My son is in a graduate business program, a friend of his is in law school, and a friend of mine is studying ethics. What do these students have in common?
Along with grasping theory and information, each is mastering his discipline largely by studying cases. Cases reflect the complexity, nuances, and richness of life. They require not memorization, but thoughtfulness, analysis, and sometimes following hunches. And if they are drawn from real life, the consequences of whatever decision was actually made can be evaluated as well.
Take business, for example. If a class is tackling a management or manufacturing problem that confronted the Chrysler Corporation, after the students have done their own analyses and made their recommendations, the professor can reveal what the corporation did and how it turned out. The cases studied be come paradigms, or models, of how to handle a similar challenge. The students learn to rely on the cases, not as hard-and-fast rules for future decision-making, but as guides providing insight and wisdom that allow them to face whatever challenge arises.
Case study does not mean there are no sound business principles that need to be learned. It does mean that the business principles by themselves cannot sufficiently sensitize and educate the student. Case study is one way for the student to gain experience without making decisions that could affect people and dollars.
Or take legal studies. Our judicial system lives and dies by decisions that at tempt to apply the law to actual cases. Law students analyze cases in relation to the established case law in order to know how to advise their clients. The students study principles, but they spend a lot of their time practicing how those principles apply to real life.
Education for the ministry is also a professional education that seeks to prepare students not just to do research, but to actually pastor churches and practice ministry in a variety of settings. For that reason, it seems to me, ministerial education ought to make larger use of the case study approach.
When Fritz Guy was professor of theology at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, he told me that such a recommendation had been seriously considered at one time. For some reason it never became a reality. As we brainstormed about what such an approach would look like, we came up with a number of suggestions.
If we want seminary students to experience ministry as much as possible while in the classroom, there is no better way to do it than through actual or fictitious cases. For example, while there may be times when a pastor is asked to exegete, or interpret, a specific Bible passage, more often than not his work will require him to preach a sermon on a passage. What would happen if, in classes studying biblical books, students not only exegeted a passage like Jeremiah 31 on an exam, but also were required to address a congregational situation that paralleled the situation described in the passage by writing a sermon based on the passage? Students would have to do sound exegesis, but this would be only part of the assignment. In addition, they would have to reflect theologically on the text and integrate that reflection with in sights from management, psychology, and public relations. Or the professor might give students a specific case problem and challenge them to make the chapter relevant to that congregation.
Another possibility would be for the professor to ask students to write an essay detailing how they would handle the following situation: A young woman looking for pastoral help has picked your name at random out of the yellow pages of the phone book. She is about to commit suicide, but tells you that she is giving you one last chance to persuade her that life is worth keeping. She is not a Christian, she has a poor marriage in which both she and her husband cheat on each other, and they have two daughters who are drug-dependent and failing in school. Using all you have learned in your seminar training in pastoral counseling, theology, biblical studies, etc., what would you say to this woman?
The case study approach should not be limited to examinations, however. Classes should be broken into small discussion groups more often, and each group given a case to tackle. Or clusters of three students might work on a semester-long project that involved analyzing the operation of a local church that seemed to be in trouble, and making recommendations for its revival and growth. Or those students interested in church administration might tackle the cases/problems of a conference or union and make recommendations. The possibilities are literally endless.
Competent ministry requires the integration of theory with practice, not the mastery of theory alone or the repetition of practice alone. Seminaries sometimes are staffed by teachers with academic credentials but little pastoral experience, and consequently these seminaries can turn into graduate schools in which each department tries to prepare its students for further graduate work in that discipline rather than for pastoral ministry. While fieldwork and practicums are important and helpful, the plan I envision calls for more than that. What we need is a reconceptualizing of the ways in which seminary curricula and courses them selves are structured. A new approach to teaching is required, not simply additional courses or a shuffling of course hours from "theory" to "practics." The new approach will put a premium on replicating at school the very situations the graduates will face when they begin their work. I predict that with this approach teachers, students, and the church at large will become more excited about seminary education. And that our seminaries will begin to produce better-trained pastors.
