Is It Time to Write the Eulogy for Seminary Education?

Frederick Schmidt wonders whether seminaries will make the necessary changes to better prepare leaders for the Church :

Our seminaries are dying and the Master of Divinity degree has been discredited.

Bishops and other church leaders once believed both were essential to effective ministry, but today they are considered one of several routes to ordination and an increasing number of church leaders are arguing that attending seminary may actually be detrimental to the process they once considered the gold standard.

A large number of the mainline seminaries are selling their buildings and property, cutting faculty, and eliminating degree programs. Those that are not, are competing for a shrinking pool of prospective students and rely on scholarships and lower academic standards to attract the students that they do have.

There are countless reasons for the crisis, some of them as old as the professional preparation of clergy itself.