The Rev. Richard Ray, Ph.D., has spent his ministry as a pastor, college teacher and board member, and seminary professor. Recently he has taken on the responsibility of Consultant for Theological Renewal for Presbyterians For Renewal. He brings a particular interest in classic theology--the theological writers the Reformers were reading. Most of all, Dick brings a love for God, and the seminarians and their professors engaged in theological study.

From where did the idea of Christian colleges arise?

The church-related college is a phenomenon of the New World, a wonderful creation of churches in North America as they realized they needed to provide solid, classical education for students who would become leaders in the churches and communities. I think almost everyone would agree that we have not done very well as a denomination in supporting these colleges, in being involved to help, to guide, and provide friendship. Therefore, the colleges, to survive, often turned to others for support and have accommodated themselves to other cultural directions. But they are wonderful institutions and a great resource. There is nothing like them in other parts of the world.

What makes them distinctively Presbyterian?

They were founded as acts of stewardship, discipleship, and commitment in order to prepare people to serve as informed, Christian leaders. The Presbyterian way of reformation is to dig deeply into the classics. That's the way our Reformers did it. You read the footnotes in Calvin's Institutes and you learn what he read. He believed one cannot be an educated Christian leader without learning to read deeply in Scripture and classics, Christian and otherwise. It's what distinguishes Presbyterians. We believe an educated person can read creatively, steadfastly in Scripture, and also in the spiritual classics. That's what our colleges, founded with a Presbyterian sense of mission and responsibility, originally required.

Our schools have gotten away from that in order to become more responsive to the needs of a changing culture and a changing public. What we may not have done well enough is to interpret the distinctiveness of our own educational heritage and purpose to our own congregations. Instead of placing importance on the Christian liberal arts process, many students who graduate from a Presbyterian college today have had only an introductory course on the Bible. One course--quickly taken, quickly absorbed, quickly lost. It equips them to do very little with the Bible from that point on.

We should see this as our responsibility: to equip students to read the Scriptures deeply and thoughtfully for the rest of their lives, and to equip them to read original classics from our spiritual tradition, deeply and thoughtfully.

Both of those tasks are suspect to some academics today: First, the desire to be open-minded leaves very little agreed-upon meaning to be read in the Bible, and second, reading the classics is suspect--those works of dead White men. What would you say to those objections?

How can you argue the point? It's like saying "Do you like apple pie?" to someone who has never had apple pie. You can describe the molecular structure of apples, the moisture content of the pie, how long it's baked, and the fact that people have enjoyed apple pies for two millennia, but they still wouldn't think apple pie is something they'd like to try.

If we are frightened away by criticism from people who do not know the classics, then we should be willing to go back and examine our own fears. The problem comes out of a loss of deep rapport with the classic writers themselves. We do not know them; therefore, we are willing to consent to the insults. But if we read the classics, we discover why the people who wrote these books have classic things to say to us.

If you could wave a magic wand and sweepingly change a thing or two, what would you do to make our Presbyterian colleges better?

First, we need to honor that great heritage of support and faithfulness, to show great appreciation for the people who care for the colleges and work in them. Then we need to have opportunities for them to discover for themselves the distinct heritage that lies behind the Reformed mind and the creation of the Presbyterian way of understanding church life and leadership. I'd begin with the boards of trustees, because they direct the course of the college. It is the trustees who hold the legal title and make the decisions. I would have retreats for trustees and help them discover our great heritage, this treasure we have neglected. Then they would be in a better position to oversee the future direction of the college.

What's particularly healthy or strong in our Presbyterian colleges these days?

They are a mirror image of the diversity of our own denomination. Young people have a variety to choose from. The colleges are distributed geographically across the country; some are small, some larger. They reflect different needs of families, different interests and ambitions of students. It almost takes your breath away to know the educational resources in our colleges, and their endowments and real estate holdings. The faculties are among the best trained in the country, although not all are Presbyterian, and many are active in their own congregations and provide leadership in churches. Some colleges understand themselves as quite conservative or evangelical. Others would not think of themselves in that way, but nevertheless, they are pleased to think of themselves as Presbyterian and church-related. All these things are positive, and we must be thankful.

However, I would hope they would find resources to re-examine their directions and go deeper into their heritage, and to help their faculties to understand more of the Presbyterian heritage of the history of education.

How about the state of Presbyterian seminary education? Does that reflect some of the things you've seen in colleges?

In many ways it does. We have a great resource in our seminaries. I can't think of any other denomination that has quite the strength we have in our seminaries and denominational colleges. When I see the leadership in the Society for Biblical Literature, time after time it has been the people in our seminaries who provide the leadership. We have some of the greatest scholars in the world.

That sounds like a glowing assessment. Not everyone I talk to feels that good about our Presbyterian seminaries.

I've heard the concerns, especially when I was a faculty member of Pittsburgh Presbyterian Theological Seminary. One concern is the priority of relating the seminary to the local church--training people to do well in the small churches under 200 members that are the majority in our denomination. Scholars are increasingly guided by their sense of responsibility to produce good scholarship and viable theology in their disciplines. They are held accountable by their organizations and faculties.

Whatever the need for scholarship, however, their most important calling is to equip the leaders of our small churches. How then does a faculty member relate to churches? Although they have a heart for the Christian faith, some of the faculty and administration, frankly, may have to have a refresher course about the needs and opportunities and responsibilities of pastoring 200-member churches.

A second concern is how we introduce students to the breadth of disciplines in a relatively short period of time. And it is short! In the Middle Ages it took much longer to be qualified academically. We're asking a lot of people preparing for the ministry, but it may not be enough. At this point the tension is not resolved over conflicting needs for exposure to the breadth of disciplines, concern for practical needs, the experience of doing research, and going deeper in Scripture and theology. Pastors need to learn to go deeply into the theological disciplines, because that is the path that will nourish their ministry and equip them best as preachers of the Word of God.

How would you go deeply into the theological disciplines?

Learn to read classic books. When I review the bibliography that John Wesley amassed during his early years, I am astonished at how he prepared, inadvertently, to become a great leader of spiritual renewal, eventually becoming the forefather of the Methodist Church in England. He read classic theologians. That is how the great theologians did it.

Increasingly our Presbyterian seminary students are coming from broad backgrounds: pharmacy, law, nursing, social work, computer programming. They have not read the classics. I don't mean excerpts; I mean reading the books that will nourish their lives and give them the perspective with which to evaluate decisions being made in their ministries and in the life of the denomination. They will be the ones to provide a critical assessment of directions proposed in their churches, presbyteries, synods, and the General Assembly. If they do not have the long view of classic theological writing and creedal history, they will be victims of whatever comes up at the present and sounds good. Without the long view, they will not know how to evaluate. We depend upon our pastors to be able to see the continuity of the direction of Christian theology.

Learning how to read what is the central core in our Christian heritage--to be at home in it, to live in it, to be nourished by it--frees one to be able to preach practical, lively, down-to-earth sermons with a great deal more authority, because one has a foundation. Our responsibility is to be preachers of the Word; it is what God requires of us. The central core of the theological curriculum has always been the seedbed out of which renewal and new life comes. It never has come off the top of contemporary culture!

Pastors find it challenging to interpret the Book of Confessions to church members because they don't understand the historical processes that produced them. They don't see the ways in which the messages are still vibrant and real and authoritative today or understand the ways in which they seem limited specifically to their times. We've got a wonderful resource in the Confessions. Understanding the depth and the power in the confessional statements should be a large part of the curriculum, not just an afterthought or preparation for an ordination exam. Take it seriously! It is part of our heritage and half of our Constitution.

The Southern Baptist Church had quite a cataclysmic purge in their seminaries regarding permissible theology. That's probably not likely for Presbyterians. But is there any way a church or presbytery can do anything to affect our Presbyterian seminaries?

Yes, there are lots of ways. The boards of trustees are made up largely of Presbyterians. The partnership should be natural.

The congregation must take some responsibility to become informed. Begin by learning what theological education is all about. Ask your pastors what they got out of seminary, what's good about it, what they enjoyed, what helped them to be prepared. Learn something about the history of theological education. Ask people from the seminary to come and talk about it. Elders in the church can visit seminaries. Choose the closest one and make an appointment with the president, dean, members of the faculty or board of trustees. Invite someone to come and talk to your session. Begin a dialogue.

Theological education is really a 2,000-year-long conversation among Christian people, some of whom are gifted in one way, some in others, but all have a part to play in this long conversation. We've got to get that conversation going again, because it will not only be enriching, it will be fun! We'll learn a lot from one another and grow in the process.

Seminary graduates love to make a game of "what seminary never taught me" when they get into the parish. What further preparation do theological students need for effective ministry?

They need spiritual preparation. The preparation of reading and studying is not just so one can give right answers on tests and write papers in a rush. Without time to absorb these things deeply and personally in a life of prayer and worship, they bounce over our lives, and we lose them. People were prepared for the ministry in spiritual communities up until the twelfth century, in monastic settings governed by the life of prayer. With the development of the University of Paris in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and later Oxford, people studied theology in the cathedral schools and universities, and not as much in worshiping and praying communities.

Have we lost something? Our seminaries sometimes think of themselves as minor universities, small academic institutions looked after by boards of accrediting agencies, but not so much as communities of prayer. Until we recover what it is to be involved in the disciplines of piety and in communities of prayer, we will not have graduates who are comfortable in leading their people to a deeper faith. We can hope that graduates came with this to seminary, or learn it outside of seminary. Sometimes they will not learn this easily in seminary.

These days, the seminaries are adopting courses in something called spiritual formation, a figure of speech from the Roman Catholic heritage. It's not our terminology. Ours would be "disciplines of piety." Until we absorb the central importance of developing those disciplines of prayer and worship and personal meditation in the life of the seminaries, we will not be producing spiritual leaders.

Seminaries aren't there yet, for the most part. How can we help?

We must continue to be involved in this conversation with our seminaries. Seminary faculties are devout, learned, and dedicated people, but they are very conscious of the importance of academic preparation because they are answerable to many different criteria, especially the accrediting agencies.

To whom is the seminary really accountable? To Almighty God! So our question must be, "Are we doing what God has called us to do in the person of Jesus Christ, preparing people to serve as ministers in his church?" Then we must ask if we are preparing people to become effective ministers in our churches, or are we preparing them for something else? All our seminaries have some interesting "sidebar" programs as their special features. However interesting and exotic these might seem, the central question is always, "How well are we preparing our students spiritually? Will they know people in their congregations spiritually in order to minister to them, to pray with them and for them, to proclaim the Word of God?" This must come out of our seminary graduates' own deep study of Scripture.

PFR is looking toward a congregationally based model for theological education, where the student is engulfed in the life of the church--the major dispenser of theological education--and just somewhat related to the seminary, rather than vice versa. What ideas do you have along those lines?

There are people in congregations who want to know more about their faith, who want to become involved in significant study at a serious level. This is a natural connection between a seminary and churches. There are more possible learners in the churches--over two million--than in the student bodies of the seminaries. It's a way of opening the seminaries' great resources of theological education to the local churches. The real flourishing of Christian life is in the congregation, where study takes place in the Sunday schools, during the services, in Bible studies, in circles. We have many people who want to partner with seminaries in new ways, to take seminary-level courses, even for credit, but do it in their local church.

Where is the energy for theological education? It's with people who worship every Sunday, who have pastoral concerns, who are ministering to the poor and the needy--these are the people who want to learn more. If we can invite congregations to find ways to draw seminary-level education into their own lives, it would be a blessing for us to help them. Today we have distance learning with all kinds of satellite opportunities offered from universities and community colleges, even our Presbyterian colleges. PFR's dream is a natural development.

Would you expect that a lot of these people who start taking seminary-level courses in the church would continue on toward an Master of Divinity degree and ordination?

We don't know exactly how the Spirit is moving with this. But it would lead to more responsible church leadership! For those who are led by God toward ordination, it would be a great thing, because it would come out of a natural love for their congregations and ministry. They would be comfortable in it; they would have tested what they learned by application in the real life of the church.

Would such church-based theological training drain seminaries or fill them?

Campus life already has changed, even with seminaries that have been most eager to maintain a residential campus community. Many of their students are commuters who have homes, families, and jobs. I don't see it draining the seminary. I see it changing it, enriching it--not just with the flow of people into the seminary, but ideas, concerns, and love for the seminary.

In a sense, the seminary is going out of the monastic setting and into the community. It's what happened with Reformed piety and the development of Presbyterianism in Scotland and Holland. They were mindful of the fact that spiritual life was no longer going to be done by the spiritual elite in the monasteries. It was moving out from the cloister to be centered in homes. Church-based seminary training is carrying out the original Presbyterian vision, bringing theology and spiritual life into personal life, into the home.

But isn't there something to be gained by the intense experience of being on campus and having the seminary education one's full focus, rather than something students do every second Thursday and a couple Saturdays a month?

There are a variety of ways to follow seminary education. For some people, it is important to be involved in a residential seminary community, if it is a constructive and wholesome community life that allows opportunities for individual growth and development and for one's point of view to be expressed; if it models the wisdom of charity and love and mutual caring of community support; if the community and faculty can model what it means to be a Christian community. But it must be intentionally designed and directed to be that kind of community. More and more, seminaries are finding this is important.

What would you hope to see in our educational institutions and churches?

The Almighty God remains sovereign in the life of the church. He is the leader of the church, setting the direction for it. Our job is to be responsive, which is normally the reading and hearing of his Word. One of my most enthusiastic interests is to encourage people in congregations to return to deep reading and study of Scripture. It is out of that experience that we will hear God's direction and guidance and learn what he has for us. Our best help for people is to bring them back to God's Word.