Evolving Adventist theological education (part 2)

Infield supervision, mentoring, and InMinistry.

Walton A. Williams, associate ministerial secretary and coordinator of off-campus continuing education for North American Adventist clergy from the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, United States.

In recent years the Seventh-day Adventist Church has felt the need for a more professionalized ministry. Consequently education and training in the Church has become more comprehensive and formal. However, as such trends emerge, it is possible for pastoral preparation for ministry to become more compartmentalized and disconnected.

There is a natural distance between the ministry that is taught in the classroom and that which is experienced in the field. This distance may become alarmingly large when almost all the formal pastoral training in the Church is left to college and seminary faculties. Even the best education frequently leaves college and seminary graduates unprepared for the challenges they face.

Often when young pastors arrive in their first ministry assignment, they find them selves isolated with poor personal and professional support. Such a scenario leaves a new minister discouraged, disillusioned and ready to quit pastoral ministry within a few years of entry.

Supervision, background, and theory

Since the 1930s, Seventh-day Adventists have sought to smooth the transition from classroom academia to church practicum by the use of intern supervision. Yet ministerial supervision came into being rather begrudgingly with field training tending to be intermittent and spotty. This disconnectedness was similar to supervision's reputation in industrial America, where production tended to over shadow more humane and holistic concerns. Therefore the history of Adventist ministerial supervision of interns, has been gathering suspicious looks from members, leaders, researchers, and authors.

Much of the framework for supervision in industry was built on what Douglas McGregor called Theory X. This theory holds that the average human being avoids responsibility, has little ambition and possesses an inherent dislike of work, avoiding it if possible. For this reason, Theory X contends, most people must be controlled, directed and threatened in order to get optimum performance from them.1 Much of the traditional supervision of employees in business, and sometimes that of young pastors in early ministry (including that of the Seventh-day Adventist Church), has operated under the assumptions of Theory X.

In contrast to this theory, McGregor pro posed a different set of assumptions, which he called Theory Y. These assumptions assert that the expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest, and thus external control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort in behalf of the objectives of an organization. Theory Y maintains that an employee will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of the objectives to which he or she is actually committed. This self-direction is itself a strong motivational factor for an employee, causing the average person not only to accept but to seek responsibility, while at the same time encouraging them to exercise their full potential.

A supervisory experience based on Theory Y, rather than Theory X, will produce a more healthy, reliable employee or minister.

Challenges to supervision

Supervision—secular or ecclesiastical—has frequently placed supervisors and supervisees in contradictory roles. On one hand, management may have insisted that production and performance be the priority. On the other hand supervisees have expected supervisors to understand their problems and treat them with fairness and thoughtfulness in representing them to leadership.

The inevitable tension arising from supervisors attempting to represent both interests illustrates the less than ideal results that have unfortunately developed in many Adventist supervisory relationships in the past.

The heart of ministerial development occurs when it is understood that pastors develop a ministerial identity by more than simply acquiring certain skills and producing expected quotas. Pastoral ministry is "more than doing the ministerial thing; it is identifying oneself in a particular way as minister. 'Minister' becomes part of who we are, not [merely] of what we do."2

The Theory X-oriented supervision of the past is flawed when applied to twenty-first-century ministerial training in the Adventist Church. Highly educated, trained pastors still abandon their calling. Increasingly, religious employers realize that they have equipped professional ministers with powerful skills without developing these men or women of God as a complete persons. Thus, after the Seventh-day Adventist Master of Divinity Steering Committee reviewed theological education, they sought a better implementation of Theory Y. They realized that a critical part of such a Theory Y application to ministerial field training is found in the mentoring model.

Mentoring

Originating from ancient Greek mythology,3 mentoring has experienced a pinnacle of expansion and research attention during the last decade.4 Not only business and education, but also various departments of the U.S. Government are now prominent advocates of mentoring.5 It is estimated that one-third of America's major corporations have mentoring programs in which executives guide and counsel younger employees who show promise.6

Mentoring's recent ascension in popularity in nearly every employment milieu is simply astounding. In just twenty years mentoring has gone from virtual obscurity to becoming the prevailing method of training young entrants in business, education, and industry.

During the same twenty years a change has occurred in the pastoral environment as well as in the expectations churches have of their clergy. Far-reaching, ongoing change in the pastoral workplace demands some form of ongoing ministry learning. Not only do opinion leaders endorse the need for constant training but influential scholars are advocating such a workplace transformation.

The "learning organization," now only an emerging pattern, may well become the standard practice in the twenty-first century.7 Instead of functioning primarily as an employer, focused merely on ministry production, churches of the future will increasingly provide their pastors with components for creating such a permanent learning environment.

"InMinistry"

After extensively reviewing the Adventist ministerial training provided by the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University, the North American Division (NAD) Master of Divinity Steering Committee elected to employ formal mentoring as an integral part of a new M.Div. degree option, being called—InMinistry.

The basic object of the new option is to provide focus and intentionality to pastoral training throughout the educational experience of seminary students. Critical to this focus is the inclusion of a formal mentoring component. A qualified and trained men tor will be able to engage ministerial students in intentional reflection on their ministerial activity and hold them accountable to their own growth objectives in ministry.

Both the existing on-campus pro gram and the new InMinistry option share common ground, including a basic curriculum which leads to a 96-hour Master of Divinity degree. Conferences and students considering the InMinistry option should note the following prerequisites and qualifications.

The student should (1) have employment with an NAD entity having completed a B.A. degree in religion or theology; and (2) be completely committed to the new option of M.Div. education.

Conferences should (1) be willing to participate completely in mentor training in connection with the NAD; (2) be discrete in selecting, placing and matching mentors and interns; (3) be willing to adjust job expectations in the case of InMinistry participants; and (4) be willing to provide some financial support in conjunction with NAD policy and in the light of mentor and intern increased travel.

The InMinistry program consists of: (1) a two-week orientation at Andrews University, including one extension class; (2) a year or two of actual field experience (prior to oncampus study) during which 12 semester hours of credit are completed each year; (3) participation in a mentorship program developed by the local conference; (4) fifteen months of on-campus study at Andrews; and (5) completion of remaining years (totaling 4 years) of InMinistry, field-based education.

InMinistry is also different from the normal on-campus M.Div. program in that it concentrates on competency-based contextualized learning that the student demonstrates by portfolios rather than examinations. Such competency based contextualized learning, though new to Adventist theological education, targets specific pastoral competencies that are demonstrated in actual ministry practice. Students are allowed some level of latitude in choosing from three levels of proficiency. These are called the emerging, developed, and distinguished proficiency levels.

Internet course work

Another area of InMinistry distinction will be in Internet course work. Annually, InMinistry will include one class chosen for its adaptability to Internet learning. Instead of similarity to the solo environment of correspondence classwork, InMinistry Internet course work will utilize the collaborative cohort atmosphere developed during Orientation. This will keep students working together while scattered across North America. "Chat times" will dialogue over ministry issues, sponsor online interaction with the professors, and present online exams to round out Internet learning.

A ministry development theme

A vital ingredient of InMinistry M.Div. delivery is the annual accentuation of a ministry development theme.

As an example, the first year's theme is "The Pastor as Person." During this year, while each class emphasizes that theme, the contextualized course work (six semester hours) will intentionally concentrate on the pastor as person. Here the intern/seminarian's focus will be on him/herself as a spiritual person in relationship with others. Following years will concentrate on; "The Pastor as Leader," "The Pastor as Evangelist," and "The Pastor as Specialist." InMinistry is different from tradi tional programs and may not fit you or your organization. But, should you, your college, or your conference desire more information regarding particulars for enrolling in the InMinistry option, contact the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.8

1 Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1960).

2 Ibid., 18.

3 Mentor, in Homer's Odyssey, circa 800 B.C., had been the faithful companion of Odysseus, King of Ithaca. Before setting off for the Trojan War, Odysseus instructed Mentor to stay in Ithaca and take full charge of the royal household with particular duty to raise the king's young son, Telemachus, to be a fit person to ascend the throne.

4 Georgia T. Chao, Pat M. Walz, and Philip D. Gardner, "Formal and Informal Mentorships: A Comparison on Mentoring Functions and Contrast with Non-Mentored Counterparts," Personnel Psychology 45, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 619-36. Marie A. Wensch, ed. "New Directions for Teaching and Learning," found in Mentoring Revisited: Making an Impact on Individuals and Institutions, from no. 57, Spring 1994, 1, says, "In the past decade few strategies for personal and professional advancement have received as much public attention as mentoring."

5 Stephen F. Hamilton and Mary Agnes Hamilton, "Mentoring Programs: Promise and Paradox," Phi Delta Kappan 73, no. 7 (March 1992): 546-50.

6 Jess Gibson, Coaching Champions: The Privilege of Mentoring (Green Forest, Ar.: New Leaf Press, 1994), 13. Others have called mentoring an American management innovation.

7 Ibid., 2, 3.

8 To reach the seminary, call 616-471-3536. To contact Walt Williams, the InMinistry director, call 865-397-5116 or email [email protected]. Or visit our Web site: http://www.andrews.edu/SEM/InMinistry/.


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Walton A. Williams, associate ministerial secretary and coordinator of off-campus continuing education for North American Adventist clergy from the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, United States.

October 2001

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