Cooperation for Theological Education

by Mark Coppenger                                                                                                                  Vol. X, No. 4, April 1997

I have to admit I didn't think I really needed seminary. Oh sure, I knew I'd learn some good things, and I'd heard that "certification" was important. But I felt I could jump right in to the pastorate with what I had.  I was one of these later-in-life callees, with family, mortgage, and a range of experience. I'd earned a doctorate and had been teaching in a Christian college for six years. My daddy was a preacher, I was a deacon, and my wife was a preacher's daughter. Surely we could figure things out through on-the-job training.

Boy, was I confused. By the leading and grace of God, we found ourselves at seminary in the fall of 1981. Instead of assigning and grading papers and tests, I was doing the homework myself. Instead of lecturing, I was taking notes furiously. It was humbling, economically trying, and wonderful.

Education: Knowledge and Fellowship

When I think what I would have missed, I shudder. So many things—the fact that the Reformer Ulrich Zwingli drowned another reformer, Felix Manz; Flake's Formula; the requirement that I spend thirty minutes in prayer each day for a semester; the use of Psalm 139 in comforting those in the hospital; the parallelism of Hebrew poetry; the realization that the Coppengers could live on a lot less money; the differences in textual density and complexity as reflected in the Fog Index; the way in which the same Greek word is the base for our words, "world" and "cosmetic"; the existence of Lenski's commentary; the fact that missionaries actually disagree about missiological approaches. These and a thousand other things.

And then there was the fellowship, the lasting friendship with a missionary in Africa, a pastor in Missouri, a church musician in Texas, and with professors.

Doing justice to God's Word

Early on, Southern Baptists realized that the ministry was sufficiently challenging and complex as to warrant some serious education. It is no small thing to do justice to the Word of God, week in, week out, shepherding a flock of believers and leading others to faith in Christ. What are the resources, the blind spots, the rules of thumb? Where are people coming from, theologically and culturally? Who's gone before us, and what do they teach us?

It takes a while to sort these things out, and it takes some seasoned teachers to help with the sorting. It takes classrooms, paper, printing, telephones, bookkeeping, maintenance, travel, projectors, and sound systems. It takes money.

While some hefty churches might be able to manage all this on their own, the vast majority of Southern Baptist churches could no more field a substantial theological training center than they could fund our mission enterprise in a foreign country. Yet, year after year, men and women walk the aisles of these smaller churches, surrendering to the gospel ministry. Most of them are as hard pressed as their churches to manage the cost of full-orbed theological education, but Southern Baptists are determined that it not stop there. They have pooled their resources through the Cooperative Program to make sure that their children who answer this particular call will be able to receive training for the daunting tasks ahead.

An extraordinary act of trust

To this end, Southern Baptists have established six seminaries, and have heavily subsidized the student costs, so that none need stumble for financial reasons. It is an extraordinary act of trust in the strategic value of these institutions.

I once read a sermon on cooperation, built on Mark 2:1-12, the story of the men who brought their paralytic friend to the Lord for healing. As they held the comers of his mat and worked to lower him through the hole they'd cleared in the roof, they anticipated our joint efforts to bring the needy to the Lord. As a newly surrendered minister makes application to seminary, the registrar works with funds supplied by a tither in Alabama, one who, so to speak, holds one corner of the mat. As he steps into his first class on the New Testament, he enjoys the insight of a professor provided that day by a little church in Oklahoma, holding another comer of the mat. And so it goes. Baptists all across the land holding their portion of the mat so that they might bring each others' children to the point of readiness for optimum service.

These mat holders have every reason to expect that their efforts will bring life to those whom they help. Unfortunately, this has not always been the case. As Southern Baptist president K. Owen White once wrote in the Texas Baptist Standard, our schools can suffer from theological "death in the pot." (cf. II Kings 4:40) With numbing frequency, Christian schools, both colleges and seminaries, drift from their moorings. The orthodox becomes heterodox. The consecrated becomes worldly, and the people in the pew are cheated.

Schools always driff left

Schools don't drift right. They drift left. The gravity of the world pulls them into compromise and spiritual lassitude. What gives? In a nutshell, schools shift their focus from the will of God to the pursuit of dollars, the world's acclaim, or some other secondary or sub-Christian value.

While writing for SBC LIFE, I discussed this shift in three articles, "Conserve is a transitive verb." (May, 1994), "It's not a game," (November, 1994), and "How does it happen?" (August, 1995). In that first column, I listed 13 forces which exert secularizing pressure on Christian educational institutions. For example:

Seeking academic "respectability"

Some faculty are overeager to gain respectability in the eyes of the secular and liberal academic world. They will often play to this audience—graduate professors, journal editors, book publishers, or the program committees of learned societies. They are more likely to focus on academic credentials and department status than evangelical zeal.

Faculty (and, indeed, most of us) desire to be left alone, yet funded. Anyone who threatens their classroom or scholarly sovereignty is the enemy. Conservatives are the least likely to adopt a laissez faire attitude, so they are the natural foe. The quickest way to become a leper on the faculty is to suggest that conservative trustees have a point or that another faculty member has strayed beyond the parameters of orthodoxy....

Alumni defending schools that no longer exist

Alumni often view their schools through rose colored glasses, encouraged to do so through glowing alumni, development, and public relations department materials and factions. When they hear that Alma Mama or old Prof Doe is "under fire," they rally to the magenta and cyan, or whatever, never suspecting that the school they knew and loved is no more....

The print and broadcast media typically favor academic and behavioral license. Few reporters are inclined or equipped to investigate doctrinal erosion. More are inclined to humiliate those who sound the alarm or take corrective action....

The accreditation process seems kinder to doctrinal drift than to conservative correction.

Schools who cut ties always become more secular

A few years back, a Christian Century writer urged that we not be so concerned with such drift — just recognize it as inevitable, and then cut the schools loose in due season, much as we do our denominational hospitals. Yes, they stay true to their Christian distinctives and purposes for a number of decades, but they become increasingly indistinguishable from their secular counterparts. At a certain point, it becomes prudent to turn them over to the culture, a gift from the church. If you want vitally connected schools, start new ones. They too will have their era of fidelity before compromise erodes their Great Commission focus.

Without integrity, money is misspent

Though Southern Baptists have done this with some colleges, they have refused to do so with their seminaries. And they are able to refuse because of Southern Baptist polity. Through the election of a president who appoints folks who nominate folks who nominate trustees, Southern Baptists keep watch care over their seminaries. It's indirect and slow, but ultimately effective. And this form of cooperation — democratic cooperation for the sake of theological integrity — is more significant than financial cooperation. Without this integrity, the dollars are misspent. With it, we can call unashamedly on the bounty of the Lord and expect his gracious anointing and material provision. And thus ordered, the seminaries bring glory to God and great encouragement to families and churches who send and receive her students.

Remembering the One we are cooperating with

We have an office of student enlistment, designed to acquaint people with our school and facilitate their transition here, but the Lord is the true enlister. We ask home churches to vouch for the applicant's call to ministry, and we believe in God's particular leading to this place or that. We don't want students on our boat if they're supposed to be in Nineveh (not to suggest that the other seminaries are Nineveh). So we, and the other seminaries do our best to seek the Lord's face, and then trust him to call out and direct his servants to our campuses as he sees fit.

"Cooperation for theological education" among Southern Baptists is admirable, but "Cooperation for theological education" with the Lord is essential. May they come to the same thing.

[Dr. Coppenger is president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City. This article reprinted from The Texas Baptist, August 1996.]