So what are the goals of theological education?

At the recent ATA Seminar for Academic Deans in May 2006 at the YMCA, Dr Paul Mohan Raj presented a paper entitled “Integrated approach to curriculum: Incorporating ATA distinctives.”

While the focus of the paper was on the need to have an integrated approach to theological education, Dr Mohan Raj spoke and wrote about three areas of formation which comprise ATA distinctives: Academic formation, ministerial formation and personal formation.

Each is important, curriculum at all levels must cover all these areas, and the three areas of formation are promoted through assessment (academic), mentoring (personal) and internship (ministerial).

In some senses, the categories used by ATA reflect the traditional major areas of development and growth that is common to educational institutions

Several years ago, Dr Allan Harkness, Dean of Asia Graduate School of Theology, the graduate arm of ATA published a paper entitled “De-schooling the theological seminary: An appropriate paradigm for effective ministerial formation.”

Allan wrote:

Seminary education is graduate level education that makes contributions to church leadership development by promoting “an appropriate blend of qualities which enable leaders to minister effectively.” These qualities include “the cognitive acquisition of appropriate knowledge, competence in required ministerial skills, and personal character development” (Harkness 2001, 142).

Harkness, Allan G. 2001. De-schooling the theological seminary: An appropriate paradigm for effective ministerial formation. Teaching Theology and Religion 4, no. 3: 108-116.

Actually, to be frank, I do not think that this way of categorizing the areas of formation we need to give attention to is particularly unique nor imaginative

I remember a faculty meeting years ago in the mid- 90s where our dean did an exercise to explore the spiralling development of KSA components, the training of head, hands, heart dimensions of our training.


Then in one of my TEDS PhD classes on organizational development, an American colleague teaching at Beeson Divinity School produced this diagram for theological education.


When I was in Hungary for the European Leadership Forum in 2003, the president of a Ukrainian seminary shared excitedly with our group his understanding of the areas of development he envisioned for his students. I guess he was real excited, but I was getting a little bored because I keep hearing the same things being said about the goals of theological education every where I go: Intellectual formation, personal formation, ministerial formation!


(To be continued...)