extol the virtues of violin playing, inculcating guilt in those who have no proficiency, and yet

who do not and cannot play themselves, will inevitably be found out.⁴⁷

      Kenneth Leech argues that spiritual direction is not a fringe activity, a "specialized" form of ministry, but "an integral part of the ordinary pastoral work to which every priest is called."⁴⁸ The "gulf between 'academic' theology and the exercise of pastoral care and spiritual guidance has been disastrous for all concerned."⁴⁹

      Transferring the issue to the area of seminary training, Neuhaus has argued that "what is needed is not the training of religious technicians but the formation of spiritual leaders."⁵⁰ Theological education ought, thus, to be directed towards the formation of the "whole person towards an increasing conformity with the mind of Christ so that our way of praying and our way of believing will be one."⁵¹

      The 1972 "Report of the Task Force on Spiritual Development" set up by The American Association of Theological Schools, commenting that "it is by men of grace that God spreads and confirms his grace among men," went on to suggest

      " . . . that seminaries today accept as their task the spiritual formation of people who will be more than able scholars, or vital human beings, or dedicated social change agents; of people also, whom--with considerable risk--we may speak of as sacramental or holy people, that is, people whose life strikes upon other people as lived from God and unto God, people whose presence somehow both communicates and evokes the divine."⁵²

      It can thus be argued that the central task of the seminary is the spiritual formation of its students, an active participation in the "liberation of the real 'Christ form' within."⁵³

      Where theological education is not centred on the spiritual formation of prospective ministry candidates, graduates of theological colleges are ill-equipped for the ministries to which they are called and perpetuate the divide between local and denominational leaders and the institutions whose alumni they have become. Pretending to ministry, without recognizing the pretence, they become either ministerial operatives, certainly more acceptable to local congregations whose numbers they swell, arcane theologians who take refuge in esoteric specialisms or advocates of a social justice that has no rootage in that solitude that is pregnant with the divine presence. They may get by, even in the long term, but the essential ministerial factor will be recognized as missing.

      Where spiritual formation is the integrating factor in theological education, and where some progress is being made, there is at least some chance that the protean person, spoken about by Fowler, who is capable of responding to the fluidity of contemporary society,⁵⁴ is in process of formation.

      It is also, thus, that "the vocation of the ordained to be used as an instrument for the spiritual awakening of humankind,"⁵⁵ is actualized. Where both occur, the theological college is seen to be at the heart of God's renewing and humanizing activity in the Church and in the world.

      Farley has pointed to the loss of an integrative rationale in theological education and thus to the atomizing of the theological curriculum.

      The movement from Divinity, to theologia and then to a plethora of discrete "theological" disciplines was matched by a division of academic offerings into the theoretical and the practical. When theologia became more a science than a life experience the latter split off from the former, which was no longer seen to incorporate it, and became a secondary addendum. In time the reason for designating certain subjects as practical also changed. Practical courses were less concerned with the experiential outcome of propositional truth and more concerned with the applied sciences of ministry relevant to the clerical vocation. The fourfold division, into Bible, Systematic Theology, Church History and Practical Theology, anticipated by Hyperius and fairly well established by the time of Schleiermacher, perpetuates this bifurcation.

      It also needs to be noted that this pervasive four-fold division does not offer any ratio studiorum. In light of the fact that most curriculum offerings are little more than a loose collection of independent sub-specialties, whose heuristics and evaluative criteria are located in the secular disciplines that determine their shape, the fourfold pattern can be seen to be little more than a useful pedagogic device.⁵⁶

      Those arguing that the central purpose of theological education is to prepare students for the practical tasks of ministry naturally enough insist that the curriculum should be integrated around the professional aspects of the vocational task. This view is premised on the assumption, that few would deny, that theological education should be a preparation for mission.

      There are two major problems with this, however. The first is that the church's mission is perceived differently by different people. The second problem is that arranging the curriculum around ministry tasks is bedevilled by two further factors related to the orientation and autonomy of the many sub-disciplines that make up College offerings. These are the different philosophical frameworks and interpretive models with which specialist sub-disciplines conduct their investigations that prevent an easy mesh, even of the "practical," explicitly vocational courses. The recent history of courses in pastoral counselling, which have been accused of betraying the gospel by selling out to therapeutic orthodoxies,⁵⁷ illustrates both problems.

      Farley has argued for the recovery of theologia, as a habitus rather than a purely scholarly discipline, contending that its integrative potential

surpasses that of any other contender. He sees it as the ecclesial counterpart to the Greek paedia, the culturing of a human being in arete or virtue. Unlike arete, however, theologia is concerned with "sapiental knowledge engendered by grace and divine self-disclosure."⁵⁸

      Farley's main thesis is that theological educators must find a way to recover theologia, otherwise "theological education will continue to perpetuate its enslavement to specialties, its lack of subject matter and criteria, its functionalist and technological orientation."⁵⁹

      For Farley, theologia, a self-correcting process, involves a fourfold movement. One begins by experiencing the given situation, the prereflective references and imagery of faith constituting the interpretive medium. The first movement of the dialectic of theological understanding involves the clarification of prereflective elements that we bring to the exercise. Farley describes this process as the "thematization of the faith world, of ecclesiality, of faith's language, references, realities."⁶⁰ In the next movement faith challenges the normative pronouncements of unfaith. In the third movement, the "hermeneutics of suspicion,"⁶¹ which has facilitated this critique, is directed towards the Church in order to test its assumptions. The fourth movement attempts to readjust the tension between the normativeness and relativity of the tradition and, thus, to grasp "the mythos in its enduring reality and its power."⁶²

      It is the cultivation of this theological habitus which Farley argues has the potential to unify and give direction to theological education.

      While it cannot but be agreed that the cultivation of a theological mind-set, represented by Farley's reinterpretation of theologia, will go a long way towards rescuing theological education from its present atomization and enslavement to sub-specialties, and to the thraldom of secular disciplines that frame the latter, it does not adequately, or specifically enough, bridge the gap between understanding and practice, despite promising a rapprochement between theoretical and practical offerings in the curriculum. The approach needs to be more profoundly existential, to impinge more directly upon the springs of motivation, the personal centre from which, it has been argued, effective ministry must proceed. Furthermore, Farley's suggestion is concerned, in the main, with only the first of the two movements of spiritual maturation, that is, with human flourishing, and, in particular, faith development. Weighted with a cognitive bias, it does not seriously address the dynamics of the second movement, which involves self-emptying and sacrificial service.

      Theological education can only begin to recover its existential, philosophic and pedagogic unity when spiritual formation is accepted as its central aim and fulcrum.

      In his search for a paradigm Farley did not go back far enough. His failure to consider the "convictional vision" represented by the eighteenth century study of Divinity, which was concerned with "a personal knowledge of God and the things of God in the context of salvation,"⁶³ was due to a number of factors, principal among which was the fact that he was, as have been most post-Enlightenment scholars, under the rationalistic, Positivist spell of the Aufklarung. This is not meant to discredit or detract from the enormous

benefits, in precision, clarification and scientific advance, that are the bequest of the Enlightenment and that inform and enrich the theological enterprise. It is reason's imperialism that is being challenged, an imperialism that has drawn a reaction from Romantic poets, Intuitivist philosophers and contemporary writers and scholars, particularly women, who have drawn attention to the rampant neglect of affective, spiritual, feminine epistemological criteria. This rationalism, based on classical logic and the philosophical assumptions made explicit by the Logical Positivists, holds the balance of power even in Farley's enormously helpful thesis. This bias is reflected in his preference for theologia, an "insightfulness, the 'knowledge' that attends faith in its concrete existence,"⁶⁴ over "piety," a work that suffers from ambiguity in his text, referring sometimes to the existential aspect of faith and at others to a sentimental or pretentious devotionality.

      Farley is critical of the flurry of activity, particularly in Protestant circles, over "formation" and "spirituality." He argues that the aim of this movement "has been to spiritualize the theological school's life and ethos but not its course of studies."⁶⁵ It is his concern that the formation movement will perpetuate "the inherited separation of piety and intellect."⁶⁶

      The accuracy of Farley's assessment needs to be challenged, however. It would be hard to substantiate his contention that the formation movement is not concerned to relate spirituality to courses of study offered in theological institutions. Even less is it the case that the necessary consequence of the movement's initiatives will be the perpetuation of a separation between piety and intellect. Those concerned with spiritual formation will want to counter with the rejoinder that it is the exclusion of intuitive and affective logic from the tool-kit of the theological logician, the deeper roots of the logic of faith, that perpetuates the divide.

      It needs to be noted, at this point, and in response to Farley's narrow definition of spirituality, that the spiritual development envisaged in this exposition encompasses meaning-making, communication, human flourishing, faith development, and a self-noughting and diaconial service. The breadth of this definition generally embraces the spectrum of courses offered by theological colleges.

      In arguing that the unifying element in theological education should be the spiritual development of theological students, it is not suggested that courses on spirituality and spiritual formation should predominate. Still less is it intended that the established parameters and canons of discrete disciplines be skewed to the point of distortion to take spirituality on board. Nor does the suggestion involve spiritualizing the contents of courses. The approach, premised on the understanding that the purpose of theological education is the spiritual formation of students, is concerned with the way course content is approached, with pedagogy, with the modelling of spiritual styles by the staff, with the social structuring of reality, including the orientation of the college and its administrative, relational and evaluative structures, with encouragement given students to embark on a personal pilgrimage and the nurturing of this pilgrimage by the community, with elements of spirituality unique to pastoral ministry, with the preparation of students for re-entry into local churches and with follow-up support beyond graduation.

      Understanding the faith, though important, is a second-order exercise. Experiencing God, living by faith, is primordial, foundational.

      While existence, in which God is encountered, is refracted through attitudes, understandings, symbolic meanings, through faith of some sort, it is the experience itself, which will continue to be reinterpreted through life, that is primary.

      Spirituality and course content are brought together, and the latter made more relevant, when the former is explored from the perspective of the existential core of the person. This is not merely a matter of beginning with a life situation. It is a tuning-in to the depths of personal existence, so that the latter vibrates the lecture content, permitting a personal ingestion.

      With Biblical Studies the potential for this sort of treatment is obvious and is consistent with the critical demands of modern scholarship and with the historical consciousness that precludes a return to a pre-critical spiritualizing of the text. It involves a personal engagement, even participation, in "the life of the Biblical communities that found their source and their focus in God."⁶⁷ Such a treatment necessitating what C. H. Dodd describes as a "dangerous leap from one cultural matrix to another,"⁶⁸ invites a comparison of spiritualities differently expressed in cultures separated by millennia.

      History, which is becoming more a matter of historical theology than of dates and actions, despite the importance of the latter, and theology, are also explicitly life- or faith-related. The biographical content of history and the ontological perspective of theology invite existential exploration and comparative analysis with the life experience of students.

      According to Andrew Louth, theology and spirituality suffered a divorce at the time of the Renaissance, a Kempis' Imitation of Christ being a symptom."⁶⁹ This divorce was unfortunate as the two belong together. As Merton argued,

      " . . . unless they are united there is no fervour, no life and no spiritual value in theology, no substance, no meaning and no sure orientation in the contemplative life."⁷⁰

      Theology divorced from prayer is in trouble.

      Since the Word of God to which theology listens is the word which engages the whole man, judging him and redeeming him, theology can never be a purely "theoretical" science, one that is existentially uninvolved.⁷¹

      It is thus obvious that

the study of theology, or at least of Christian theology, cannot survive in a healthy state apart from the life of prayer.⁷²

      It is also true that theology, divorced from spirituality, seriously debilitates the theologian. Urban Holmes drew attention to the "sick eros of the theologian," whose theologicalizing neither arises from nor is sustained by the vitality of his faith experience, and who concentrates on

      " . . . correcting other theologians rather than cooperating with them; on the thriving on end-in-itself controversy and conflict and the security of footnotes, bibliography and equivocation."⁷³

      Theology arises from the experience of God in life and contributes its own riches to future engagements.

      The shift from prayer, to theology, to prayer, however, requires "a flexible psyche."⁷⁴ The teaching of theology, in a manner that will engage the depth experiences and spiritual hungers of students, requires of lecturers humility, openness, a willingness to be vulnerable, other-directedness, sensitivity to the inchoate theological preformulations of students, to the presence of the Spirit in their lives and to the shape of his corporate existence in the Body, constituted by the classes in which they are involved.⁷⁵

      The area of Moral and Practical Theology is directly life-related. The potential for integrating the constituent disciplines with the depth experiences and the faith insights of students is obvious.

      Moral Theology, particularly its practical issues, is personally engaging, though there are dangers. The temptation with a predominantly deontological approach is that it can reinforce an unadventuresome immaturity and inure it against God-contact. On the other hand, situationalists need to guard against confusing the projection of passive aggression with an anger bedded in compassion and to ensure a sensitivity to the Spirit.

      Philosophy of Religion, a response to the secular challenge to Faith, engages the human spirit in a dialogue where it is hard to avoid being wounded.

      The investigation of other Faiths necessitates a similar honesty, but promises enrichment by challenging cultural assumptions and revealing and filling in lacunae.

      Study of Christian Education and of the Church's Mission invite a reassessment of the imperatives of the inward and outward Journeys.

      While Pastoral Psychology, Pastoral Care and Pastoral Counselling impinge directly on the student's emotional centre, in the past they have not always engaged the spiritual core.

      Despite the enormous benefit Clinical Pastoral Education has been in enabling students to get into honest touch with their basic humanity, it has also suffered from the same defect.

      Within the area of Moral and Practical Theology there is enormous scope for marrying constituent disciplines and spirituality, to the enrichment of both.

      Most theological colleges, in addition to their degree programmes, offer courses designed to tutor students in practical ministry functions. If, as has been argued, effective ministry arises out of the depth of the person, and is a measure of their spiritual maturation, the task of relating spirituality and practical ministry functions is a critical one. This exercise becomes even more imperative when it is acknowledged that clergy so easily become captive to urgent eternal pressures⁷⁶ and to the philosophic assumptions and methodology of the secular helping professions by virtue of the fact that the latter enjoy greater community recognition. It is the need to integrate their spirituality with the role-mix through which their vocation is expressed that makes the spirituality of clergy instrumentally different from that of the laity.⁷⁷

      In seeking, as Wesley suggested, to beget, preserve and increase the life of God in the souls of men,⁷⁸ the temptation to use ministry, albeit unconsciously, to meet unrequited ego needs is ever present. Clergy, no less than others, are hungry for affirmation. They are seldom affirmed by superiors,⁷⁹ or by denominational leaders. At the local level, they frequently find themselves victims of the disappointed expectations of parishioners, their unconscious projections, transferences and reactions to change. Criticisms usually outweigh expressions of appreciation. Dependency on the affirmation of a congregation frequently strengthens into a captivity that makes it difficult for clergy to deal with conflict and that causes them to overwork and to make demands on their families and friends that the latter are unable to meet.⁸⁰ It also causes them to seek self-justification in success.⁸¹ Where success eludes then, they may either quit or fall victim to boredom and indifference.⁸² It is, therefore, of critical importance that ministers source their lives and ministries, and their self-affirmation, in the God who is ultimately the ground of all self-affirmation. When this occurs ministry becomes a compassionate sharing, in mutual vulnerability and disarmament, of a presence encountered in the course of a personal pilgrimage.

      The minister usually has "the absurd responsibility of preaching Sunday after Sunday."⁸³ He is faced weekly with the task of avoiding inanity and abstruseness, of bringing the message of the gospel alive through a mastery of the craft. To preach effectively he needs to speak from his personal centre.

      Students need to be taught to marry their preaching and their spirituality, so that, over time, the former becomes less a matter of self-display, of the exercise of power, of the recommendation of oneself to God, of the justification of a faith stance, or of the venting of anger, and more a subtle dialogic⁸⁴ articulation of inner events⁸⁵ in which the person preaching makes available the undulating realities of, her experience.⁸⁶

      It is also important for students to learn to yeast their sermons out of the Divine will, to prayer-think their preparation, to contemplatively gather up a congregation into a oneness in which the energy of God becomes an almost felt reality, to lose themselves, buried deep, and unselfconsciously, in the intuited needs of the congregation, to be gathered up in a Grace that orchestrates both preacher and congregation into a symphony of deep healing.

      The marriage of spirituality and pastoral care focuses the latter, not, as in the Clebsch and Jaekle model, on troubled persons,⁸⁷ but on the maturing of the whole Christian community. Crisis counselling and the addressing of chronic personal or social problems are incorporated within this paradigm, but do not dominate. Instead, the primary function of pastoral care is seen to be the enabling of persons "to experience and order their lives in openness to and

according to the dimension of the Sacred."⁸⁸ It is a matter of creating an open and friendly space where others can tell and become obedient to their own stories.⁸⁹ For ministers, it is learning to recognize God at work in others and discerning opportunities for involvement in his initiatives.

      To yield to his grace, to co-operate with him, ministers must at least be in the process of accepting his acceptance of themselves. A growing self-acceptance will yield insight and an awareness of the inner dynamics of pastoral encounters, particularly the otherwise unconscious engagement of their own needs. It will deepen their affection and compassion and free them to properly attend to others. In the case of attentive listening, prayerfulness, or a contemplative presencing, will enable them to enter feelingly and intuitively into the other person and to read the many levels of symbolic encounter. They will be simultaneously aware of the probing and curative divine loving at each level and will discern the nature of the response urged upon them by the Spirit. He may well encourage them to articulate in a vocal prayer aspects of the vision of the other to which they have had privileged access and which will convey to the other a sense of being lovingly known. As in preaching, they will be the articulators of inner events, both human and divine, and will speak out of their own woundedness.⁹⁰

      In preparing prospective ministers to lead worship it will be important for them to understand that they cannot take others beyond the limits of their own spirituality, even with the help of a set liturgy. In the latter case, the absence of an inner reality results in either an obvious performance, or worse, a woodenness which drains the life out of even the most muscular themes of the faith. As Nouwen has argued, worship is celebration, a remembering of the past, an affirming of the God-drenched present and an anticipating and living in the dynamic future.⁹¹ To lead such a celebration one must be responsive to the sacramental voice of nature, in touch with the joys and hurts of the people and with their deep need of God. One's own experience of God must be real and edged with an honesty and freshness.⁹² The worship leader must be a woman or man of prayer who can unobtrusively facilitate a divine-human encounter.

      The minister's organizational role ought also to be linked with his spirituality. The temptation is to serve one's personal agenda, and in a manner that is manipulative or authoritarian. Nouwen has pointed to the dangers of concretism, power and pride,⁹³ which have an almost demonic capacity for disguise. Where our self-esteem hangs on the result of our organization we are particularly vulnerable. The minister's spirituality needs to be vigorous enough to counter these biases and to capture the initiative.⁹⁴

      The leadership style of the minister should also arise out of her spirituality. Ideally, it will be a creative, participatory leadership, avoiding that aspect of a charismatic or authoritarian style that creates a dependency on the minister as transference object, which she can falsely use to create volunteer energy and commitment.⁹⁵ It has been suggested that the minister, who both leads and personifies the Church,⁹⁶ needs, more than any other ability, the skills of the change agent.⁹⁷ These skills, however, need to be rooted in a spirituality that reaches from the depths to rework and rename stories and symbols⁹⁸ and that is manifest in gentleness, patience and an integrity that inspires confidence. Change agents, even the most sensitive, are not universally loved, and need the inner strength, deriving from a spiritual rootedness, to endure personal and professional loneliness.⁹⁹

      To fulfil these and other roles the minister must himself be pursuing his own spiritual journey. He must place himself continually under the discipline of the Scriptures. There is "no way that the spirituality of the ordained person can be realized short of being responsible for himself or herself as a hearer of the Word."¹⁰⁰ Prayer, the development of a

contemplative approach to living, is also of critical importance, as it is only thus that the minister can adequately fulfil his symbolic role as living reminder to his people of the God he purports to represent.¹⁰¹ The minister must also be discovering an increasing freedom to give her life for her people.¹⁰² This includes, besides heroic self-sacrifice, the willingness to celebrate her own failures.¹⁰³ Under pressure to perform, and even to be, the ordained must, from their own still centres, be continually reclaiming their vocations.¹⁰⁴ This necessitates a balance between activity and disengagement¹⁰⁵ and between activity and reflection.¹⁰⁶

      According to Niebuhr, there was no mention of Spirituality in the curriculum offerings of theological colleges in the 1950's.¹⁰⁷ Today, due to an increasing focus on spirituality, colleges are offering a variety of courses, such as The History of Spirituality, Biographies of the Saints, The Classics of Christian Devotion, The Psychology of Religious Experience, The Discernment of Spirits, Spiritual Direction, The Theology and Practice of Prayer, Healing, Contemporary Spirituality and Spiritual Theology.¹⁰⁸ If it be accepted that the effectiveness of ministry is dependent on the spirituality of ministers, and if theological colleges accept the proposition that the spiritual development of students is their main purpose, then it will be important to undergird the developing lineaments of this different approach with the sort of solid scholarship that is, at least ostensibly, represented by such courses. In working them up, however, it will be important to avoid the extreme objectivity that distorts reality and the style of overdependence on experts that can diminish trust in one's own experience.¹⁰⁹

      In dealing directly with Spirituality it would be important to indicate that background, personality and gender will determine the shape of a person's spirituality,¹¹⁰ a factor that would be taken up personally in the context of spiritual direction. It would also be helpful to point out that the personal and theological mix of one's spirituality will change with progress through the life cycle, mid-life being a critical transition period.¹¹¹ Changes of direction within the career trajectory, intersecting phases of the life-cycle, could be theoretically considered, to enable prospective graduates to anticipate change.¹¹²

      It would also be important to raise with students the relationship between spirituality and professionalism.

      There has been considerable debate over the question of whether or not the ministry is a profession.

      There are those who, defining a profession as "a type of work performed in a social setting which requires particular education, entrance, and relationship to one's peers and to the public," argue that the ministry is a profession, perhaps even the oldest.¹¹³

      Others contend that the ministry is not a profession. Ministers have few status symbols¹¹⁴ and, unlike medicine, for instance, the effectiveness of their work is a consequence, not of their intellectual or technical training so much as the transformation of their inner being.¹¹⁵ Neuhaus, with his usual pungency, lampooned those clergy who display "diplomas and certificates from academic institutions and professional associations" in a

pitiable imitation of the doctor's office, where diplomas are designed both to intimidate patients into accepting doctor's orders and to assure them that they are in good hands.¹¹⁶

      There is also a sense in which ministry can only be spoken of as a profession with a certain irony. It is always more than a profession, its very existence being a threat to the other professions.¹¹⁷ The uniqueness of the ministry was highlighted by Brian Wilson who argued that

      "The role of the priest is diffuse rather than specific. Of all social roles the priest's calls for the widest use of his purely untrained capacities, and calls into play, more than in any other profession, his personality dispositions. Of all specialists--and he is one by virtue of his theological training--he is the one who in his role must use the greatest amateur abilities. In so many ways the successful priest is such, not because of his specific training and in terms of what he has been taught how to do, but because he has developed a lively sympathy, acquired a sense of tolerance, and because he is culturally informed and humanly committed."¹¹⁸

      It is important for clergy, while aiming for competence and excellence, to deprofessionalize their ministries so as to avoid the temptation to trust in their professionalism above God and to make themselves available to timid souls, While the minister needs to "perform'" the quality of his presence is of greater importance than his performance.¹¹⁹ That performance can easily become a substitute for real compassion. In the case of reconciliation, "professionalism without compassion will turn forgiveness into a gimmick."¹²⁰

      The authority of the minister resides, not in her success,¹²¹ but as D. Day Williams wrote, "the concrete incarnation of the spirit of loving service."¹²² Neuhaus has commented that "to live by the authority of Christ is to abandon the search for authority as understood in other vocations."¹²³ In a sense, clergy are called upon by the Lord they serve, and the roles they perform, to act with a professionalism without being professionals. This requires an integration of their "professional" activities and their spirituality, which, when it happens, is a gift of the Spirit.¹²⁴

      Habituating students to patterns of Christian spirituality would be easily aborted by a pedagogy that contradicted explicit teaching. It is, therefore, important to avoid the violence associated with paternalism, packaged information¹²⁵ and alienation caused by the irrelevancy of the subject matter to the student.¹²⁶ A new pedagogy, that goes beyond the mere transference of knowledge,¹²⁷ is called for.

      Such an approach should focus an the integration and assimilation of knowledge by the student. It is the duty of the educator, as Friere has indicated, "to search out appropriate paths for the learner," so as to encourage "the effort of searching that is so indispensable to the act of knowing."¹²⁸ It is also important to lay questioning baits within the parameters of the student's world-view, to teach contextually.¹²⁹ This style of pedagogy presupposes an I-Thou¹³⁰ relationship between teacher and student, leading to trust and openness.

      It is important to help students to be honest, to provide both boundaries and that fearless, homely space where questions can come to consciousness¹³¹ and where students can air their hesitations and doubts. It is also important to desist from tugging at some things for an "answer" and let them be themselves.¹³²

      Acting as midwife to generations of students, whose new identities are birthed through crises,¹³³ requires considerable patience.¹³⁴ Teachers themselves need to be given more to questions than to answers,¹³⁵ particularly to help those students whose hastily swallowed questions bring on depression.¹³⁶ It is also important for students to see the teacher's mind grappling with questions,¹³⁷ nudging them to consciousness and then wresting them towards a series of ever-more satisfying conclusions.

      A pedagogy premised on Christian spirituality should strive for a bilateral participation. It should avoid imperialism. As Amma Theodora commented, "a teacher ought to be a stranger to love of domination, and a foreigner to vainglory."¹³⁸ Both students and teachers are participants in the symbols of hope,¹³⁹ fellow-companions.¹⁴⁰ Teachers who refuse to learn from students are living out an ideology of domination.¹⁴¹ It is also important for teachers to teach existentially, rather than abstractly.¹⁴² It is also important for teachers to be, and to be seen to be, personally involved in the content,¹⁴³ with the Word of God challenging both teacher and student.¹⁴⁴

      The greatest difficulty posed by the suggested evolution of a new pedagogy is the issue of evaluation. While academic requirements, particularly for the granting of bona fide degrees, require a minimum standard of rigour and excellence, the time students need to put in to achieve results satisfactory to the examiners, or to themselves, fosters a competitiveness, antithetical to mature spirituality and suggests that to be intelligent is the supreme virtue. While essays are increasingly being substituted for examinations, at least in some subjects, the issue of comparative results remains.

      It is hard to see a way out of the impasse created by the need to maintain standards and yet to tailor the course to student needs and capacities. If it be argued that degree programmes should be ditched, as retarding the development of a rich spirituality, the incentive to exert to the full one's intellectual gifts, particularly for those whose major function is cognitive, is seriously reduced. It could also be contended that it is a competitive world into which graduates will be launched and to ill prepare them for this, and for empathizing with laypersons and strangers caught up in such a world, is to deprive them of valuable experience and insight.

      For teachers it would necessitate the devising of alternative, compensatory, motivational structures. It would also confront them with the need to more deeply embed within students a sense of their identity, worth and authenticity to sustain a sense of self-worth in an environment in which their vocation is misunderstood, tolerated or patronized, and in which acceptance is gained, and a degree of equality assured, through the possession of degrees.

      Spirituality is evoked and developed more by modelling than by explicit teaching.

      Where a lecturer's life contradicts his teaching, the latter is likely to be ridiculed.

      The faculty is the seminary. Ultimately, the spirituality of students will be fostered, not by administrative reorganization or curriculum revision, but by the demeanour and behaviour of staff. The spiritual formation of students is dependent upon the spiritual formation of the faculty.¹⁴⁵

      Anthony de Mello criticises divinity schools for aping secular educational institutions. His argument is that

      " . . . they have professors instead of Masters and they offer scholarship instead of enlightenment. The professor teaches; the Master awakens, The professor offers knowledge; the Master offers ignorance, for he destroys knowledge and creates experience; he offers you knowledge as a vehicle, only to drag you out of it when the time arrives lest knowledge impede recognition.¹⁴⁶

      The authority of the theological faculty resides ultimately, not in academic degrees or position, but in competence, maturity, integrity, experience, faith and character.¹⁴⁷ This personal heuristic is marked by an openness to the Word of God¹⁴⁸ and a courageous commitment to the truth wherever discovered.¹⁴⁹ It also involves the offering of friendship and love. Love is at the centre of the Gospel and there is no integrity in talking about love unlovingly.¹⁵⁰

      Faculty members will also be judged by the way they treat other faculty and their own families. Theologians have not always been best known for loving each other.¹⁵¹ Zhou Yu, in Lou Guanzhong's The Three Kingdoms, was right in contending that while it would seem beneficial for wise men to ally with wise men, men of genius seldom endure each other.¹⁵² By careful attention to the development of their own spirituality, faculty should attempt to make real to students the meaning of ministry,¹⁵³ by working on their own spirituality so that students can live more authentically.¹⁵⁴ An awareness of holiness creates a desire for holiness."¹⁵⁵

      In shouldering this responsibility the staff are caught in "the fatiguing tension between effective professional adequacy and the capacity of faculty and administration to be redemptive presence"¹⁵⁶ It also adds to their responsibilities, which already include teaching, counselling, research, administration, and denominational and ecumenical involvement, and, for those recruited after considerable pastoral experience, the additional task of studying for a Ph.D.¹⁵⁷ Despite the pressure of competing demands, however, and, in the long run, to allow them to be sorted in order of priority and carried through with that restfulness associated with Christian maturity, the commitment of faculty to continuing growth in Christ is essential. An ancillary benefit of this commitment is that faculty will be able to avoid, at least partially, modelling the workaholism associated with a variety of works-righteousness.

      Theological educators are members of two professions.¹⁵⁸ They are ministers and teachers. Because their work is mainly academic, and because the function of theological schools is educational, the orientation of the latter is predominantly intellectual. This means that for the four or five years of the student's training intellectual values are paramount.

      In most seminaries the scholar is king¹⁵⁹ and students graduate as mini professors.¹⁶⁰ Even in theological colleges where the degree work is augmented by a comprehensive practical ministry programme, the latent influence of the former over-rides the different ethos of the latter.

      In an academic setting it is possible for both lecturers and students to hide from life behind dignified but futile academic projects¹⁶¹ and to escape self-knowledge by consuming an endless number of books.¹⁶² The Nieburian ideal of theological education, the intellectual love of God and neighbour, is easily corrupted into the training of a scholar gentry who are incapable of making a gut-level appropriation of intellectual understandings and who are beyond appreciating the distinction between knowledge and insight.¹⁶³

      If theological colleges are to prepare students to be effective ministers they must educate them to recognize, in the context of Christian living, that knowledge is worthless without love.¹⁶⁴ They must encourage them to reach beyond the realm of pure logic to the sphere of the personal and the unique where truth is grasped by paradox.¹⁶⁵ While valuing intellectual rigour, theological educators should help students appreciate that the ability to make fine verbal distinctions is a poor substitute for singleminded commitment to God and to people. It can even lead to an idolatry of words where it is tacitly assumed that God can be measured and confined by our conceptualizations.¹⁶⁶

      If, as has been argued, the purpose of theological education is to develop the spirituality of theological student, then it will be important for theological educators to strongly counter the pervasive influence of the almost exclusively intellectual orientation of the educational process. This will be no easy task, given the degree to which reality is socially constructed.

      One of the ways in which the predominant intellectual tone can be balanced is by staff encouraging students to begin or continue a spiritual pilgrimage, an exercise that will run parallel to their academic and practical training. Where the spiritual formation of students is acknowledged as the main purpose of theological education, and the central unifying theme of the curriculum, students will view the individual exercise as an integral part of their preparation for ministry. Furthermore, where spiritual formation is seen to involve both faith development and a kenotic discipleship, there will be less of a sense of inconsistency between student's academic work and their personal journeying. There will also be less of a temptation for their spiritual expression to degenerate into either formalism or a mushy, anti-intellectual pietism.

      It will be important for students to seek God in prayer and for them to at least begin the progression from verbal prayer, through meditation to contemplation. The demands of the course, and, for those who are married, the addition of family obligations, sometimes including part-time employment, will seriously mitigate against this intention. But the experience, valuable, and far from alienating in its own right, should at least wet the appetite and show the way forward.

      The Word of God should also be welcomed and loved in depth.¹⁶⁷ Students should be encouraged to place themselves under the judgement of the Scriptures, avoiding both an uninformed spiritualizing of the text and a purely intellectual exegesis. They should be helped to enter imaginatively into the experience of the writers or dramatis personae, to existentially appropriate the message of the gospel.

      As Christian spirituality is most effectively developed through modelling, it will also be important for students to read good Christian biography, devotional classics and the literature of contemporary spirituality.

      It is of enormous benefit for students to journal their progress. They can be helped to discover and own their shadow side by recording and reflecting upon their dreams, by owning and reclaiming their projections and by listening to their bodies. The record they write up of all this can be a means of bringing to consciousness what is vaguely known, of working issues through and even of praying. The exercise will itself be the means of developing a contemplative attitude towards life.

      Spirituality is most effectively fostered in community which facilitates faith development, spiritual nurture, character building and sustains the community's deeds of love. Theological colleges are both schools and churches. Their self-giving discipleship role is of critical importance to students. As Noel Vose has argued, it helps to balance unrestricted independence, the emphasis on the unassisted achievement of the individual, which is the "bete noir of spirituality."¹⁶⁸ Community life also confronts students with their rough edges and shows up their ability or inability to get along with other people.

      Where community is equated, at least for some, with communal living, physical, temporal and psychological space needs to be provided to allow for the balance of intimacy with distance. Monastic experience points to the benefit of manual work in helping with problems of identity.¹⁶⁹ Bonhoeffer's seminary at Finkenwalde, which combined a sturdy theological programme with communal living, was relatively unique in Protestantism.¹⁷⁰ With or without communal living, however, theological communities are by their very nature, at least theoretically, "communities of the deed."¹⁷¹

      To foster community, and growth through community, within theological colleges, is a multifaceted endeavour. It would include the development of pre-sessional programmes which encourage new students to share their faith, in the process of which they learn to appreciate the differentness of others. Group experiences, carefully handled, and focussed on acceptance and love, would bring students to a discovery of their unique gifts by drawing them out. They would also be an indirect means of tutoring then in group dynamics and would point to one way in which the human resources of local congregations could be encouraged into a broadly-based, gift-centred, shared ministry.

      College worship, when approached intentionally and creatively, and as a participatory exercise, has enormous potential for fostering the spiritual development of students. As Roger Hazelton has argued,

      "God becomes real as an object of knowledge only insofar as he is an object of devotion at the same time; and a God who can be worshipped is as necessary to adequate theology as a believable God is necessary to worship.¹⁷²

      Worship, which needs to be more than a refurbished didactic experience,¹⁷³ where it involves both staff and students in community prayer,¹⁷⁴ "is the great leveller of distinctions within the institution."¹⁷⁵ It also fulfills other important functions.

      "It is for students and faculty in general the most important alternation from study; in the context of praise and adoration the objects of theological study are set again in the context of churchly devotion. Diversity, of points of view on questions of theology and church strategy is set in its proper light. The anxieties and guilt of students in the throes of becoming Christians are relieved in their renewed certainty of the faithfulness of God. For some students the life of worship and devotion brings the maturation process to its culmination; in worship they come to themselves."¹⁷⁶

      Corporate worship is of such critical importance that

      " . . . a theological school in which worship is not a part of the daily and weekly rhythm of activity cannot remain a centre of intellectual activity directed towards God."¹⁷⁷

      Community retreats, scheduled through the year, concentrate specific attention an spiritual maturation, and, when the approach is varied, can prove helpful to diverse individuals with a wide variety of personality styles and experiences. They can also help to reveal to students the unique configuration of their spirituality and the approximate stage they have reached in their journeying. Retreats worked up from within the community, using a small number of staff and students, and retreats organized by outside retreat leaders, are each useful.

      Spiritual direction, which began with the Desert Fathers,¹⁷⁸ has been a feature of Catholic spirituality.

      The Catholic experience of spiritual direction has not always been positive. Tauler described some directors as hunting dogs who ate the hare instead of bringing it to their master.¹⁷⁹ J. P. De Caussade regarded direction generally as more a hindrance than a help.¹⁸⁰ However, while some direction has been too rudimentary,¹⁸¹ and while some directors, have, as in the case of Teresa of Avilla,¹⁸² been ill-equipped to assist directees whose spirituality has been way ahead of their own, it is generally agreed, among Catholics committed to spiritual growth, that spiritual direction assists one's spiritual progress. As Merton indicated, it had a decisive part to play in the lives of saints and mystics,¹⁸³ Certainly, "experience without supervision can lead to the adoption of poor patterns of behaviour which are very difficult to shake off.¹⁸⁴

      Protestants, until recently, have rejected the practice of spiritual direction, because of their emphasis on the freedom of the Christian person and because early generations associated it with, what they considered, Jesuit intrigue and tyranny."¹⁸⁵

      This does not mean, however, that Protestants have not been spiritually directed. They have been deeply influenced by significant individuals, from the sixteenth Century Reformers to contemporary pulpiteers. As participants in a "literary sub-culture,"¹⁸⁶ Protestants have been spiritually directed, and not always wisely, by literature. Over recent years, the theological tone and spiritual configuration of this literature has owed a great deal to popular demand and to the preferences of publishers, distributors, and the owners of retail outlets.

      Many Protestants are today arguing that "spiritual direction is our greatest pastoral need today."¹⁸⁷ As Kenneth Leech put it,

      "The church at the present time is in desperate need of spiritual guides, men and women who are steeped in prayer and in the spirit, and who can therefore be bearers of the spirit to our age."¹⁸⁸

      Where pastoral supervision is concerned with "the supervisee's learning and growth in ministry,¹⁸⁹ and counselling with assisting persons towards greater self-understanding, spiritual direction concentrates on the development of the directee's relationship with God.

      Spiritual direction has been defined as

      " . . . help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God's personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship."¹⁹⁰

      According to Merton, the value of the spiritual director lies in the clarity and simplicity of his discernment and judgement, rather than in exhortation.¹⁹¹ The spiritual director is someone from whom we can get a "navigational fix,"¹⁹² who will help us penetrate beneath the surface self¹⁹³ and to deal with self-will, self-justification and the desire to please.¹⁹⁴ The director enables the person she is directing to discover a new centre and a new identity.¹⁹⁵

      Spiritual direction requires an unusual degree of sensitivity. The director makes his experience available to the directee, but not by imposing it on him.¹⁹⁶ The director's experience furnishes the perspective, understanding and insight which he brings to the encounter. The spiritual director, according to Merton, is one who, following the inspirations of grace in his own life, enables others to arrive at the end to which God is leading them.¹⁹⁷ He is a carrier and vehicle of the Spirit,¹⁹⁸ who is able to stand aside and allow the Spirit to do his own work.¹⁹⁹

      Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, describes the director, as, among other things, someone who is "prudent, discreet, cautious, reserved . . . gentle."²⁰⁰ According to Holmes, directors need to be the sort of people who combine faith and vulnerability.²⁰¹ Merton listed as qualities necessary for a spiritual director "simplicity, humility, frankness, honesty and sincerity."²⁰².

      Spiritual directors have not always been clergy.²⁰³ Lay persons, recognized as having the experience and giftedness, have given direction, and continue to do so.

      The critical issue, when considering spiritual direction within theological colleges, is the question of who should do the directing. This question comprises two sub-issues. Should the director be ordained or lay and should he or she be a staff member.

      If spiritual direction is a matter of enabling the directee develop his or her relationship with God, then it does not really matter whether the director is a minister or a layperson.

      On the question of whether the director should or should not be a staff member, Catholic opinion in the past was divided. The French experience, resulting from a dearth of clergy at the time of the Revolution, was to use professors within the institution. The Italians, influenced by Charles Borromeo, selected their directors from outside the institution. The Italian model eventually won the day.²⁰⁴

      Given the fact that faculty not only evaluate academic progress but also fitness for ministry, It would seem appropriate for Protestant theological institutions to follow the Catholic lead and appoint spiritual directors from outside the immediate academic setting. By its very nature, spiritual direction would need to be optional, and the appointment of persons as spiritual directors who were not staff members would encourage their use by students.

      One of the difficulties of structuring the opportunity for spiritual direction into the matrix of college offerings lies in the scarcity of adequate spiritual directors. While Nouwen has argued that there are few guides because their services are not in great demand,²⁰⁵ when demand was greater they were still a rarity.²⁰⁶ While spiritual directors, who possess the requisite personal qualities, can be trained, and are being trained in increasing numbers as the demand for their services rises, it is still true that effective directors are a miracle of grace,²⁰⁷ a gift of God.²⁰⁸

      Both Teresa of Avila and John of the Gross argued that it was better not to have a director than to endure someone who was incompetent.²⁰⁹ While, as Merton and others have contended, the Holy Spirit, the most competent of all directors, is available to guide Christians,²¹⁰ with or without the intermediate assistance, of a human director, there are few who are mature enough accurately to discern his intimations. It is too easy for the urgings of our unsatisfied egos to counterfeit his voice.

      If it be agreed that the purpose of theological education is the spiritual maturation of students, then the engagement, by colleges, of directors, preferably from outside the institution, will be a potent means of bringing together the formational elements in all other aspects of their training. To ensure that this end is intentionally aimed at, if not achieved, it would be of benefit for the director or directors to liase with the faculty, not about individual students, but about the structuring of the overall programme of the college to ensure that its central purpose was being achieved.

      In the absence of spiritual directors it would be up to the staff to give what guidance they could. Spiritual friendships could be encouraged and it may be possible for each student to spend at least a day, at some stage during his or her course, with the equivalent of a Russian staretz. Books and tapes would partially compensate. Fenhagen's suggestion of a personal rule could also be taken up.

      If the staff are to play a critical role in the formation of students they would require special training.²¹¹ Their spiritual gifts would need to be deepened.²¹² It would necessitate their being committed to intentional spiritual development.

      Ideally, colleges, at least in the initial stages, would need to make available to staff two types of persons, faculty whose speciality is spirituality and spiritual directors. As yet there is no clear path for training advanced teachers in the area of spirituality²¹³ and lecturers may be uncomfortable with the thought of consulting and reporting to a spiritual director.

      What commitment to this orientation would mean for the administration of colleges is that they would have little or no justification for hiring and retaining faculty members who were not committed to spiritual maturation. Finally, it has to be admitted that even when staff are committed to spiritual growth, and have available to them specialists in the area of spirituality and sufficient spiritual directors, this would not, of itself, guarantee the spiritual formation of students at that institution.²¹⁴ It would, however, go a long way towards achieving this aim.

      A study of theological education undertaken under the auspices of the American Association of Theological Schools in the early 1950's suggested that there were a whole series of reasons for students enrolling in theological institutions.

      There were those in the seminary because of the encouragement of parents, pastors or local congregations. Others were studying theology in the hope of healing their own woundedness. Some, who functioned well in interpersonal relationships, felt that a ministerial career would bring them prestige and success. Others, who had begun to minister effectively in local churches, recognized that to be fully accepted as ministers they needed to fulfil mandatory educational requirements. Some, who felt alienated from the world and sought asylum in the security of the seminary. Others were soundly "converted," and, experiencing the power of the gospel in their own lives, were anxious to share their discovery. Some, who had felt acutely the disorganization of society, or who had come into contact with disorganized minds, saw the Church as a place from whence flowed healing and volunteered themselves to be part of this

healing. Then there were the educated, who were looking for a faith capable of bringing order into the intellectual and moral confusion associated with their previous personal and academic experience. Finally, there were those rare persons of mature faith who were seeking to become adequate servants of their Lord.²¹⁵

      Despite such diversity of personal and religious experience, and of motivation, an educational program designed by theological colleges, which focuses an spiritual formation/transformation as its central purpose, will catch up the different personalities represented within this spectrum, and by developing the inner core of each, test their calls to ministry and broaden the theologial and spiritual base from which they will operate.

      Urban Holmes, reporting an a survey of ministers conducted during sabbatical leave from the Winter of 1980 to the spring of 1981, concluded that

      " . . . the vast majority of individuals responding to the call tend towards the end of the spectrum that holds dreamers, visionaries and thinkers rather than the end that produces politicians, entrepreneurs, and go-getters.²¹⁶

      Two consequences flow from this, particularly for voluntarist churches. The first is that, while denominational leaders are looking to theological colleges to produce ministers with sufficient enterprise to attract an increasing attendance at services and to build up local memberships, the colleges are unable to do this because so few entrepreneurs offer themselves for training. The second consequence is that those who do volunteer for theological training, being visionaries and thinkers rather than activists, will be biased towards the intellectual enhancement offered by the college. Both, however, would respond to an approach that concentrated on spiritual formation, though, admittedly, the response of the visionaries and thinkers would be more immediate.

      Several decades ago those volunteering for training were mostly young people in their late teens or early twenties. The majority of students today are in their late twenties or early-to-mid thirties.

      While it is encouraging that mature men and women, a few from the commercial world and a greater number with professional training, are volunteering for ministry, it remains true that Protestant theological colleges are, in the main, failing generally to attract the best minds or most creative individuals within the church. This may be more the fault of parish or denominational leaders than of the colleges, but the fact remains.

      A consequence of this is that the majority of students find the intellectual rigour of the degree course excessively onerous, and, failing to see its immediate relevance to pastoral ministry, criticise what they see to be the over-intellectual bias of theological training. Denominational leaders, who are critical of colleges for their failure to graduate effective operators, join disgruntled graduates in calling for less emphasis an the intellectual and more on the practical aspects of the training.

      If colleges were to yield to this demand, and develop an overall programme biased towards skills training, they would be doing future generations of students a disservice. Ironically, those who most need the intellectual expansion are those who find it most difficult.

      It also needs to be born in mind that neither emphasis, on degree programmes or practical ministry training, will produce star performers. They are born and not made. Perhaps the question at issue is how to encourage such persons to consider ministry as a vocational option. Emphasis on a

broadly-conceived spirituality, that includes faith development and selfless service, and that emphasises the enormous creativity of the divine initiative, may well have more appeal than either the promise of a degree in theology or the offer of tuition in the practical skills of ministry.

      Theological educators working in traditional institutions argue that theological education should take place within the established colleges. Advocates of theological education by extension contend that theological education is the right of the whole people of God and that ministers should be trained on the job. It is argued here that all Christians should be theologically educated and that theological education should run the gamut from specialist training in traditional institutions to the training of laity at the local level. It also posits a middle-level vocational training an the TEE model which is centred in the life of local congregations. The focus at all levels, where the concern is both with intellectual enhancement and skills training, is on the spiritual maturation of those involved.

      In this debate the question of ordination is critical. It is the contention of this thesis that ministry involves the whole Church and that baptism is the fundamental ordination for all Christians.

      The predominant model of ministry in established Protestant churches has been that of "a prima donna with a chorus of laymen"²¹⁷ Within the Church, at least, the minister has enjoyed superior status, which has been sacralized by his ordination.²¹⁸

      The conception of the minister as an ecelesially superior person owes much to the Medieval schoolmen who held that sacramental character was akin to the genus of power. Scotus put the matter unequivocally when he argued that baptism makes us citizens, confirmation soldiers and ordination officers.²¹⁹

      It is being increasingly argued, however, that "the concept of ordination is no longer helpful in understanding the Church's ministry and in planning its work."²²⁰ Apart from the practical consideration of enlisting the laity in ministry, ordination, as traditionally conceived, is unhelpful in another, more subtle sense, in that

      " . . . when power is ascribed to some designated element within the Christian community, rather than to the community at large, it becomes focussed on the institution of the Church rather than on the mystery that the Church and its ministry embody.²²¹

      It was at the Faith and Order Commission that preceded the World Council of Churches Assembly at New Delhi that a view of ministry based on the notion that "baptism is the ordination of the laity" was first asserted ecumenically. In a document prepared for the Montreal Conference, the World Council of Churches Department of Laity commented that

      " . . . this ordination of baptism is basic for the whole study of the ministry. One may understand and interpret the subsequent special ordination within the Church quite differently, but this basic once and for all ordination of

baptism remains valid. Every specially ordained minister in the Church is and remains first of all a baptised member of the Church."²²²

      As indicated in the above quotation, the fact that all baptised Christians are ordained to ministry by virtue of their baptism does not preclude the special ordination of some for specific leadership roles. Such post-baptismal ordination, however, does not "make someone better or even fundamentally different," but it does offer "to the Church a living symbol of its own identity."²²³ Karl Rahner, in speaking to students at Freiburg University in 1965, argued that

      " . . . we are all one in Christ, the ultimate difference is the degree of love, for God and the brothers; distinctions of office are necessary but entirely secondary and provisional, a burden, a service, a sacred responsibility . . . The bishop will not look very different from any other official in a small voluntary group effectively dependent on the good will of that group . . . It will be clear and plain to see, that all dignity and office in the Church is uncovenanted service, carrying with it no honour in the world's eyes perhaps it will no longer constitute a profession in the social and secular sense at all.²²⁴

      The ensuing argument of this section, as indicated, is based on four preliminary propositions; first, that ministry involves the whole church; second, that baptism constitutes the fundamental ordination of all Christians; third, that the ordination of baptism does not preclude further special ordinations associated with leadership roles; and fourth, that such subsequent ordination carries with it, not superior status, but an obligation to humble service.

      It is the argument of theological educators, operating within the traditional pattern, that the leadership of local congregations is an increasingly demanding responsibility, entailing an educated knowledge of the Gospel message and of the ideational and social context within which local churches are placed. It is also seen to demand organizational and counselling skills of a high order. It is further contended that it is within theological colleges, staffed by highly-qualified faculty, that prospective ministers are best trained for their increasingly professional roles. It is there that they come into touch with the broadest ecumenical trends in biblical scholarship, theology and missiology. The college also provides a collegial atmosphere in which students can dialogically wrestle with issues of faith, order, life and works, free from the myopic confinement of local situations.

      Critics of traditional theological education have pointed to numerous weaknesses in this approach. It has been argued that the hothouse atmosphere and strongly intellectual orientation of theological colleges ill-prepares students for ministry.²²⁵ Graduates have degrees, and are expert at writing papers²²⁶ but have no idea of how to minister.²²⁷ Such criticism, while it obviously applies to some colleges, is an unfair indictment of others and may say more about the quality of students offering themselves for training than about the adequacy of the tuition.

      Despite this necessary rejoinder, however, it is true that the majority of mainstream theological colleges, however much attention they give to the practical tasks of ministry, offer programmes biased towards intellectual

achievement. It is for this reason that Ross Kinsler raises the question of whether academic achievement is relevant to ministry.²²⁸ He concludes that, while the training offered by theological colleges may adequately supply a few elite urban pulpits, it unfits those in training for ministry anywhere else, particularly in outlying rural areas.²²⁹ Arguing that its inappropriateness is most obvious in non-Western contexts,²³⁰ he contends that it has produced "a Western academic-professional system of clergy" that is static and "incapable of responding to the needs of the masses."²³¹

      Friere, who has argued that there is no neutral, a-political approach to Education,²³² has criticised traditional education for alienating students by imposing on them prefabricated information and because of its elitist character.²³³

      The difficulty faced by theological colleges, at least in the Western World, of adequately informing students and extending their ability to intellectually grapple with the faith, without alienating them or unfitting the majority for the rather humble, but extremely important, roles to which they will be called, is not easily solved.

      One way of approaching the problem would be to organize the educational process to accommodate levels of training and to concentrate at all levels on the spiritual maturation of those involved. Those at the centre of the theological enterprise would, thus, be intentionally concentrating, not so much on running trains as on providing transport.²³⁴

      Steven Mackie argued that

      " . . . if the whole people of God is to receive some sort of theological education, then the structure and institutions of theological education we have today must be changed beyond recognition."²³⁵

      This challenge was taken up with alacrity by the Theological Education by Extension Movement. Allying themselves with the deschoolers²³⁶ and liberation theologians,²³⁷ and, sobered by the poor record of traditional schooling in Latin America,²³⁸ TEE advocates argue that, as the church exists primarily at the local congregational level, it is there, in situ, that theological education should take place. They make the point that contact with local Church leaders will also cause theological educators to pay attention to those with experience at humbler levels of society.²³⁹

      A number of advantages are claimed for this approach.

      First, it is argued that, whereas few Church movements assimilate those most gifted for ministry,²⁴⁰ TEE works with men and women with proven character and ability.²⁴¹

      Furthermore, not one in ten of those working through TEE would ever have been able to study in a traditional residential seminary.²⁴² Prospective students do not need to meet any basic educational requirements, though they do need motivation to work and a reasonable intelligence.²⁴³

      A further advantage is that students are not separated from their cultures,²⁴⁴ or from what is happening around them.²⁴⁵ They also learn in

the environment of their work²⁴⁶ and from that work.²⁴⁷ Kinsler has argued that by placing academic and practical training In the normal context of life, students relate more naturally and effectively to human problems.²⁴⁸ Graduates also identify more with the common people.²⁴⁹

      Another advantage of TEE is that there is a close connection between theology and work.²⁵⁰ Theology becomes far less of a theoretical, esoteric exercise, and, as "water buffalo theology,"²⁵¹ much more related to the concepts and insights of ordinary people.

      TEE places a premium of facility, the capacity to deal with personal and group problems, rather than on knowledge,²⁵² and argues that, just as the village health worker who lives among the people is a more effective agent for health than the MD, so their graduates are more effective agents of the Church's missionary endeavour, at the local level, than is the consummate professional.²⁵³

      Within the TEE programme, teachers at the local level, as practicing ministers rather than research or classroom theologians,²⁵⁴ by virtue of being at the cliff-face themselves, maintain the focus on the mission of the Church.²⁵⁵ Within this paradigm, seminaries become resource centres rather than classroom institutions.²⁵⁶

      Much is also made of the fact that the cost of TEE programmes is considerably below that of traditional theological education. The Anglican experience in the UK suggests that TEE programmes reduce the cost of theological education by two-thirds.²⁵⁷

      It is further contended that the Extension Movement, which is facilitating a shift from hierarchies and institutions to a basic grassroots Church of the people,²⁵⁸ is allowing thousands of small congregations which could not afford the cost of a professional ministry, to survive and grow.²⁵⁹

      The success of TEE graduates has also been emphasized. The Quiche Presbytery, servicing American Indians, "has discovered that the congregations that have no trained, ordained, paid pastors are growing fastest."²⁶⁰

      Thomas Campbell, Dean of United Theological Seminary in Minneapolis and Theological Education Fund committee-member, argued in 1976 that Education by Extension is now clearly established as the most vigorous alternative form of preparation for ministry." He went on to suggest that "It nay soon outdistance residential patterns of training as the dominant form of training for the ministry."²⁶¹ Kinsler, in 1983, was even more enthusiastic, arguing that "the institutions and structures that have evolved in Europe and North America can no longer presume to hold the keys to theological understanding, prophetic insight, or spiritual vitality."²⁶²

      While TEE is meeting needs not addressed by traditional theological colleges, and while it is challenging theological education to recapture "the . . . missionary passion and missionary vision it should never have lost,"²⁶³ it is itself subject to certain criticisms.

      While it is true that institutions can be oppressive and are not easily changed, it is equally true that local churches, which are themselves small institutions, can be equally oppressive and resistant to change. It is also true that the nearer a leader is to the people he leads the more he experiences the pressure of their expectations and the more he is liable to conform to their thinking, their ways and their political manoeuvres. Confinement within a local situation can also lead to insularity and myopia, and offers little opportunity for dispassionate reflection.

      Furthermore, Kinsler's comment that "the extension movement challenges and humbles because it brings down the high altars of academic prestige, professional privilege, clerical status, and institutional presumption."²⁶⁴ is more the statement of a zealot than a dispassionate observer, and points to a type of inverse snobbery. Furthermore, as Emilio Castro pointed out, most articulate TEE advocates were "trained in traditional ways" and "profited by their time in seminaries in the West."²⁶⁵

      It may well be that the validity of a degree system may need to be questioned,²⁶⁶ but it also needs to be asked whether TEE graduates, as newly ordained pastors, "will assume the prerogatives and perquisites of other seminary graduates," which is an issue Kinsler himself raises.²⁶⁷ Given the human penchant for making comparisons, in the interest of self-esteem, one wonders whether the measure of pastoral excellence, in the absence of academic qualification and traditional clerical status, will be an evangelistic success. If this is so, then the criticism by TEE advocates of the traditional ministry, and of traditional theological education, can be seen to be somewhat self-serving and hollow, however accurate it may be.

      It is interesting to observe, in the American scene, and in areas to which they have exported their product, that the vocational degrees worked up by theological educators to cater for those wanting to do basic research into practical ministry issues, and who have only elementary theological training, result in the award of doctorates, Like the poor, competitiveness, and the desire to be considered competent or important, will always be with us, whether it be expressed in academic honours, social status or commercial success.

      With TEE now firmly established, its advocates no longer find it as necessary as previously to criticise established schemes in order to gain acceptance for their own. Some now acknowledge the dependence of TEE on traditional theological education, and emphasize the mutual dependence of each on the other.²⁶⁸ Not all theological educators of the traditional mould are happy to accommodate TEE, whose iconoclastic advocacy has not helped their cause in traditional theological circles. However, an increasing number recognize the need for middle-level training programmes and are being challenged to rethink their own approach.

      It was argued, earlier in this chapter, that the central purpose of theological education, end the unifying them of its curriculum, ought to be the spiritual development of students.

      This approach also addresses the tensions arising from the debate over the context of theological education. The tendency for traditional theological education to over-emphasize intellectual values and to prepare the way for the development of the sort of professionalism that is based, not on service, but on academic status, is countered by the rigorous attention given to the preparation of the spiritual personhood of students for ministry, The tendency towards insularity, myopia, a captivity to local world views and power elites and the temptation to pursue renown through evangelistic success, which are dangers faced by students who are part of the TEE programme, is also reduced by concentration on their spiritual development. Furthermore, when the focus is on spiritual development, the aims of both groups are no longer viewed as antitheses, but are seen rather to complement each other.

      The growing rapprochement between those involved in traditional theological education and the leadership of the TEE programme is partially a result of the fact that they both recognize they need each other. TEE programmes are reaching and training leaders, particularly lay leaders, who would not want to, or be in a position to attend residential institutions. On the other hand, without the theological expertise of traditional colleges, TEE programmes would lack an adequately trained senior leadership. It is interesting that, those students who are recruited and trained through TEE, and who go on to do graduate or post-graduate work in seminaries, are looked upon as the first fruits or Justification of the system.

      It was argued earlier that the mission of the Church is the responsibility of the whole people of God, who, by virtue of baptism, are ordained to service.

      It is further contended that to fulfil this service effectively all need some degree of theological competence, an ability to express and live out the faith in a context to which the faith can be related. When theological education is seen to centre on the spiritual maturation of participants, for their own growing and to prepare them for ministry, the argument that the whole people of God should be involved in theological education can hardly be gainsaid.

      It is the contention of this analysis that theological education is the spiritual birthright of all Christians, that it will enhance the mutual ministry of the people of God, and that it needs to be organized at a variety of levels to allow for general and specialist preparation.

      The traditional theological college will continue to have an important role as the centre of the Church's intellectual life.

      It will monitor, and, at times, contribute to new theological formulations. This seminal role, which will also involve research, experimentation and a deliberate attentiveness to grass roots intuitions, will he a shared ecumenical enterprise.

      Theological colleges will also be responsible for training future faculty for their own and sister institutions and for providing leaders for middle-level theological enterprises. Leadership training will need to focus on the formational goal, though without thereby despoiling the integrity of the separate disciplines that make up the curriculum and in which future faculty will need to own a competence.

      It will also be the responsibility of theological colleges to encourage the theological education of the laity, and of faculty to make themselves available to assist in congregational programmes designed for this purpose. While it is recognized that this is an additional demand on already burdened faculty, and the latter will need to determine the degree of their involvement, the benefits of working at the cliff-face, even though very briefly, will keep then alive to the realities of local pastoral ministry and will enhance their understanding and teaching.

      Middle-level theological education,--the levels being a measure of academic stringency and not of importance,--will be concerned with training proven leadership, whether for full or part-time ministry, within the context of the local congregation. Such training, on the TEE pattern, will involve academic input, perhaps at a district level, and a short period of residency each year at one of the traditional theological colleges. It is also possible, working on the Open University model, to incorporate a bona fide degree programme as part of the offering, However, because of the fact that the training Is principally

vocational, a longer period of residence than is required by the external studies departments of universities would be recommended.

      The development of a middle-level, or alternative, training programme raises the question of denominational accreditation of full-time ministry personnel. However, granted the adequacy of middle-level programmes, there seems no practical reason, and considerable ideational disincentive, to grade ministers according to the level of their training. Their effectiveness, which it is granted is not easily measured, will indicate to churches looking for ministers, and to denominational boards placing ministers, the appropriateness of placing specific individuals in particular situations.

      The theological education of the membership of local congregations is the immediate responsibility of local ministers and its quality will be measured by the level of their spiritual maturation. This, in turn, will, at least partially, reflect the adequacy of their training.

      It should also be possible for laypersons to take advantages of programmes offered by theological colleges and middle-level training programmes, depending on interest and ability. As already suggested, faculty involved at both levels should make themselves available, given stringent time constraints, to local congregations. Besides the mutual enrichment that would ensue, a further benefit accruing would be that people at the local level would come to discover that those whose vocations are in the academic world are ordinary people, and that their imagined aloofness is mostly shyness!

      In order to ensure that the theological education offered at each of these levels was balanced, obvious biases would need to be countered. Residential colleges would need to guarantee an adequate vocational orientation to their overall programme. Middle level training programmes would need to ensure that there was sufficient academic rigour to their offerings to make them credible. Theological education at the local level would need to be intentional.

      Maintaining a deliberate focus on spiritual maturation at each of these levels would go a long way towards achieving this balance. The process would also be assisted by cross-fertilization. This could be achieved by requiring that the governing bodies of theological colleges and middle level training programmes reserved several positions for representatives of the other body, by the transfer of lecturers, perhaps one at a time and for a period, from one body to the other, by requiring middle-level programme lecturers to spend periods of time, at intervals, on further study at theological colleges, and by making it mandatory for lecturers at residential colleges, after, say, seven years service, to spend six months to a year, ministering to a local congregation. The latter may require a rotating leadership, a practice already established in many Catholic seminaries and university departments. It would also require collegial decision-making to ensure continuity.

      While the role of theological educators is to prepare students for ministry, rather than to be responsible for them after they have graduated, which seems to lay more in the province of denominational administrators, they do have some responsibility for their continuing development. It is also true that relationships have been built up that will continue beyond graduation. The pastoral concern of faculty, unless it is a purely professional interest, does not cease with the student's ordination. If anything, it increases. Faculty continue to be concerned with the student's personal and vocational development.

      The contribution of theological educators to graduates can take many forms, involving preparation for entry into ministry, regular support and evaluation and the opportunity for continuing education.

      It is part of the responsibility of theological colleges to prepare students to return to congregational life as local ministers. This is made easier if colleges have organised supervised pastoral education for their students, particularly during the latter years of their training. It is also important, where there has been any degree of deculturization, or where the student has worked his or her way through ascending stages of faith, to help them grapple with the problem of relating to local memberships with which they may now experience a slight cultural dissonance. Hopefully, the college has also included spouses in its caring and offered them the opportunity to attend courses and share the new discoveries that grow, and therefore change, their partners. The college will also need to pick up aspects of pastoral ministry that may not have been treated during the student's training.

      The college should be part of, if not the organizer of, an ongoing support system that encourages self-evaluation. Aside from personal contact, initiated on the basis of relational ties, ongoing pastoral contact between the college and its recent graduates, can assist transition of the latter from college to pastoral ministry and help them more effectively relate their training, and their spirituality, to the exigencies of local ministry. The possibility of bringing together year groups, after one, three, five and ten years, to share experiences, discuss difficulties and mutually encourage each other, with some low-key input from faculty is also worthwhile canvassing.²⁶⁹

      To maximize the benefit of the student's initial theological education, it is important that their learning continue.²⁷⁰ While learning can result from reflection on one's ministry, resulting in personal and professional growth and grassroots theological reflection, commitment to a programme of continuing education, selected by the individual, and that will extend them is also imperative. It is at this point that theological educators, associated with residential institutions or middle level programmes, can assist by either offering established courses or responding to the demand for new courses relevant to those requesting them.

      Denominational leaders are being made increasingly aware, by ministers, of the latter's need for someone to pastor them. The ongoing pastoring of graduates by theological educators goes some way towards meeting this need, though the provision of a pastor-pastorum is not directly the responsibility of colleges.

      The role of the pastor-pastorum is somewhat ambiguous, and obviously depends upon the need of particular ministers. The assistance offered will usually be either consistent preventative caring or help with urgent issues and could relate to practical, emotional or vocational concerns.

      A critical aspect of the role of the pastor pastorum would be spiritual direction. Where the pastor pastorum was able to offer spiritual direction, adequate to the minister concerned, they could fulfil this ministry. The pastor pastorum, however, would need to work out whether he or she could effectively carry out this role alongside other roles, such as listening to grievances, offering personal nurture, counselling or negotiating with church leaders at the local or denominational level, or whether it would be better to split it off and hand it over to another whose sole speciality it was.

      Where students discovered helpful spiritual directors, in the course of their training, relationships with these directors could carry over beyond graduation. Where there was an intention, on the part of the minister, to root his or her ministry in the depths of their own spirituality, in the God who was discovered in and was nurturing those depths, it would be important to continue the relationship or to form another similar relationship.

      It has been the argument of this essay that the central purpose of theological education is the spiritual development of theological students. It has been further contended that this maturational aim, rather than the recovery of theologia, as asserted by Farley, will effectively unify the diverse elements of the theological curriculum. It has been explained that what is envisaged is not intended to destroy the integrity of established disciplines, though it will relate sub-specialities to the essence of Christian faith and ministry. It has been further argued that theological education involves the whole people of God and needs to be structured to provide for different levels of understanding and diverse styles of vocational commitment. The whole approach has been premised on the assumption that the degree to which ministry is effective depends upon the spiritual maturity of the ministering person.