Robert Hunt – Response to Philip Wingeier-Rayo: Implications of Online Education for the Future of the Church, Part II

Today’s post is by Dr. Robert A. Hunt. Rev. Dr. Hunt is Director of Global Theological Education and Professor of Christian Missions and interreligious Relations This post responds to an earlier series of posts by Rev. Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo, which can be found here: [1], [2], and [3].

In my last post, I suggested that the move to online-only M.Div. degrees is another sign that theological education across-the-board must be completely rethought in a radical way. Only by so doing can we respond to the fundamental changes in the self-understanding of contemporary people and thereby hope to present a comprehensible gospel to the contemporary world.

There are ways that theological education can address some of these challenges, and they go hand in hand with the new possibilities for online learning.

First, we must recognize that while a set-apart community life is an important phase in preparation for ministry, it is not necessarily its heart. Instead of assuming that putting students in proximity with one another will manufacture community life, we need to build intentionally constructed retreat-like experiences combining learning, worship, and spiritual formation as part of the theological education experience. There are multiple possible models for this, and any and all will need to be operative depending on specific needs and circumstances.

Moreover, we must take seriously the possibilities for real, virtual communities, many of which already exist. This isn’t simply a matter of capturing the imaginations of Millennials and Gen Z. One of my differently abled students pointed out to me that the best-intentioned disability access programs are still burdensome compared to entering a virtual world in which he and his friends can meet without navigating any physical restraints. For many “virtual” worlds are at least in part better and more fulfilling than “real” worlds, assuming that this distinction is even valid.

Second, given the unsettled state of our churches and church institutions, it is unfair to ask students to commit to a degree program as their initial engagement with a theology school. We’ll need to accept and move toward what are commonly called “stackable” credentials based on focused training in particular skills or realms of inquiry that persons already in ministry need to master. These could then be built up to credit for a full semester course and so-on to a degree. And we need to accept that many competent pastors will not need to complete a degree to begin and carry on good ministry.

Third, we’ll need to recognize that online pedagogy is completely different from classroom pedagogy, but it does match much of what has been accepted in higher education for the last 15 years or more. The “sage on the stage” isn’t dead, but for the most part needs to be replaced by the “guide on the side,” a model suited to online and hybrid education. And after all, I had incredible sages in seminary at Perkins who were no more available to me emotionally and spiritually than if I’d been watching a video of the lecture. People of my generation reveled in the sage on a stage. That simply isn’t true of millennials and Gen Z.

Fourth, this means that credentialing for teaching needs to be seriously reconsidered. American PhD programs are designed to reproduce 20th century scholars, researchers, and authors of monographs, not necessarily teachers and leaders. The church needs professional theologians, but seminaries also need teachers and guides.

Fifth, we must master the emerging digital media as means of communication and interaction.

One of the things most difficult to accept, but absolutely necessary to understand in a rapidly changing multi-cultural context, is that there is no universal standard for either ordering information so that it constitutes understanding and knowledge or conveying that understanding in a comprehensible way. We must become open to the fact that a standard academic essay is only one of many possible models of thinking rationally from question to answer, and thus only one of many possible models of conveying understanding achieved to others. We are training pastors to engage the world with the gospel, not to become members of the academic guild. They must speak the languages of the people to whom they minister.

Sixth, and following from the above, theological educators must create curricula and course content relevant to a rapidly changing social and cultural situation. Precisely because the socio-cultural situation is rapidly changing, there is no fixed model for theological education that won’t soon be out of date. Instead, theology schools will need to create models for learning that have clear goals but are internally flexible -- with the capability of changing on a semester by semester, or at most year by year, basis. There will be no comfortable place where we have mastered our field of study and the ways in which to communicate our knowledge to students.

Similarly, pastors and church leaders cannot be trained just to become competent spiritual guides and denominational functionaries. United Methodist theological education in the 20th century assumed a stable organization within which changing theological expressions would address a changing society. That stability is gone. Now, pastors and church leaders will need to be prepared to foster creativity and manage change within congregations. Critical theological reflection will need to be supplemented by teaching more practical forms of leadership.

Finally, balancing this focus on teaching with the need for faculty to pursue longer term research projects will require new ways of thinking about how research requiring commitment over years fits with the need for constantly changing subject matter in courses. A tenure system that rewards only monographs that take years to write will exclude the necessary faculty who are willing and even desire to engage the edges of change in a field or many fields. Dilettantes and non-credentialed experts have an important role in theological education and shouldn’t be pushed into second tier positions.

There is a church in County Durham in England called the old Saxon church. It has stood for 1250 years. It was built from stones taken from Hadrian’s Wall, which was no longer relevant to the defense of England. Stones intended for one purpose were used for another.

Modern theological educators must look at the stones we have, look at the challenges we face, and begin to both tear down and rebuild. It will not be easy. The old barbarians remain a danger. And yet our defenses against them convey no gospel, no good news to rising generations.

Suggested Readings: Raymond Martin, John Barrisi, The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self; Charles Taylor, A Secular Age; Calvin Schrag, The Self in Post-Modernity; Jeffry Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse; Meghan O’Gieblyn, God, Human, Animal, Machine; Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head.

Robert Hunt – Response to Philip Wingeier-Rayo: Implications of Online Education for the Future of the Church, Part I

Today’s post is by Dr. Robert A. Hunt. Rev. Dr. Hunt is Director of Global Theological Education and Professor of Christian Missions and interreligious Relations. This post responds to an earlier series of posts by Rev. Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo, which can be found here: [1], [2], and [3].

In his recent posts, Phil Wingeier-Rayo has brought our attention to the United Methodist University Senate’s recent decision to allow fully online M.Div. degrees for United Methodist ministry candidates. Phil asks what the implications of this decision will be for students, the denomination, and seminaries and suggests a hybrid model as an alternative to a fully online degree.

In my comments about online teaching and the future of theological education, I will essentially make two points.

The first is that modern hybrid theological education actually goes way back to the 1960s and 70s. There are well formed pedagogical models for bringing students together over a period of one or two weeks, and then interacting with them remotely over the rest of the semester. This is classic theological education by extension (TEE). It was pioneered by Pentecostals in the Netherlands, conservative Christians from Texas and California, and others extending theological education to underserved areas.

I was the Director of such theological educational programs in both Malaysia and Singapore. The key feature of these programs was that they focus on forming proven leaders rather than young people who thought they might potentially be leaders. The TEE model allows men and women already in ministry to gain the education and professional skills they need to lead more effectively. Allowing fully online degrees simply makes it possible to do in the United States what has already been well done for many decades in some places.

The second and more radical point is that higher education across-the-board must be rethought. The idea that degrees are necessary to the preparation of persons or ministry must be abandoned. The Master of Divinity degree is declining because it is seen as irrelevant. It is irrelevant to The United Methodist Church, and it is irrelevant to people who are seeking to serve Jesus Christ. Indeed, the very concept of academic credentials needs to be rethought, as it is being rethought across many fields and industries.

Further, in rapidly changing times every possible question that can be asked must be asked. Do pastors actually need to be theologians? Why is critical thinking important for ministry? Why teach people to think theologically, and then demand that they pass tests for doctrinal correctness?

Are pastors entrepreneurial leaders and potential missionaries, or are they functionaries with defined tasks in relation to the congregation and its maintenance? Are the contemporary fields of study in a theological school actually relevant to contemporary Christian ministry? Are PhD programs in theology relevant to creating teachers for men and women entering Christian ministry?

Is it not possible that the entire system linking preparation of pastors to institutions of higher education is no longer useful or relevant? Is it not possible that we should be taking the resources that we have and deploying them in completely new and different ways to serve the church?

Ultimately, I would suggest that Philip is not radical enough. Contemporary theological education is based on an enlightenment understanding of both religion and the human person. We are in the midst of a sea change in which those understandings are being swept away, and along with them, the institutions that served their intellectual and spiritual needs.

We are moving into an era in which changes in the self-understanding of contemporary people will rival and surpass those changes created by the Enlightenment and modernity. These factors at the least are changing human self-understanding. 1. The rise of AI and, related to it, changes in psychology and neurobiology. 2. Advances in medical science, particularly related to the manipulation of genes and the mechanization of the body. 3. Cultural shifts with regard to sexuality. 4. Emergent understandings of the human biome in relation to the biosphere under the influence of evolving evolutionary theory. 5. Multi-cultural and multi-ethnic environments as the norm for human experience. 6. Changing ways in which contemporary people construct their human identity.

These factors are rapidly making Enlightenment era models of human personhood obsolete. As a result, articulations of the meaning of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ for 21st century persons must inevitably change to address them as they are.

In this situation, all past theological work, from the apostolic witness in the New Testament to the theologians of the 20th century, is better understood as normative examples of the process of faithful contextualization rather than as generators of normative doctrines. And that alone tells us that all Enlightenment era constructions of theological school curriculum and even individual courses need to be reworked.

As importantly, the church must learn to speak the contemporary vernacular, a vernacular that is either missing or transforms the theological language of 20^th century Christianity. And it is the task of theological educators to prepare pastors to learn that vernacular, which means first that theological educators themselves learn it, something that many if not most appear reluctant to do.

In my next post, I will suggest some of the ways in which theological schools and theological educators can engage in that very task.

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: Implications of Online Education for the Future of the Church, Part 3

Today's piece is the second in a three-part series by Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Professor of Missiology, World Christianity and Methodist Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Part Three: The Impact of a Fully Online MDiv for Theological Schools

On February 9, 2023, the University Senate of the UMC announced that they have approved a fully online MDiv degree to meet the educational criteria for ordination orders. https://www.gbhem.org/news/university-senate-approves-policy-change-to-offer-fully-online-master-of-divinity-degree/ This is a monumental change from the previous policy that required at least one-third of the degree to be completed in-person.

This is the final part of a 3-part blog on the implications of this policy change. The first part explored implications for students and future pastors, part 2 examined the impact for the UMC, and this final segment analyzes what this change will mean for theological schools and propose a mediated alternative between the two extremes of the costly traditional residential model and 100% online delivery.

Theological education, just as all of higher education, has been in crisis in recent years due to rising costs and a decline in enrollment. For decades, the MDiv has been the bread and butter for seminaries, and this has meant a consistent tuition revenue, but fewer students are enrolling in the MDiv. According to a 2018 report by Chris Meinzer using data from 240 member institutions of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), enrollment in MDiv programs declined from 43% to 40% of total students, while enrollment in academic MA degrees increased from 12% to 17% of degree-seeking  students.  While 40% is still the largest of the seminary programs, it is significant that less than half of students are preparing for parish ministry. This trend has accelerated since 2018.

Historically, the UMC has subsidized the 13 official United Methodist seminaries through the Ministerial Education Fund (MEF). A formula divides the designated funds based partially on the number of United Methodist ordination candidates who graduate from a seminary. The number of seminarians pursuing ordination has declined, and so the school won’t be credited for these students.

Many students are instead enrolled in other degree programs, such as the Master of Theological Studies (MTS) or the Master in the Arts in Theology (MA) and feel led to work in non-for-profits, chaplaincy or some para-ecclesial ministry. MA in Religion programs require fewer credit hours and can be completed in two years, as opposed to three to five years for the MDiv. As a result, seminaries will be hit by a double-whammy of both a lower MEF allotment and also less tuition revenue. Seminaries are feeling this economic pressure.

Many schools also receive revenue through room and board in their residential facilities. The University Senate’s decision will likely lead to less demand for physical facilities for seminaries as future students will not reside on campus, eat in the dining hall, sit in class, or do research in a brick-and-mortar library.

These added financial pressures will accelerate the trend of seminaries merging, embedding in larger universities, and closing campuses. For example, in the last two years Lancaster and Moravian Seminaries in Pennsylvania combined, General Theological Seminary in New York came under the umbrella of Virginia Theological Seminary, and Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary became embedded in Lenoir Rhyne University. In March of this year, Claremont School of Theology announced that they will relocate from their historic campus in Claremont to Westwood UMC in Los Angeles. Saint Paul School of Theology was ahead of the curve when it sold its historic campus in 2012 to have a smaller physical footprint renting space from the Church of the Resurrection and a second campus at Oklahoma City University.

With fewer residential students and more distance learners, aging campuses that require maintenance become more of a burden than an asset. This, of course, will depend upon the enrollment, budget, and ethos of each school. However, this announcement from University Senate will impact all the schools, as they will need to take into account the increased competition, as ministry candidates do a cost-benefit analysis and weigh their options.

In light of the University Senate’s announcement, the decline in MDiv enrollment, the cost of maintaining a physical plant, and the challenges with online pedagogy, I would like to propose a via media—a middle way. I propose a path the has the best of residential pedagogy and the accessibility and cost-effectiveness of online education.

Contextualized theological education is not new to ministerial training. Even before the latest technological advances, Methodism has a long tradition of training pastors by extension. John Wesley created the Christian Library, an anthology of classical theological writings that he deemed essential for new preachers to read. Aspiring circuit riders on the American frontier were assigned reading, and they were partnered with experienced pastors, called “yokefellows,” for apprenticeship.

Eventually, a more formalized 4-year reading list was published by the Methodist Book Concern, which led to the Course of Study for local pastors. As transportation improved, the Course of Study moved from correspondence courses to a residential model. Even still, this training method was contextual because pastors were under appointment and their courses only required 2-4 weeks of residence each year—usually in the summer.

Institutions of higher learning, particularly Ivy League schools on the East Coast, were the forerunners in professional theological education. Yale University, for example, graduated its first Bachelor of Theology (BT) class in 1869. The emergence of graduate theological education and the MDiv as the gold standard for ministerial training didn’t become common place until the mid-1950s. Yale changed its BT to an MDiv in 1971.

So, the University Senate decision to allow a fully online MDiv degree for ministerial candidates is not entirely new or without precedence, and, in fact, is actually closer to the early training model for American Methodism.

Contextual theological education has several advantages. I have taught in the Course of Study for 25 years, and local pastors bring their pastoral experience into the classroom. They engage course readings with a pastoral lens as to what is useful and what is hyperbole. They practice the advice of Paul, who wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “test everything; hold fast to what is good.”

In other words, local pastors want a practical theological education they can use in their ministry settings. One student under appointment reported: “Since I was a student pastor, therefore it was an excellent experience because I was applying the knowledge as the seminary shaped my theological and ministry understanding.” I’ve received reports from Course of Study students who study a concept during the week and then preach on it on Sunday.

This is very different from young MDiv students who are straight out of college often studying theory to be applied later in their field education site or their first appointment. Thus, online-only degrees will push seminaries to reevaluate their pedagogy.

On the flipside, as discussed in Parts I and II of this blog, students who remain in their home contexts and aren’t exposed to a wide variety of experiences in residential theological education often complete seminary without major changes in their worldview or theological perspectives. This also creates pedagogical challenges.

I propose a hybrid pathway where students are allowed to remain in their communities and maintain their current family and work commitments and travel to the seminary campus for intensive face-to-face immersions with their professors and their classmates. These intensive immersion classes can be week-long or for just a weekend.

This model retains the best of both extremes while still creating spaces to embrace diversity, to sit in class, in chapel, or across the table from someone from a different life experience than one’s own. It will force students to get out from behind a computer screen and open the door for deeper relationships and cognitive dissonance. Students will build community, and this will improve morale and retention. Students who are more connected with their professors and classmates in a cohort model are more likely to complete the degree.

A hybrid delivery method also justifies the use of seminary residential and dining facilities. Students can rent a room and eat meals in the dining hall, giving the schools some additional revenue.

This model isn’t completely new, as it has a great deal of similarity to the summer Course of Study, where students serve as local pastors throughout the year and travel to a seminary campus for 2-4 weeks every summer. This hybrid pathway will create a cohort where ministerial candidates can build community as they journey through the MDiv program together, seeing their classmates for a few intensive encounters every year.

In conclusion, the announcement earlier this year from the University Senate will have major repercussions for theological education in The United Methodist Church. Candidates for ordination no longer have a residential requirement and can now complete 100% of their MDiv online. This allows students who are tethered to their local communities to study while remaining in place. This pedagogical model is a throw-back to earlier models of contextualized theological education where students completed their training while under appointment, such as the Course of Study. To mediate the 100% online vs. traditional theological education debate, I propose a hybrid pathway that involves courses taught online with intermittent intensive immersion encounters placed in the middle of the semester. This will allow students and professors to have the advantages of both delivery methods. 

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: Implications of Online Education for the Future of the Church, Part 2

Today's piece is the second in a three-part series by Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Professor of Missiology, World Christianity and Methodist Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Part Two: The Impact of Fully Online Theological Education on the UMC

On February 9, 2023, the University Senate of the UMC announced that they have approved a fully online MDiv degree to meet the educational criteria for ordination orders. This is a monumental change from the previous policy that required at least one-third of the degree to be completed in-person.

This is the second of a three-part blog analyzing the impact of this policy on the student in preparation for ministry, on the UMC, and on theological schools. In this part, I will look at the impact on the UMC. The third and final part will propose a model that addresses some of the concerns and questions raised in the first and second parts.

In my opinion, this new policy will favor those annual conferences that do not have a seminary (either a UM seminary or a seminary that is approved by University Senate) within their geographical boundaries. There has historically been a “brain drain,” where rural areas lose talent when young people go off to study in urban areas and don’t return.

Similarly, when ministry candidates move from their homes to a major metropolitan area such as Atlanta, Chicago, or Washington DC, many do not return to their home conferences. Talented young people are enticed to divinity schools with full scholarships for three years where they are exposed to new opportunities and connections at seminary. Students participate in a very diverse community and are exposed to new ideas. Students are tempted by studying for a PhD. There is also an increasing number of seminary graduates who do not feel led to serve the church, whether ordained or not. Many enter into chaplaincy, non-for-profit organizations, or other career options.

This is not true of all students from rural areas; some candidates are far enough along in the ordination process, or they have significant community ties, so that they indeed do return to their home conferences, accept an appointment to a local church, and continue the ordination process once they have completed seminary.

The new University Senate policy permitting a 100% online MDiv degree will allow more ministry candidates to stay within their annual conference, which could lead to a higher percentage of young people who remain in the candidacy process and continue on through ordination. The Lewis Center of Wesley Theological Seminary began reporting on the decline in numbers of young clergy under the age of 35 in 2006. In 2005, the number of young elders declined to a historic low of 850 in the United States. For a few years, the denomination provided greater support and incentives for young clergy, and the number rose to 1003 in 2016. However, in recent years the decline in young clergy has continued. A 2022 report by Lovett Weems stated, “The number of young elders in 2021 hit a new historic low of 742. The trend of steep losses continues in 2022 with a loss of another 94 and thus another record low number of young elders at 648.”  

This University Senate policy change may help annual conferences retain young people, who can stay within their geographical boundaries while they complete their seminary training. Moreover, annual conferences can appoint ministry candidates to an appointment as a student pastor while they are completing their degree.

On the downside, I also foresee fewer opportunities for transformational learning experiences for students who stay put to attend seminary. When one does not have to be directly confronted with another person’s reality and life circumstances that are very different from one’s own, then there are fewer opportunities for cognitive dissonance. I fear that students who study for their seminary degree completely online will go through the curriculum without major challenges to their beliefs. This could lead to a lack of critical thinking skills. If an author, instructor, or classmate presents an idea that is mediated by technology, then one is safely behind a computer screen unchallenged.

Students will not have to live in residential student housing, eat in the dining halls, and attend chapel with other students from different walks of life. The richness of campus life is a seminary community of students who identify as rich and poor, gay and straight, rural and urban, as well as international students. You may encounter students different from you in an online class, but there won’t be spontaneous and perhaps uncomfortable conversations in the parking lot after class, late night theological discussions or weekend road-trips.

While online students can still access e-books and electronic resources, they will have fewer opportunities to peruse the reference materials or get lost in the stacks of a theological library. Online education can also rely on “cookie cutter” and “check the box” methodology that transmits knowledge but without liberatory pedagogy that teaches critical thinking.

These changes matter not just for students, but for the church at large. They could result in pastors who are not trained as public theologians to think on their feet and lead their congregations through the unchartered challenges ahead. The church will need skilled leaders and theologians in the years ahead. Online study could result in fewer MDiv graduates with the academic preparation to pursue a doctorate or to lead in innovative and inclusive ways.

In conclusion, a student who completes seminary in a fully online platform may produce pastors who are more deeply rooted locally with less exposure to the national and global church and the reality of those whose life experiences are different than themselves. I foresee that the long-term impact for the annual conference will be pastors who have a more local or regional worldview—largely unchanged from the time that a student enters seminary. Collectively for the annual conference, the clergy will become more like-minded without the national or international connections of those who have been exposed to a broader range of seminary experiences and relationships.

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: Implications of Online Education for the Future of the Church, Part 1

Today's piece is the first in a three-part series by Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Professor of Missiology, World Christianity and Methodist Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Part One: The Impact of Fully Online Theological Education on Seminary Students

On March 11, 2020, while serving as Academic Dean at Wesley Theological Seminary I did something that I never thought I would do. I sent out an email to faculty that stated: “We are cancelling all classes.” The first positive case of Covid-19 had come too close to our seminary community, and so I cancelled all in-person classes and campus activities and instructed the faculty to transition their classes online by the following week. This was a very sudden pivot, but necessary to practice social distancing and still advance our educational mission.

Nearly three years later, on February 9, 2023, the University Senate of The United Methodist Church announced the inevitable consequences of the changes wrought by the pandemic: approval of a fully online MDiv degree for ministerial candidates. This is a monumental change from the previous policy that required at least one-third of the degree to be completed in-person. Citing accessibility, global access, and especially the Covid-19 pandemic as the impetus for accelerating change, the University Senate acknowledged the need to keep pace with changing times.

Now that this policy change is official, I’m pausing to ask what are the long-term implications of this decision for training clergy for The United Methodist Church? What will the impact be upon students themselves and for theology schools? This is the first of a 3-part blog series that will examine the consequences. This first part will deal with the implications for the students themselves and for future pastors. Part II will explore the implications of this decision for the United Methodist Church, and part III will examine the impact for theological schools.

To begin, I want to emphasize the obvious: this is a major change and will have serious implications for future clergy and the church. It is an attempt to make theological education more accessible and affordable for students who are unwilling or unable to move to a brick-and-mortar campus for a traditional residential seminary experience. There are other denominations where one can complete the educational requirements, become ordained, and enter full-time ministry with fewer hurdles and less financial burden—not to mention more lucrative non-ministry career options. The UMC is competing for talent against other denominations and other vocational choices, so it makes sense to remove barriers from the journey toward ordained ministry.

Removing the residency requirement will even the playing field, removing barriers for those who are not able bodied, untethered candidates with the financial means to pick-up and move to another part of the country for 3 or more years to complete an MDiv. Students will no longer need to move to a seminary campus, or within commuting distance, to study in the traditional residential method. Due to the decision to allow a fully online MDiv for ministry candidates, I foresee more students taking advantage of this distance learning option and staying in their home communities.

This will be especially advantageous for the second career or working student who is tethered to work and/or family commitments. This also applies to international students who will no longer need to obtain a visa and plane ticket and travel far from home. This move will also make theological education more accessible for persons with a physical disabilities or other limitations, such as time and money.

There is a financial incentive for students to stay in one’s current setting where one can remain employed, stay in current housing (living at home), and not be uprooted from one’s community. If a student is married or has family obligations (childcare, eldercare, etc.), one can continue to uphold these commitments while pursing an MDiv, perhaps part-time. If a student has a job, or even a career, then one can study in one’s free time and not quit in order to pursue theological studies, resulting in fewer student loans and less student debt.

This delivery method will help more rural communities retain talent and avoid the “brain-drain” to urban centers and conferences that do have seminaries within their geographic boundaries. International and domestic ministerial candidates in rural settings can remain close to family or to their current employment—as long as they have access to reliable internet.

Another, perhaps unintended, outcome that I foresee is greater affinity with technology. Since the learning process will be mediated through the computer, the online student will gain greater aptitude at editing videos, blogging, and PowerPoint presentations. Here I’m thinking of the 10,000 hours rule referred to by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. The basic thesis of Gladwell is that the more you practice something, the better you become. It would follow that the more seminary students use technology, the more comfortable and adept they become.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly expanding, and tech-savvy students who are on computers more will learn more about technology and can harness these skills for ministry in the 21st century. Just in the last couple of months, articles and blogs have reported pastors and rabbis experimenting with chatGPT in writing sermons. Students be particularly adept at using technology as a medium for digital ministry, such as teaching a Zoom Bible study, broadcasting worship, or facilitating their Ad Council meetings on an online platform. As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic and churches face decisions around the future of live-streaming worship vs. in-person worship, pastors who are more knowledgeable and skillful with technology can help the church re-imagine the opportunities for digital ministry church in the 21st century. This skillset could help pastors reach millennials and younger generations who regularly use technology as part of their daily lives.

These technology skills, however, may come at the cost of interpersonal skills, such as building deeper personal relationships, spiritual formation, or pastoral care with their parishioners. During the Covid-19 pandemic, students at Wesley Theological Seminary reported a loss of connection and difficulty building community. As dean, I responded to this feedback by encouraging faculty to open up their zoom platform 30 minutes before class and leave it open after class to allow students to connect with one another in a more informal online environment.

Generally speaking, studying for a degree online is a much lonelier endeavor without a close cohort of classmates. After graduation, this could translate into pastors who don’t have a support community and don’t have the interpersonal skills to create one. Pastors trained in the fully online modality may score lower in emotional intelligence, or the ability to “read the temperature of the room,” while guiding a congregation through difficult decisions about the future direction of the church. The online modality could lead to more “group think,” where difference is white-washed, and assumptions remain unexamined. With less direct exposure to difference in seminary, future pastors may have a more difficult time dealing with diversity.

In sum, the University Senate’s decision to allow a fully online MDiv degree will make theological education more accessible and allow students to remain in their communities, but with fewer opportunities for those transformational encounters. Students will graduate with the same credentials; however, the seminary experience will be very different, producing a graduate with a very different skillset than your traditional residential program. Students will have better technology skills, but not as much experience dealing with diversity or as much interpersonal aptitude.

The next part of this blog will address how technology will impact the UMC as a whole.

UM & Global Collection on Theological Education

A new UM & Global collection is now available. This collection examines theological education, including its intersection with mission and Methodism, access to theological education, and the ways in which it is changing in various contexts around the world.

The collection includes eleven posts by Ann Hidalgo, Genilma Boehler, Benjamin L. Hartley, Andrew Harper, David N. Field, Robert A. Hunt, Dana L. Robert, and David W. Scott. As with other collections, there is a set of discussion questions at the end of the volume, intended to help church members, students, and others reflect on how theological educators can help prepare their students and the church as a whole to effectively join in God's mission to the world.

Recommended Reading: North American and African Wesleyan/Methodist theological education initiative

Dr. Hendrik R. Pieterse, associate professor of global Christianity and intercultural theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and contributor to UM & Global, will be leading a new initiative at Garrett to strengthen networks between American and African Wesleyan/Methodist theological educators. The goals of the project include "mapping scholarly networks, institutions, scholarship, partnerships, and publications among sub-Saharan African and North American scholars in the Wesleyan/Methodist traditions who are actively engaged in-depth intercultural theological exchange, collaboration, joint research, and publishing" and "convening representative groups of African and North American Wesleyan/Methodist scholars and thought leaders to serve as consultants and partners in organizing a theological symposium for the second year of the initiative, with an accompanying book project."

As various contributors have emphasized on this blog, and as Pieterse and UM & Global blogmaster David W. Scott have argued in a recent article, intercultural dialogue is critical for the future of Methodist theology. It is hoped that this new initiative will make a substantial contribution in that direction.

Ann Hidalgo: Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana and a New Vision of Mission

Today's post is by Dr. Ann Hidalgo. Dr. Hidalgo is a missionary for Global Ministries and professor of theological sciences at Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in Costa Rica.

I write to you from San José, Costa Rica, where I teach as a professor of feminist theology at the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana (UBL). A Methodist institution, the UBL has a long history as one of the foremost ecumenical Protestant centers of theological education in Latin America. In fact, next year, the UBL will begin celebrating its centennial.

From its earliest beginnings in 1922 as the Biblical School for Women and its formal establishment as the Biblical Institute of Costa Rica the following year, the institution has evolved continually to meet the changing needs for theological education in the region. In 1941, it was renamed the Latin American Biblical Seminary to mark the establishment of correspondence courses throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and in 1997, it received formal Costa Rican accreditation as the Latin American Biblical University. Today it offers degree programs in theology and biblical studies at the bachelor, licensure, and masters levels, as well as a variety of certificate programs.

I first visited the UBL in 2013 when I was a doctoral student at Claremont School of Theology. At the time, I was preparing for my qualifying exams. In addition to my time spent in the library (marveling over the Spanish-language resources from Latin America that are seldom available in the United States), I sat in on some classes and participated in the weekly chapel services and other events. I was fascinated by the depth and richness of the classroom conversations, teaching, and preaching. In other circumstances, drawing a community together from different countries, denominational backgrounds, and genuinely different life experiences might be a recipe for conflict and discord, but, at the UBL, I experienced warmth, curiosity, generosity, a passion for learning, and a deep desire to develop the skills necessary to be of service in the churches and in society.

Last year, I accepted a position as a missionary with GBGM, and in December, my husband and I moved from the United States to Costa Rica. In January, I began teaching courses in feminist theology at the UBL. While the pandemic sent nearly all of our residential students home and moved all classes online, in this first year, I have taught students in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, and Spain. The UBL’s other online events, such as lectures and conferences, have regularly attracted participants from all over Latin America, the Caribbean, and beyond.

These experiences might suggest that I would have something to say about the connection between mission and theological education.

I have to confess, however, that I am as unlikely a missionary as you can imagine. Or, at least, that is how it seemed to me.

To start with the obvious, I am not a Methodist. I am a Catholic who typically attends church with my husband, an ordained pastor with the Disciples of Christ. Fortunately for me, that did not prove to be an obstacle for working with GBGM. Next, I am not ordained. While not a requirement for my position, GBGM’s application is full of language asking for call stories and visions of ministry. To me, as an academic, the application felt quite foreign.

But perhaps most significantly, my academic work has focused on the decolonial critique of the Christian churches in Latin America. From this perspective, the work of missionaries—whether in the 16th century or today—is more often seen as the source of problems than of grace. The decolonial perspective has rightly identified instances in which evangelism served as one arm of a larger political and economic project of domination, in which the teaching of religion conveyed a message of cultural inferiority to the recipients, in which the Christian churches failed to protect the most vulnerable, and in which newly established Christian communities were expected to remain subservient and were not encouraged to develop local leadership and authority.

During my application process, I was surprised to learn that GBGM has retained the title missionary, while other denominations have adopted titles like mission coworker to signal an updated vision of ministry. My experience as I filled out my application was one of mixed feelings: I was thrilled about the possibility of returning to the UBL to teach and, at the same time, genuinely uncomfortable with the title of missionary.

I wish I could tell you that this internal argument is a thing of the past. I can, however, share with you two hopeful signs that I have found encouraging.

The first is the GBGM motto for ministry: from everywhere to everywhere. As I participated in the training sessions, I was pleased to see that these were not empty words. The approximately twenty members of my training cohort came from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, significantly reducing my fears that GBGM’s work was yet another act of United States-based cultural imperialism.

The second emerged in a conversation with Dr. Elisabeth Cook, the rector at the UBL. While describing the many relationships that the UBL maintains with churches, denominations, nonprofit organizations, and other funding bodies, Dr. Cook explained that the UBL occasionally has refused funding offers when the donor organization was unwilling to relate as an equal partner. As an institution, the UBL is willing to forego much-needed cash if the other organization intends to impose projects or activities that are incompatible with the UBL mission. Again, I was grateful for this encouraging bit of news that contradicted my (admittedly pessimistic) view about how loudly money talks.

The UBL itself has become for me a symbol of mission. It is committed to reading the signs of the times in order to adapt to better meet the needs for theological education in the region. It acknowledges and celebrates its roots as a mission project and its long history of collaboration with a variety of Christian churches, but it is not willing to compromise its institutional identity in order to balance the books. Likewise, it is dedicated to walking alongside its students throughout their educational journeys and its graduates as they engage in their ministries in Latin America and beyond.

Despite my misgivings, this is a vision of mission I can embrace.

Recommended Reading: Black-ish Missiology

It is not often that this site recommends academic articles, especially ones that are behind paywalls. However, those interested in missiology are strongly encouraged to read Dwight A Radcliff Jr.'s article "Black-ish Missiology: A Critique of Mission Studies and Appeal for Inclusion in the United States Context," if they have not already done so. The article appeared in last June's issue of Mission Studies.

In a strong indictment of the field of missiology, Radcliff, who is himself Black, explores the ways in which African American Black scholars and Black thinking are marginalized within US missiology, leaving a field that is black-ish: "something that purports to be Black (African American), but upon close inspection may not be authentic to, or representative of, the culture."

Radcliff identifies two driving forces behind the marginalization of African Americans within missiology. The first is an "internal structuring and epistemology" that pays little attention to African American concerns and has little room for African American intellectual methodologies.

The second is the failure of the discipline to engage with a large catalogue of scholarly writings by Black scholars that could be considered within missiology, given their focus, but are not. I discussed this second reason in my UM & Global piece "Why Are There So Few Black Missiologists?" and I am grateful to receive confirmation of what was for me a hypothesis, and grateful to have Radcliff's analysis as a Black man that is able to see things that I as a White man cannot.

Radcliff does not think missiology as a field is irredeemably marked by racism, nor do I. Radcliff gives three helpful guide points for developing an authentically Black missiology. The work of constructing such a missiology must be done by Black African Americans. But those from the dominant White culture in the United States, such as me, and those from other backgrounds may profitably ask themselves how they may support such an effort, both in structural ways through positions and funding and through the habits of scholarship, by listening, reading, and engaging with Black missiology, incorporating it into the larger discipline by taking it seriously and seeing it as an important contribution to the collective knowledge of all missiologists, regardless of racial background.

Genilma Boehler: The Methodist Tradition: Educating for Autonomy and Freedom

Today’s post is by Rev. Dr. Genilma Boehler. Dr. Boehler holds a PhD in Theology from the School of Higher Education (EST) of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, located in Sao Leopoldo. She is an ordained elder of the Methodist Church of Brazil and serves as a missionary of Global Ministries, acting as a professor at the United Methodist University of Mozambique, Africa, since January 2020.

Among the historical archives of the Methodist tradition are records of the influence that Susanna Annesley Wesley (1669–1742), mother of John Wesley, had on the formation of her nineteen sons and daughters. This is known about her method of literacy: whenever one of her sons or daughters turned five years old, Susanna would spend six hours on that day teaching him or her the letters of the alphabet (as a birthday present) and for three more months teach him or her to read by means of the words of Holy Scripture.

In the records of her life, one finds a note in her diaries expressing her frustration at having failed with this method with three of her children. In other words, three creatures born of Susanna were not able to memorize the alphabet in one day and read in three months, at the tender age of five. But later in these same records is her self-assessment, where she states that she has reflected and learned that one being is not the same as another being. That everyone has their singularities and capabilities, which do not always arise at the same time. Such notes lead us to believe that this magnificent lady did not give up teaching each of her sons or daughters to read, even if some did not learn in the time that she had stipulated as the ideal.

My memory as a Christian and a Methodist educator has sought in Susanna A. Wesley the inspiration to reflect on the educational legacy of our Wesleyan tradition.

I remember that between the years 2004 to 2010, we tried some excellent applied experiences in two Methodist institutions of education in Brazil: the IPA, Centro Universitàrio Metodista in Porto Alegre, RS, and the Methodist Izabela Hendrix Institute in Belo Horizonte, MG. Our management team, led by the Rector Jaider Batista da Silva, worked with policies of socio-economic inclusion for scholarships. Profiles were defined that reflected the needs of economically impoverished populations, difficulties of opportunities for specialized and university training, and at the same time exclusion based on race (skin color, Afro-descent), ethnic groups (indigenous populations and quilombolas),[1] gender (women imprisoned in female prisons), sexual diversity (such as transvestites or LGBTQ persons), social movements (landless, homeless, etc.), people who lived on the streets of the two large cities Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte. The schools were also opened with scholarships for foreigners from emerging, extremely poor countries such as Haiti (in the Caribbean), Mozambique (Africa), and Kosovo (Europe).

The two Methodist university centers, in both cities, are over a century old and by tradition worked to form an elite originating from social classes with access to resources and the financial stability to pay monthly payments to private institutions for higher education. Certainly, offering scholarships to marginalized and impoverished sectors generated resistance and a lot of noise from students and teachers.

But, with the experiment, what we found is that the presence of different social segments can bring excellent results in education, from groups and face-to-face or virtual classes, with possibilities of the construction of critical knowledge compared at a high level and with opportunities to wonder about topics not previously valued. In addition, it generated possibilities for structuring intelligences and solutions for the future, for problems that until then had not been considered in the teaching and research in the courses offered in such institutions.

Subsequently, between the years 2011 to 2019, as a missionary of Global Ministries, I was assigned as a professor of theology for the Latin American Biblical University (UBL) in Costa Rica. Such an institution, with more than 90 years of tradition, is very competent in Latin American Liberation Theology. Its students come from many Latin American and Caribbean countries. As an institution specialized in theology, the training it offers is very much aimed at leaders, pastors of churches of the various evangelical inclinations (Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and Neo Pentecostal), as well as nuns or lay people of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the UBL, what was for me, as a teacher, more relevant was the cultural richness of students originating from different cultures and with diverse academic backgrounds. Many of them came to university education with a minimum of what is considered basic training. On the one hand, higher education led to a demand for studies based on readings and on deep research into current and challenging topics, often generating personal difficulties due to the lack of academic preparedness; on the other hand, the cultural richness that permeated all students generated fruitful debates and unusual conclusions as a result of the proposed research. I want to say that the experience that adds socio-cultural particularities to the construction of scientific knowledge generates new results or understandings of the same reality that challenge the knowledge of life, God, and the challenges ahead in our human and/or community experiences.

Finally, I find myself working in Africa, Mozambique, at the United Methodist University, located in Cambine, since the beginning of 2020. One of the elements that challenges me around here is first and foremost the linguistic diversity. Mozambique is a country that speaks 42 different languages in addition to Portuguese, which is the language of the colonizer. One of the curious aspects that makes it difficult for those who teach is that students think with their mother tongues and have great difficulty in understanding and capturing epistemologies generated in academic circles that have nothing to do with their way of thinking or speaking locally. In addition, Africa, on the shores of the Indian Ocean and far south, is very distant from Western thought.

Thus, some difficulties are observed: It is difficult for the students to grasp the dissonances between the Western theories, because they were constituted in far distant worlds and unknown to the Mozambican people. Secondly, the cultural richness based on parental relationships and rural contexts differs from an urban and academic background. Local cultures are transmitted orally, and therefore, academics registered through writing cause difficulties of comprehension. Or in other words, the academic often tries to impose him- or herself on the local knowledge, rooted in traditions and experiments of thousands of years. Here in Africa, as in Central America, with students from ancient indigenous cultures, I have experienced the challenge that academics blocks the cultural knowledge that permeates the minds of those who study.

I return to the memory of Susanna A. Wesley mentioned initially: no person is the same as another. People, as subjects – with their intelligences, desires, and subjectivities marked by cultural inheritances – do not obey the same order of cognitive structuring. This does not mean that someone is superior to the other because he or she goes faster, nor does it imply that some may know more than others due to one or another socio-cultural condition. It is not a question of falling into the traps of universal scientism or the superiority of those who possess political and economic power.

But, as we walk with people who belong to multiple cultures, we learn that there are no weights or measures to classify people's ability to know and to learn. There will always be new and curious universes to stimulate our attention and to capture other notions that are as true as others that exist in the universe of knowledge.

Education understood in this way makes it possible to think of the human being as a learning being. We are all apprentices. There is never a limit to knowing! We will always find a horizon that escapes us and that points to the beyond, and there are so many things to know, much still to be unveiled, intelligences to encounter.

From its origins, Methodism was marked with the goals of education. Educate for autonomy and for freedom. Never educate for slavery, for subjugation, for exclusion. One thing the Holy Scriptures—the source that Susanna A. Wesley applied in her methods of literacy—teaches us is that the written word once deciphered from the codes of the alphabet opens up windows for life and its mysteries, for the human being and for the encounter with God.

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[1] The so-called "Quilombos" in the past constituted places of refuge for Africans who fled their slave status in Brazil. Today the descendants and remnants of those refugees are called Quilombolas.

Genilma Boehler: La tradición Metodista: Educar para la autonomía y la libertad

La publicación de blog de hoy está escrita por la Rvda. Dra. Genilma Boehler. Dra. Boehler es Doctora en Teologia por la EST (Escuela de Enseñanza Superior) de Sao Leopoldo, da IECLB, pastora-presbítera da Igreja Metodista do Brasil e missionária de Ministérios Globais atuando como docente na Universidade Metodista Unida de Moçambique, África, desde janeiro, 2020.

Entre los archivos históricos de la tradición Metodista se encuentra los registros de la influencia que tuvo Suzannah Annesley Wesley (1669-1742), madre de John Wesley, en la formación de sus diecinueve hijos/hijas. Es conocido acerca de su método de alfabetización: siempre que uno de sus hijos o hijas cumplían cinco años, Suzannah se dedicaba por seis horas en este día para enseñarle las letras del alfabeto (como un regalo de cumpleaños) y por más tres meses, para mediante palabras de la Sagrada Escritura, enseñarle a leer. En los registros de su vida, mediado por la oportuna metodología de los diarios de vida, se encuentra en una primera nota su frustración por haber fallado con este método, con tres de sus hijos. Dicho de otro modo: tres criaturas nacidas de Suzannah no fueron capaces de memorizar el alfabeto en un día y de leer en tres meses, en la terna edad de cinco años. Pero, en estos mismos registros se encuentran más adelante su auto-evaluación, cuando afirma que ha reflexionado y aprendido que un ser no es igual a otro ser. Que cada cual tiene sus singularidades y capacidades, que ni siempre acompañan a un mismo tiempo. Tales apuntes nos llevan a creer que esta magnífica señora no ha desistido de enseñar a leer a cada uno de sus hijos o hijas, aún que alguno no aprendiera en el tiempo que ella había estipulado como el ideal.

Mi memoria como cristiana y educadora Metodista ha buscado en Suzannah A. Wesley la inspiración para reflexionar acerca de este legado de nuestra tradición wesleyana. Recuerdo que entre los años 2004 a 2010 en dos instituciones Metodistas de Educaciòn en Brasil, hemos probado algunas excelentes experiencias aplicadas en el IPA, Centro Universitàrio Metodista de Porto Alegre, RS y en el Instituto Metodista Izabela Hendrix, en Belo Horizonte, MG. Nuestra equipe de gestión guiada por el Rector Jaider Batista da Silva, hemos trabajado con políticas de inclusiones socio-económicas para becas de estudios. Se definiera perfiles que reflejaban las necesidades de poblaciones económicamente empobrecidas y con dificultades para oportunidades de formación especializada, universitaria, y a la vez con recortes de exclusión basados en raza (color de piel, afrodescendientes), etnias (poblaciones indígenas y quilombolas[1]), género (mujeres reclusas en presidios femeninos), diversidad sexual (como travestis o homosexuales), movimientos sociales (sin tierra, sin viviendas, etc), personas que vivían en las calles de las dos grandes ciudades Porto Alegre y Belo Horizonte. Además se abrió con becas para extranjeros de países emergentes, extremamente pobres como Haití (en Caribe), Mozambique (África), Kosovo (Europa).

Los dos Centros Universitarios Metodistas, en ambas ciudades, son centenarios y por tradición trabajaron en la formación de una élite, oriundas de clases sociales con acceso a recursos y estabilidad financiera para pagar mensualidades de instituciones privadas para la educación superior. Ciertamente ofrecer becas para sectores marginados y empobrecidos ha generado resistencias y mucho ruido por parte de estudiantes y docentes. Pero, con el experimento, lo que hemos constatado es que la presencia de seguimientos sociales diferentes pueden traer excelentes resultados en la educación, desde los grupos y clases presenciales o virtuales, con posibilidades de construcción de conocimientos críticos, comparados de alto nivel, con oportunidades de preguntarse acerca de temáticas antes no valoradas. Además, ha generado posibilidades de estructuración de inteligencias y soluciones hacia el futuro, para problemas que hasta entonces no habían sido considerados en la enseñanza y en las investigaciones, en los cursos ofertados en las diversas carreras de tales instituciones.

Posteriormente, entre los años 2011 a 2019, como misionera de Ministerios Globales, he sido asignada como profesora de Teología para la Universidad Bíblica Latino Americana (UBL), en Costa Rica. Tal institución con más de 90 años de tradición, es muy competente en la Teología de la Liberación Latinoamericana. Sus estudiantes llegan de muchos países Latinoamericanos y Caribeños. Como institución especializada en Teología, la formación que ofrece está muy direccionada a líderes/lideresas, pastores y pastoras de Iglesias de las varias vertientes evangélicas (Metodista, Bautista, Presbiteriana, Pentecostales y Neo pentecostales), como también monjas o laicos de la Iglesia Católica Romana.

En la UBL, lo que ha sido para mi, como docente, más relevante ha sido la riqueza cultural de las personas estudiantes oriundas de diversas culturas y con formación académica plural. Muchas de ellas llegaron a la enseñanza universitaria con una formación mínima de lo que se tiene como formación básica. Se por un lado la educación superior conducía a una exigencia de estudios basados en lecturas y en las investigaciones profundadas en las temáticas actuales y desafiadoras, generando muchas veces dificultades personales por la falta de preparo académico; por otro lado, la riqueza cultural que permeaba al conjunto de estudiantes, generaban debates fecundos y conclusiones inusitadas como resultados de las investigaciones propuestas. Quiero decir que la experiencia que detiene las particularidades socio-culturales suman con la construcción del saber científico, generando nuevos resultados o de comprensiones de la misma realidad que desafían al saber de la Vida y de Dios y los retos que hay hacia adelante, en nuestras vivencias humanas y/o comunitarias.

Finalmente me encuentro a trabajar en África, Mozambique, en la Universidad Metodista Unida, ubicada en Cambine, desde inicios de 2020. Uno de los elementos que me desafían por acá, está en primer lugar en la diversidad lingüística. Mozambique es un país que habla 42 idiomas diferentes además del portugués, que es la lengua del colonizador. Uno de los aspectos curiosos y que dificultan a quien ocupa el lugar de la docencia, es que estudiantes piensan con sus códigos lingüísticos maternos y poseen mucha dificultad de comprender y captar epistemologías que fueron generadas en medios académicos que nada tienen que ver con su modo de pensar o de hablar local. Además África, a las orillas del Océano Índico y más al Sur, está muy distante del pensamiento Occidental. Entonces, se observa algunas dificultades: Es difícil para las personas estudiantes captaren las disonancias entre las teorías Occidentales, hasta porque se constituyeron en mundos muy distantes y desconocidos para las gentes mozambicanas. En segundo lugar, la riqueza cultural basada en las relaciones parentales y de contextos rurales diferencian de un bagaje urbano y academicista. Por otro lado, las culturas locales son transmitidas oralmente, y por lo tanto, el academicismo registrado mediante la escrita, causan dificultades de comprensión, o dicho de otro modo: el académico por muchas veces intenta imponerse sobre el conocimiento local, arraigado en tradiciones y en experimentos de miles de años. Acá en África como en Centroamérica, con estudiantes advenidos de las culturas milenarias indígenas, he vivenciado el desafío que traban el academicismo con el conocimiento cultural que permean las mentes de quien estudian.

Vuelvo a la memoria mencionada inicialmente de Suzannah A. Wesley: ninguna persona es igual a la otra. Las personas, como sujetos - de sus inteligencias, deseos, subjetividades marcadas por las herencias culturales – no obedecen a un mismo orden de estructuración cognitiva. Esto no significa que alguien es superior al otro, porque va más rápido, como también no quiere decir que puede ser que unos sepan más que otros, por una o otra condición socio-cultural. No se trata de caer en las trampas de los cientificismos universales o en las superioridades de quienes poseen poder político-económico. Pero, al caminar con personas que pertenecen a múltiples culturas, aprendemos que no hay pesos o medidas para clasificar la capacidad de las gentes de saber y de conocer. Siempre habrá universos nuevos y curiosos para estimular nuestra atención y para captar otras nociones que son tan verdaderas como otras que existen en el universo del conocimiento.

La educación comprendida de este modo, posibilita pensar al humano como ser de aprendizaje. Somos todos aprendices. Jamás hay un límite para el saber! Siempre se encontrará un horizonte que nos escapa y que apunta para el más allá, y que hay tantas cosas a conocer, mucho todavía a desvendar, inteligencias por venir a nuestros encuentros.

El metodismo desde sus orígenes estuvo marcado con las metas de la educación. Educar para la autonomía y para la libertad. Jamás educar para la esclavitud, para el sometimiento, para la exclusión. Se algo nos enseña la fuente que aplicaba Suzannah A. Wesley en sus métodos de alfabetización – las Sagradas Escrituras – es que la palabra escrita una vez descifrada desde los códigos del alfabeto, abren ventanas libertarias para la vida y sus misterios, para el humano y para el encuentro con Dios.

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[1] Los llamados “Quilombos” en el pasado constituyan en locales de refugios para los africanos que huyan de su condición de esclavos en Brasil. Hoy día se llaman Quilombolas a los descendentes y remanecientes de estos refugios.

UMC Deacons at 25: Rethinking Deacons’ Education

Today’s post is by Deacon Benjamin L. Hartley. Hartley is a member of the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference. In the fall of 2021, he will begin serving as Associate Professor of Mission and World Christianity at Seattle Pacific University. He writes occasional blog posts at https://missionandmethodism.net/blog/

2021 is the 25^th anniversary of the United Methodist Order of Deacons. Anniversaries are a time to celebrate and think critically about the past and to look forward to the future. Two years after the UMC General Conference established the Order of Deacon, I wrote a book with GBHEM Section of Deacons and Diaconal Ministry staff member Paul Van Buren, The Deacon: Ministry through Words of Faith and Acts of Love. In 1998 it was the first book to introduce the new understanding of the diaconate to the denomination. In the years since writing that book with Paul, I have written a half dozen scholarly articles on the diaconate that can be found here – along with some other scholars’ work on the diaconate that I have found helpful.

Deacons in the UMC are rightly celebrating their 25^th anniversary as an Order, but the idea in United Methodism to have a permanent, distinctive, and ordained diaconate in the UMC can be traced back much earlier.

On July 27, 1973, Associate General Secretary of the Board of Higher Education and Ministry Robert W. Thornburg gave an address to United Methodist deaconesses and home missionaries entitled “The Permanent Diaconate: A Challenge to the United Methodist Church.”

When I was a twenty-eight-year-old seminarian at Boston University School of Theology, I told by-then Dean Thornburg (he was my preaching professor and Dean of Marsh Chapel at BU) that I was fascinated by the possibilities of the diaconate and wanted to become one. He gave me a warm smile and said, “Well, you know, I have some history on this one.” He proceeded to rummage through a file cabinet in his office and handed me two papers he had written. The first was “The Permanent Diaconate.” The other one, written in the mid-1980s, involved personal reminiscing about his efforts to support a permanent diaconate in the United Methodist Church. He entitled that paper “The Story of the Challenge."

Re-reading these papers as part of my own reflecting on the past 25+ years of the United Methodist diaconate I was most struck by these words from Dean Thornburg in 1973:

[T]here are many other people … who are willing and eager for a part in the serving ministries of the church that we are not putting to good use, because our structures are not flexible enough and our imaginations less than adequate. We seem to be stuck with a tradition that may have had good reason to evolve as it did but which is no longer self-validating. We seem to have forgotten another tradition – the permanent diaconate – that may hold greater promise for revitalization in ministry than most of the other viable options open before us.[1]

These words remind me of how long reform often takes in the church as well as how reform needs to continue. Twenty-five years into the Order of Deacon I wonder how even our understanding of the diaconate needs to be reformed and revitalized. Who are the people today who are excluded from the diaconate because our structures for the diaconate remain inflexible?

At the top of my wish list for revitalizing the United Methodist diaconate is to change the way deacons are educated. Many deacons will not like what I have to say here, but reform rarely happens without disagreement.

United Methodists departed from the experience of the distinctive, ordained diaconate in Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions when we decided that to be ordained a deacon one needed to have a seminary education (a minimum of 27 credits along with some other master’s degree). As I remember the conversation that took place in the wake of the 1996 General Conference decision, people seemed to arrive very quickly at the assumption that deacons needed a similar educational background to ordained elders in the UMC for their ordinations to be meaningful, or, more precisely, for their status to be recognized.

But why does this have to be the case? Ordination is something we do in the church to set people apart for leadership. Ordination vows are taken, the Holy Spirit is called upon, and a bishop’s hands are prayerfully laid on people whom God calls for this important role in the body of Christ. Having a seminary education is valuable, to be sure, but is it really necessary?

The decades-long experience of ordained Episcopalian and Roman Catholic deacons around the world is one where a seminary education has not been required nor has it proven necessary. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has crafted an excellent guide for diocesan training programs for deacons. Great diocesan-level deacon training programs exist in the Episcopal Church as well.

When I dream about a revitalized Order of Deacon in the next twenty-five years, I think about the expanding numbers of deacons who feel the call to the diaconate “in their bones” and who are integrally connected to poor communities and communities of color. If we are to even come close to keeping pace with demographic changes in the United States, many more future deacons will be recent immigrants or the sons and daughters of recent immigrants.

But our current requirement for costly seminary education erects too high a barrier for too many people who may be experiencing a call to be deacons. That said, seminary education itself is going through dramatic change, with some seminaries offering less expensive pathways for theological education. That could work too, I will admit. But there is something about an intensively contextual deacon training program at the Annual Conference level that I find even more exciting and filled with possibilities for the training of deacons. I think, for example, of the work a friend began many years ago to train community organizers. Could we do something similar to this alongside Annual Conference deacon training initiatives?

In an article I wrote over fifteen years ago I argued that the office in the Methodist tradition that probably comes closest to what I think contemporary deacons could be is that of “class leader.” In the past, class leaders visited the sick, encouraged serious discipleship, and were critical to the functioning of Methodist societies. Class leaders had already established themselves as trusted, wise, leaders in communities, and they were not trained in seminaries. The comparison between class leaders of the early nineteenth century and deacons of today is not perfect, I realize. Deacons today are different in many ways. Still, the example of the class leader inspires my imagination. How would our church be different twenty-five years from now if we had as many deacons as we had class leaders in the early nineteenth century? Imagine the possibilities!

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[1] Robert W. Thornburg, “The Permanent Diaconate: A Challenge to the United Methodist Church”

Andrew Harper: TheologyX Provides Greater Access to Theological Education for All

Today's post is written by Rev. Andrew Harper, Director of Global and Learning Innovation, Cliff College, UK. It is part of an occasional series on new, missionally-focused forms of theological education.

In May 2020, the International Association of Universities (IAU) published its Global Survey Report concerning the impact of COVID-19 on higher education around the world. The IAU canvassed four hundred and twenty-four higher education institutions (HEIs), representing one hundred and nine different countries. Their report paints a startling picture of how deeply the pandemic has affected institutions and teachers alike. Fifty-nine percent of HEIs reported the total cessation of all campus activity.

As one might expect, this has had a devastating impact on the delivery of student education: an overwhelming majority of HEIs (ninety-eight percent) replied that their teaching and learning had been affected in some way. It is also clear that students in the Global South suffer disproportionately compared to those elsewhere. Whereas eighty percent of European students will be given the opportunity to complete their exams, only sixty-one percent of African students will enjoy the same. Indeed, although ninety-seven percent of American and European HEIs reply that they have adequate communication infrastructures in place to keep their students up to date, that number drops to sixty-six percent for African HEIs.

TheologyX is perfectly positioned to respond to the global tumult caused by COVID-19 and to remedy the deleterious effects it has had on higher education around the world. Based on Open edX (used by nine of the ten highest ranked universities), TheologyX provides an online learning platform specially designed for theological education. Indeed, it utilises certain tools and features which help to overcome those geographical, financial and social barriers to learning exacerbated by the pandemic, especially in the Global South. Developed in partnership with Cliff College (Derbyshire UK) and the Methodist Church of Great Britain, TheologyX makes it possible to access theological education at a time when it might otherwise be out of reach and many theology departments in the West are adjusting to the peculiar demands of online pedagogy.

TheologyX’s digitalised curriculum makes it unnecessary to travel long distances just to learn, and its inexpensive programme of delivery eliminates the prohibitively high cost of entry associated with traditional forms of education – boons which stand to benefit believers in the Global South disproportionately more than students based in the West. To send an African student to the U.K. to obtain a theology degree at Cliff College, for example, would cost around $75,000. For the same amount, TheologyX can train thirty-three African students for an MA degree.

Of course, TheologyX wouldn’t be possible without accessible and affordable technology, funded by Cliff College as well as others. Participating colleges receive web cameras with built-in microphones and books on Wesleyan theology from Cliff College. In addition, TheologyX provides these colleges with a ‘Theo’ box – an intranet device which creates a local digital learning environment for up to fifty students using an internal data / Wi-Fi connection. Each box hosts the entirety of TheologyX’s digital theological library, and all the tools necessary to facilitate teaching at all levels. It provides the opportunity for users around the world to access global theological materials, no matter the user’s location.

Its library boasts diverse curricula covering a variety of subjects, with lectures often arranged in ten to twenty-minute "bite sized" chunks to accommodate best pedagogical praxis. The Theo box boasts dual SIM card slots which can be set up to facilitate further content, but – critically – it does not itself require an internet connection to function. Broadband is sparse in Africa, but almost every African has a mobile phone, hence why the Theo box is fitted to run on signal data. It is effectively a Bible college in a box, accessible to believers in diverse locations and from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

We are personally familiar with institutions based in the Global South that have faced lockdown and which have also seen their doors shut immediately in the wake of COVID-19. TheologyX has been able to step into this situation, providing a virtual learning environment that has equipped those institutions to maintain the same degree of rigour and depth of substance, but in a way that grants its students easy access to learning without them needing to be technically proficient. In short, we have had the privilege of helping institutions keep their doors open, albeit virtually. These institutions would otherwise have faced significant financial problems – potentially closing forever as a result, a tragedy both academically as well as for the local Church. In the meantime, TheologyX has given institutions the space to breathe and to reflect, providing a "sandpit" environment in which to play and create and see what might work in a post-COVID world.

And perhaps best of all, as colleges and believers across the world contribute to TheologyX’s online platform, we are teased with the exciting possibility of western learners bearing witness to the quality theological teaching and research coming out of the Global South. We hope TheologyX will thereby serve not only to bless and equip those in diverse contexts, but also to train and encourage those of us in the West with the unique gifts and perspectives found only in the Global South.

Why Are There So Few Black Missiologists?

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

I have had several recent conversations, including among members of the American Society of Missiology and the United Methodist Professors of Mission, about the relationship between race, mission, and missiology. These conversations have left me pondering a question: Why are there so few black missiologists? There are, of course, many significant black African missiologists, but here I am thinking about black African American missiologists and their relative absence from white-dominant missiological conversations and organizations.

Before going further, I think it is important to state several caveats:

1.    This post focuses on the relationship between African Americans and white-dominant American missiology. It does not address the participation of other people of color in missiology or the racial systems in which that discourse is embedded, even though other people of color are a significant part of missiology, both domestically and abroad.

2.    This post draws from my general knowledge of the structure of American religion and American society, not extensive research into the subject.

3.    There are, of course, black and white exceptions to what I say below. My goal is to explain general patterns, not to account for every individual case.

4.    I write as a white man, and thus this analysis reflects my own, white-privileged perspective.

With those caveats in mind, I believe the reasons there are so few black missiologists lie in compounding levels of systemic racism and implicit bias. I will examine three.

Black Christians participate in mission, but in different ways than White Christians
This observation applies to both international and domestic mission, and black participation in international mission differs from white participation both in its extent and its focus.

Black missionaries have historically gone to different places than white mission practitioners. Africa and, to a lesser extent, the Caribbean have been the overwhelming focus of black missionary interest. African Americans’ sense of affinity to Africa, racial assumptions by white-dominant missionary agencies about appropriate placements, and the racism of Asian and Latin American societies towards Blacks have combined to reinforce this focus. Yet that focus has meant that black missionaries lack the same sorts of inter-continental networks that white missionaries have had, networks which often foster missiological reflection.

Moreover, white Americans have more often served as international missionaries than black Americans. Because of systemic racial inequalities, African Americans in general earn less and have less wealth than white Americans. These more limited financial resources limit black participation in international mission, both short-term and long-term, especially when that participation must be self-financed or financed through personal social networks.

Domestically, many black churches have been and are extensively involved in what should fairly be termed mission, but often goes by different names: social engagement, social justice, community development, etc. Thus, black and white churchgoers participating in mission may use different language to describe and analyze their domestic mission activities, leading to separate discourses and the exclusion, often unintentional, of black practitioners from white-dominant mission conversations.

Black mission practitioners are less likely to become academically trained than white mission practitioners
Again, systemic racial inequalities are at play here: in income, wealth, and education. First come the educational consequences of growing up in different, racially segregated zip codes, which negatively impact African Americans. Then there the well-documented challenges to black access to higher education, especially graduate education.

When African Americans do participate in higher education, they are more likely than other Americans to end up at a historically black college or university (HBCU). HBCUs are good institutions, and the role of the premier HBCUs such as Morehouse, Spellman, and Howard in developing a black intelligentsia is unquestionable. Yet, advanced graduate study of mission almost always requires attending a white-dominant institution such as Fuller, Asbury, Boston University, or Biola. The perceived challenge of doctoral study of missiology may be greater for black students who have not previously been part of white-dominant educational institutions, with their unspoken expectations geared toward white culture.

Intertwined with that educational system are racial denominational differences in the educational requirements for ministers. Most white-dominant denominations, especially mainline Protestants, require a master’s degree for ordination. Many predominantly black Baptist and Pentecostal denominations do not. That makes a difference when pastors involved in mission consider whether to further study that practice academically. For pastors who already have a master’s degree, it is a smaller jump to consider a D.Min. or Ph.D. Racial differences also exist in the breakdown of part-time vs. full-time clergy and congregational ability to support continuing education for their pastors.

Thus, to the significant extent that missiology is a scholarly conversation, it is one that African Americans are less likely to join for reasons both internal and extending beyond the field.

Black conversations about mission are segregated from white-dominant conversations about mission
Even when African Americans participate in mission and/or make it through the obstacle course of academic study of mission, there are still several reasons why they may not end up participating in white-dominant missiological conversations.

The first challenge is the question of terminology raised earlier. Black and white scholars/practitioners may describe similar things but use different, racially conditioned language. For instance, despite the similarities between the white-dominant missional church model and black patterns of community engagement, my impression is that much of the missional church conversation does not look to black models and has a presumed white-dominant audience in mind.

A second challenge is white implicit biases about the place of African Americans in mission. From an early focus on plantation mission to recent racial connections between African Americans and poverty, white Americans have often seen African Americans as “recipients” of mission, rather than practitioners of mission. While thinking of mission in terms of actors and recipients is inherently problematic, it is even more so when assumptions about those actors and recipients reinforce racial hierarchies. Because of these associations, when prompted to discuss race and mission, white Americans have an implicit bias towards framing the conversation as about predominantly white mission practitioners working with African Americans, rather than as about black mission practitioners doing their own work. Such a framing serves to exclude or mute the voices of black missiological thinkers.

A third challenge is white implicit bias towards seeing black Christianity as a contextual expression of Christianity with limited relevance to white-dominant Christianity. American religion is structurally segregated along racial lines. But for White Americans, seeing black Christianity as a distinct phenomenon from white Christianity often means seeing it as a tradition that is irrelevant for their own faith. Deep seated white assumptions about the normativity of white Christian practice and white theology make White Americans less interested in learning from black Christian practice or black theology. Moreover, when black voices are raised up, white Christians are often only interested in listening to those black voices speak about racial issues. Thus, white interest in other forms of black Christian practice and theology, including mission, is limited. Certainly, one hopes that missiologists, with their appreciation of context, would be less prone to such biases than others, but they still exist.

White Christians should be learning from black Christians, though, about mission and all other Christian beliefs and practices, just as black Christians have had to learn about white Christianity for a long time. That is why it is important to broaden the scope of missiological focus, to challenge the labels used to describe Christian practice, to support black students in studying missiology, to question white theological normativity, and to listen to black voices.

These are not easy or quick reforms, and they cannot be accomplished apart from larger societal changes that will benefit black economic and educational outcomes. Yet for a whole host of moral and theological reasons, missiology as a white-dominant field must engage these issues.

David N. Field: Connecting Across Europe – the Case of the Methodist e-Academy

Today's piece is written by Dr. David N. Field. Dr. Field is the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.

The advent of the corona virus covid-19 has sparked an intensification of the move toward online theological education that has been slowly growing over the past decade. It is quite possible that in the aftermath the pandemic online education will have established itself as an integral component of theological education and pastoral formation.

It is appropriate at this juncture to look at one model that has been operating for almost 12 years. The European Methodist e-Academy started operating in 2008 as a response to the specific situation of (United) Methodism in Europe.

European Methodist Churches are all minority churches. In most cases the annual conferences are small with limited resources yet in many cases experiencing steady but limited growth. Establishing theological seminaries in every country was not viable, and it was not practicable or desirable for students to attend one of the existing seminaries.

A decision was taken that students would do their initial theological training at a seminary or university in their own country and that this would be supplemented by an online program focused on Methodist studies. Thus, the Methodist e-Academy was established to offer this program.

The program consists of six modules covering Methodist History (Early Methodism and European Methodism), Methodist Theology (Doctrine and Ethics), and Methodist Ecclesiology (Including polity but focused on the mission in contemporary Europe). Students take one module a semester. In the majority of cases, the students are engaged in ministry either prior to or after ordination during this time.

At present each module in made up of eleven lessons which have of three components.
 •  Printed and online readings.
 •  Online exercises
 •  A weekly webinar

From 2020, each lesson will also include at least one videoed lecture. This was successfully introduced to one course in 2019.

Each module is concluded with a residential block seminar of two to three days, and students have to complete a major essay on a topic related to the course.

The e-Academy operates primarily as a network linking together students and lecturers from diverse parts of Europe. The lecturers are either suitably qualified pastors or professors at one of the Methodist seminaries. The only people employed on a regular basis are the coordinator and an administrator – both of whom are employed in a part time capacity. The work of the e-Academy is overseen by a board comprised of representatives of the four UMC episcopal areas, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, and the independent Methodist Churches.

A new development which, it is hoped, will facilitate the expansion and improvement of the program is a partnership with Cliff College in Britain. This partnership includes access to the TheologyX learning management system, which offers numerous technological advances that will enhance our program.

The key pedagogical features that we strive to implement are.

 •  Learner centred – It seeks to enable students to learn with and from each other.

 •  Interactive – It requires interaction between the lecturers and students, and amongst the students.

 •  Praxis oriented – It is designed to facilitate interaction between academic theological content and thinking with the lived experience of ministry.

 •  Connectional – It brings together students and lecturers from diverse countries to learn together.

 •  Communal and relational – It is based on the recognition that the learning best takes place in the context of relationships of commitment and trust. A key element of the program is the building of a community of learning. Here, the residential seminars have been of great importance

 •  Responsibility and commitment – Community involves mutual responsibility. On the one hand, students are responsible for their own learning, but on the other, they responsible to enhance the learning of other students by participating in the interactional dimensions of each lesson. 

The program was designed to meet a particular need – to equip students who had been educated at non-Methodist Institutions with a deep understanding of the Methodist tradition so that they could creatively draw on it as they engaged their ministry. It has however had two unforeseen consequences which have become increasingly important particularly in the present context of The United Methodist Church.

1. The development of deep relationships between church leaders from different parts of Europe. This occurred not only in the organised dimensions of the program but also on the initiative of students. They organised, for example, an online fellowship group, congregational visits, and partnerships between congregations in different countries.

2. The facilitation of inter-contextual learning. While students were united by their common membership in a Methodist, in most cases United Methodist, Church they discovered the dynamic variety of contextual differences that lead to very different understandings of the Methodist tradition and its embodiment. Students came from the richest and some of the poorest nations of Europe. Some came from highly secularised societies others from deeply religious societies, though with different dominant religions – Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Islamic. The nations and the churches had lived through the twentieth century on different sides of the Iron Curtain. The e-Academy provided a community in which students could learn from each other’s contexts and experiences  

The Methodist e-Academy has not achieved all its goals and has not fully implemented its desired pedagogy. However, its structure as a virtual connection linking students and lecturers across very different countries and contexts has provided the flexibility to address the particular needs of European United Methodism and provides an example of how online learning can be used to provide inter-contextual and connectional theological education with limited resources, which would not have been possible in a traditional institution.