Educational Return on Investment

I have been considering over the last several years the value of education, and what might be termed the 'return on investment' it might provide. I read an article yesterday that dealt with the overwhelming cost of obtaining a law degree and the crippling effect it has on graduates. I can see this in my own daughter; she just completed a year in law school and I know what debt she carries. The article made the point that in most cases the debt is likely to take many years to get rid of, if at all. There is an overabundance of lawyers and the field is shrinking.

Then there are the theology majors. The so-called 'entry-level' degree is a Masters of Divinity. A traditional MDiv will take 3 years of full-time study and cost anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000. The typical graduate will join a field of graduates all vying for pastoral positions which pay in the vicinity of $25,000 in salary (other benefits MAY be included, but no guarantee). As a matter of fact, the average church in the United States has 75 people and the pastor is likely to be bi-vocational. Return on investment? I would say that there is very little.

This raises a question in my mind. If the return of investment is so low, why do it? Especially for a minister who is already ordained, what's the point? There are only a couple reasons to pursue an advanced degree in ministry. One is to advance your skills or keep your skills sharp. Another is for the 'prestige' of an advanced degree. A third reason would be to allow the recipient to teach in a more formal setting (at a District educational center, for instance). A fourth reason, at least in our denomination, is that there is a requirement for ordained elders to participate in continuing education.

A better option might be to take advantage of free or low-cost educational opportunities according to a plan of education you draw up yourself. There are free courses available online from places like Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Covenant Theological Seminary. Low cost courses are available from Nazarene Bible College and others. Why not look at a Master's level program from a legitimate school and see if you can duplicate it, or come close to it, by using these kinds of resources? If you honestly pursue the plan and meet your goals, at the end you could even print yourself a certificate and hang it on your wall.

The typical response by many in our field is that this is simply not the same as earning an advanced degree from an accredited institution. Yet, if it brings the knowledge and skills that you need, who cares? Abraham Lincoln did not seem to find his self-education in law a problem either when practicing law or as a politician. Maybe we are becoming too caught up in the formalities to recognize what the end goal should be...ministry.

The Beginning from the End

I was reading a book on chess and came across a very interesting statement. The discussion was about ‘forking’, that is, attacking two pieces with a single piece. Such an attack means that one or the other of the attacked pieces can be saved and the other is captured. He stated, “In cases like this one you might compare a chess player to the author of a whodunit who starts his work by figuring out the solution which will come at the end of his book…the Knight’s forking check is the ‘solution’. Black’s task, once he sees this check is to search for the moves that make the check meaningful.” 1

It occurred to me that this same process is applicable to us in the church. First, it is a clear way to structure our spiritual life. What is our goal in our spiritual life? Every Christian should strive to become more Christlike disciples, to be closer to God. You know where you want to go, and where you are now, so how is that reasonably accomplished? Daily Bible reading and prayer, finding an accountability partner, finding and using your spiritual gifts are all excellent paths to this goal.

Secondly, we can apply this to other areas of our lives. If you want to achieve certain things in your life, then what do you need to do to get there? For instance, if you want to write a fiction novel, you need to sit down and start writing. If you want to get a Doctorate, then you need to work on your Master's degree. If you want to be a motorcycle mechanic, then you need to buy a 'beater' and enroll in a course or buy some books.

Finally, in the collective church we have goals as well. The high-falutin’ church language calls this “casting a vision” and there are entire seminars and college classes about it, but it’s really simple. The first question should be, “What is our vision for this church?” Where do we want to end up? What do we see this church being or doing in five years, or ten years? So many times we go along with no goal, and then wonder why we don’t seem to get anywhere. There’s an old story about a flight of military planes flying through overcast skies just after World War 2. Their navigational instruments were out when the controller radioed them and asked where they were. The pilot in the lead plane answered, “Well, I really don’t know, but we’re making good time!”.

If we want to be known as a “Praying Church”, do we have prayer meetings and activities? If we want to be known as “Friendly”, how do we support that goal? If we want to be known as the church that has its hands in the local community, how are we striving to get there?

Don't just dream about it and think God is going to drop things in your lap. Make a conscious choice to pray about where God wants you to go and what He wants you to do, then follow Him!




1 “How to be a winner at chess” by Fred Reinfeld: Fawcett, c1954, p65

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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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Where exactly IS Vermont?

My daughter related a conversation to me that took place at her school in Illinois. Apparently the question was the standard icebreaker, “Tell us something about yourself and where you come from”. After relating some details of her life one of her classmates asked her, “So, what state is Vermont in?” The question absolutely flabbergasted her, and even more so when she realized that there was more than one person who didn’t know that Vermont IS a state! Now, this was in a University with a wonderful liberal arts program, but I have to wonder about our High Schools who send kids on to college who don’t know at least that small detail. It makes me wonder what else they don’t know.


If you are reading this and feeling a little embarrassed because YOU don’t know where Vermont is, let me tell you. Vermont is located in New England, north of Massachusetts, and sandwiched between New Hampshire and New York. The northern border is the Canadian province of Quebec; the largest city Burlington is only a 2-hour drive from Montreal.



The name 'Vermont' comes from the French and means “Green Mountain”. Appropriately enough Vermont is known as the “Green Mountain State” and is home to the “Green Mountain National Forest”. The state capital is Montpelier. It is still the only state capital without a McDonalds, and at least until recently was about the only place where anyone could walk directly into the Capital building without going through a metal detector and a search. This despite the fact that Vermont has no (zero, nada, zip, zilch…) state gun laws. Concealed carry without a permit is a right of every adult citizen within the limits of federal law. You don’t often hear about firearms being used to commit crimes, at least not nearly at the levels of neighboring states. After all, try to mug that little old lady and you might find she’s carrying a .357 Magnum !

Vermont is an independently-minded state. We are one of only two states in the continental US which were previously fully sovereign countries prior to statehood, the other one being Texas. That said, it is a conflicted state…extremely liberal on the one hand (first state to legalize same-sex civil-unions and the only state to have a Socialist elected to Washington) and extremely conservative on the other hand (Second Amendment rights are taken very seriously). A destination in the 1970’s for back-to-nature hippies, it is now a destination for techies and yuppies trying to escape the rat race of the city. Vermont has a large agricultural tradition which the aforementioned back-to-nature people enhanced. One of the legacies handed down is a law against billboards on Highway right-of-ways (one of only four states in the nation to do so), which makes a drive through Vermont a scenic delight.


Vermont still has only about 600,000 people…compared to the city I lived in down in Massachusetts which had 125,000 all by itself! The largest city in Vermont is Burlington, which has a population in the city proper of only some 38,000. Demographics indicate that the state is 98% Caucasian making it the second whitest state in the US (behind Wyoming).

So yes, Virginia, Vermont IS a state! And I maintain that it is a state with not only some unique attributes, but is one of the most beautiful states you are likely to see. Come visit and bring your camera. You won’t be disappointed!