Treading the Academic Maze

I have recently been treading the academic maze in a new and different way, and have found myself turned around and upside down by the complexities. What started me on this journey? The Church of the Nazarene has a denominational requirement for all ordained ministers to take two CEU’s (Continuing Education Units) each year. Since this was relatively recently introduced even District leadership doesn’t fully understand the process. The idea is good, of course; we as professionals need to keep our minds sharp and abreast of the latest developments in our field. So far, so good.

First, knowing the burden this places on the minister in terms of time and money, Nazarene Bible College offers courses through their Institute for Ministry Enrichment at $35 a course, plus the cost of any texts. These are totally online and are only four weeks long. They count as one CEU, so taking two courses a year is a realistic goal. They do not count as college credit, however.

Next, the Districts themselves can ask for specific events to count for CEU credit. So, for instance, a Saturday seminar on prayer or evangelism can count. Depending on the ‘seat time’, or amount of time actually spent in instruction, the seminar may only accrue a fraction of a CEU. As a result, you may have to attend many seminars to get your two CEU’s. The lowest I have personally seen is a seminar that had ‘.1’ CEU…that’s right, one-tenth of a credit! The catch to this is that the District must have the event approved before it runs in order for it to garner any credit.

Finally, an individual can request credit for either an event they are attending (say, a seminar on puppet ministry put on by a third party) or a book they are reading. The proper forms must be submitted to the District CEU coordinator, who then may request a written report on the event or training. As long as the book or training has application to the ministry the credit should be granted, with consideration given to time and effort spent on the training. In other words, the coordinator determines how much CEU credit the training is worth. Recently our church staff and lay leaders were required by our insurance company to go through training for “Sexual Abuse Prevention”, which encompassed a set of DVD’s, a textbook and workbooks. We requested credit for that training, as it was long enough to be valuable in CEU terms, and directly applicable to our ministry.

Now is when it gets interesting. See, I have an aversion to taking random courses, no matter how good they may be, earning no college credit and having no possibility of a degree/diploma/certificate being awarded. So since I already have a bachelor’s degree, my thoughts turned to graduate school and earning a Master’s degree. I also reasoned that this will allow me to contribute to my District because I will be able to teach our next generation of ministers. I love teaching, so that would come easily.

I looked first at Nazarene Theological Seminary, our flagship school. They have an ‘in-service’ program for ministers who don’t want to move to Kansas City. I found that the degree is costly, but not only that, it has a residency requirement. You spend 2 weeks twice a year at the least (4 weeks total) in on-campus intensive courses to fulfill this requirement. Why is this so? Because they are accredited through the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). ATS accreditation states that you MUST earn a significant percentage of your credits in a classroom…even if the rest of the credits are online. What this means in a practical sense is that the NTS ‘in-service’ program is only available to pastors who are in fully-funded pastorates. Any bivocational pastor is going to have a tough sell to their secular employer as to why they should have four weeks off a year! NTS told me that they have a large grant to try and rectify this situation, but the reality is that as long as ATS accreditation is part and parcel of the equation, there will be no help forthcoming from NTS.

So, what about other schools? It turns out that most major seminaries are accredited by ATS. If they have an online program it likely has on-campus requirements of some kind. There are Nazarene institutions which do have fully online programs; Northwest Nazarene University is a case in point. They have a fully-online program with several Master’s degrees, including an MDiv.. They are, of course, not ATS accredited, but are regionally accredited through the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. Taking this program means among other things that an ATS accredited school may or may not take that coursework in transfer or when working for another higher degree. The only schools pretty much guaranteed to take them are other Nazarene institutions. The cost at NNU is still high, but at least it seemed a possibility.

So, what about non-ATS accredited schools? I found several likely looking schools who were affordable, but did not have a residency requirement. Many of them are affiliates of ABHE (Association of Biblical Higher Education). Several of them use the same curriculum as some of the larger seminaries such as Nyack College in New Jersey. They are definitely not fly-by-night degree mills. Inquiry at our local training facility (Reynolds Institute) indicated that all of our instructors are certified through Nazarene Bible College. A quick call there discovered that in order to be an instructor you must have a degree from an ABHE full member school. Affiliation with ABHE was not enough, despite the solid curriculum.

So I started leaning toward the program at NNU for an MA in Missional Leadership. In talking with people on our District, the consensus was this degree was useless. "No one would be allowed to teach a Bible course based on this degree". "Only an MDiv was worth getting", so the argument went! Who in their right mind would get an MDiv at the cost of $30-40,000 in a position that is essentially unpaid, or even at the typically low salary of a pastor?

This begs the question, why do it (take a degree from an ATS accredited school or an ABHE member school)? Will it further your ministry ‘career’? Will it result in higher pay or more opportunities? Is the goal more knowledge and experience so you can minister to your congregation better, taking them to new heights? Is it for peer recognition? You can take courses and get a degree from one of the ABHE-affiliated-but-not-member schools and fulfill your denominational requirement. It’s cheaper and available in a delivery format that is more amenable to bivocational ministry. You just won’t be able to teach in the local training center. And when was the last time someone asked you about the accreditation of the school you attended outside of an academic setting?

The sad thing about this is that I really do want to help our District train new people; otherwise I have no aspirations to anything other than ministry in the local church here in Vermont. But the means to help the District (especially in our somewhat isolated corner) has been placed out of my reach. So I will have to settle for second-best until our denominational schools get their act together in a fashion that reflects the real-world circumstances of the bivocational minister.

Probably not anytime soon.

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