Dr. David Lose weighs in on the future of seminaries, and theological education, with this provocative statement:
I’d argue the single most significant cause of decline is far simpler: most seminaries are training leaders for a church and world that no longer exists.
Lose references Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk’s book, The Missional Leader, and the three zones that organizations and their leaders dwell in: the emergent, the performative and the reactive.
Ironically, it is our well-founded confidence in what we know that makes it difficult to recognize and accept what we don’t know; namely, what practices will be most effective in a changed and changing world.
He calls seminaries to reconsider what we thought we knew and admit “what we don’t know” so that they can learn from faithful Christians of all types — from missional and emergent church developers to educators and business leaders.
These leaders are “eager both to share what they are learning about our changing context and to enter into conversation about how new practices and insights interact with historic ones.”
What new practices/insights do you think seminaries should be talking about?
