An Overlooked Reason for Decline in Seminary Enrollment 3

Many seminaries and divinity schools are concerned about the present and future of theological education. In layperson’s terms, this means a concern for more students enrolled as numbers have been on the decline. Last year, the Association of Theological Schools reported 57% of their member schools noted a declining enrollment. While there are the changing U. S. demographics and X-factor of two years of Covid, a more fundamental issue is present and often overlooked.

For a couple of related articles on seminary enrollment published last year, see HERE and HERE.

My concern, one I have been voicing for almost twenty years, is part of this decline may be traced to poor disciple making efforts of local churches. All seminary students were once unbelievers in the fields of lostness. If the fields are not sown this morning, harvested this afternoon, then schools will begin to see a decline in students by this evening.

Do not misunderstand. I am a strong advocate for theological education at the graduate level. For a decade, I served as an associate professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Though presently engaged full-time in theological education at the undergraduate level, each year I give lectures to various seminary classes and continue to teach at the seminary-level in an adjunctive capacity. My life has been submerged in the classroom for twenty-five years. I believe in, recommend, and participate in seminary education.

But my endorsement does not change the problem at hand. And it is a real problem. Of course, the largest schools (often connected to denominations) do not experience the effects as their counterparts. A massive battleship responds differently to a storm at sea than a row boat. There are very few battleships, but many row boats, in the water.

Declining enrollments and shifts in theological education are complex issues. I do not wish to make light of such or state the problem may be solved with one quick-fix. We did not get here overnight and no solution will arrive overnight.

However, we must be honest and understand that sometimes complex problems are not always solved by complex solutions. Sometimes the way of the simple is extremely difficult when we operate from very complicated models.

Call me simple-minded, but theological education is predicated upon evangelistic labors. Such is biblical missiology. Apostolic work never begins with self-theologizing but evangelizing. After churches are birthed from the harvest, formal theological education develops. Cut off the evangelistic pipeline and theological education will suffer. My hypothesis follows:

Declining evangelism among a people -> Declining number of people coming to faith -> Declining number of people baptized and becoming members of local churches -> Declining number of church members -> Declining number of people called into vocational ministry -> Declining number of people enrolling in seminaries and divinity schools.

Tomorrow’s students are today’s church members. If churches diminish efforts in reaching others with the gospel, they will have fewer people to send to seminaries.

While such is not the only hypothesis for declining enrollments (as noted above), it is a significant contributor. Of course, this trickle-down effect is never felt overnight. A school will never see a change in its Full-Time Equivalent statistics because of last year’s lack of evangelistic ministries. However, such neglect will have an impact over 10, 20, and 30 years.

Because the decline is slow and over a lengthy period of time, such micro-shifts go unnoticed until a generation later. And while missiologists across time are outspoken with concerns, they are often viewed as making mountains out of molehills and not canaries in coal mines.

Though institutions will still deny my hypothesis (and that of others just expressed differently), they now not only recognize but acutely feel the problem. Since they did not consider, discern, and take the lead to make changes years ago, many now are forced to change–and the contemporary change is, and will be, painful.

But one has to acknowledge the root of the problem and not just the uncomfortable surface issues. Of course, most changes made, and being made, are insufficient over the long-run and will not address the problem of declining evangelistic work (e.g., schools will diminish entrance standards, cut costs, move to more on-line training, give more attention to training leaders in other countries). Structural shifts, new economic models, and innovative delivery systems, though oftentimes much needed, are band-aids on a hemorrhaging patient.

With the crisis at hand, many institutions will make many sacrifices but never address the evangelistic problem in their backyards. They will do little to help churches, denominations, and networks. They will do little to embrace an apostolic imagination among their leadership and pass it along to their current students. Evangelism, if offered, will remain a three-hour course at best and disconnected from the broader curriculum.

Disclaimer: It is one thing for churches to be involved significantly in evangelistic work throughout their communities and the Holy Spirit does not bring many people into the Kingdom. It is another matter altogether for churches to be uninvolved significantly in evangelistic work throughout their communities and the Holy Spirit does not bring people into the Kingdom. But I am unconvinced that the former applies to most U. S. churches.