Here comes this anger-inducing piece of news from The Lead:
John Mitman, executive director of the Society for the Increase of the Ministry (SIM), a Connecticut-based nonprofit that provides financing for Episcopal seminarians, said students often balk at the prospect of relocating to such pricey cities as New York, Berkeley, Calif., and Cambridge, where tuition, books and living expenses can run upward of $40,000 a year.
What’s more, those who leave seminary with debt face average annual student loan payments of more than $12,000 — with an average starting salary of just $45,500.
Anger-inducing… Or maybe frustration. I was thinking $40K total in my two previous rants. How can a church, promising to reach out to the poor of the world, insist on it’s clergy to go $120K into debt? If I’d seen this report back in 2001 when I was entering the discernment process, I’d have run the other way screaming.
I feel like screaming four letter words at the top of my lungs. Why is it so freaking hard to do the one damn thing I’ve ever wanted to do?
It’s kind of interesting that (a) the liberal seminaries cited in the report are the ones having the problems - while the conservative seminaries are not. I say this because it’s the “liberal” side that claims to be all about social justice. There’s this really pitiful quote…
The seminary experience “is taking a secular person and making that person into a spiritual being,” said Brett Donham, chair of the EDS board of trustees. “It’s learning a new language, a new way of seeing the world. [Seminarians] need to talk with each other and with people who’ve gone through it before.”
What? No… graduate school is about making an academician. It’s a church geek party. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it. If the seminarian wasn’t a “spiritual being” in the first place, s/he is in serious trouble. After seminary is done, the first parish (or four) will need to use holy brillo pads to scrape the scholastic plaster off get to the spiritual being underneath. About that time sermons will stop flying over the heads of the congregants and, instead, reach into their hearts.
I’m currently in seminary and am certainly racking up some student loans, but I should walk away with somewhere between “only” $40,000-$50,000 in student loans. At AMBS (Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary) students only fund the school’s expenses from the beginning of September through mid-October, the rest of the school year (mid-October through July) is funded by donors. Our professors’ jobs are really a labor of love though-as far as professors go, they don’t make much at all.
When I graduate I will go full time into the mission field-have no idea how I’m going to raise funds for that while paying off student loans…
“When I graduate I will go full time into the mission field-have no idea how I’m going to raise funds for that while paying off student loans…”
I had a friend who, for nearly a decade (in the 1980s), turned away the phone calls from his student loans (at Harvard) by reminding them he was a priest in charge of a very poor parish. I don’t know what happened in that situation, although he is still a priest. One wonders that *any* minister of any denomination can pay it off.
Interestingly enough, one of the things that is most often not known about Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry is that in its original founding they required that every student participate in assigned service to the community, whether mopping seminary floors or volunteering in a hunger center. I do not know whether that continues to be a requirement.
But, let me defend the liberal seminaries only in that they originally located where they did before those became high price zones. They were founded so as to make it easier for students to reach them. But, I can remember talking to older clergy who remembered when the bishops would give significant (or sometimes total) support to those whom they sent to seminary.
Yes, Christianity in America has lost much. We want Master’s degree (Ph.D. preferred) clergy, but then want them to work for low wages, and complain bitterly should they say something. We want academic excellence, but complain about spiritual poverty. We want dynamic and inspiring sermons, provided we do not need to follow through. We want 24/7 service, as long as no member is required to make a commitment longer than one hour a week. We want a respected community leader who cares for the poor, as long as they do not actually attend our church.
I suspect that if Jesus were to come back, he would begin many of his sentences addressed to America with “Woe to you. . .”