Introduction

When I was in my first year of the Master of Divinity program at Duke Divinity School, my wife and I met with an insurance salesman to set up a life insurance policy. It turned out that he had attended the Divinity School as well, for about a year, in the early 1980s. As a Presbyterian at a United Methodist school, he had basically no funding, and his part-time work as a UPS driver didn't make ends meet. He told us, "When we got to the point where we were eating one meal a day, I knew it was time to quit."

Theological education can be a prohibitively expensive endeavor. It has crippled many thousands of pastors with debt, driven other graduates away from occupational ministry due to debt, and kept countless more qualified candidates from completing or even starting a program of theological education.

When I first applied to divinity school I assumed that thousands of people had left money in their wills or made other plans to help endow schools like mine. I was wrong. Seminaries and divinity schools of all denominations struggle to make ends meet, find themselves at the low end of funding priorities for churches, individuals, and denominational bodies, and can rarely give their students the financial help that is needed.

This is a major problem because without well-trained clergy and lay leaders, churches suffer from a lack of leadership. Without this leadership local churches are less able to confront the daily ministry needs around them, from spreading the Gospel to caring for the sick and poor.

It is because of this problem that I have initiated this forum for conversation. I believe that we need a grassroots program to raise funding for theological schools. The question is, how and where to begin? I invite readers of this blog to share their ideas and, I hope, their enthusiasm. We'll work from there.