GroshLink

As I've moonlighted in the seminary sphere, I've heard much regarding the dominance of the academic model of ministerial preparation that has been with us for the last 200 years. One friend forwarded to me the following thought by a seminary professor:

If we were really preparing students for ministry, we’d be more concerned with their orthodoxy than with their exposure to new ideas. Most of these new ideas (not all of them) come from people who had to think up something new for a dissertation. And the assigning of textbooks is based more on what the academy likes than on what is really profitable. I think we should go back to an apprenticeship model: field ed with academic components, rather than the other way around.

Graham Standish, the instructor for Pittsburgh Theological Seminary's (PTS) Spirtual Formation class on Mystical Spirituality expressed his dissatisfaction with his experience as a student at PTS and his pleasure to see changes in the institution. Standish's perspective on mystics as the ones which draw close to God and many times birth new movements which systematize their life/teachings until another mystic comes along reminds me of Richard Lovelace's The Dynamics of Spiritual Life.  Is such the cycle of the people of God?  With true transformation coming as each individual, generation, community (local and in larger associations) chooses whether to accept the gift of drawing closer to God, growing in humility, or divines their own path leading to pride and the institutionalization/protection of power. 

Earlier post: What is a Christian mystic?