Our Bible colleges are in trouble.

I’m writing this not to make accusation or to bring judgments against my fellow believers.  Nor do I claim to have all the answers to the challenges faced by our Bible colleges.  I believe our colleges are being lead by deeply committed and faithful Christian servants.  I write this because I am deeply concerned about what is happening to our Bible colleges. 

Perhaps what our Bible colleges are evolving into is the very best option and will result in more and better-trained ministers.  Nevertheless, I am concerned. These are my observations and concerns.  I do not claim to back them up with volumes of research or superior wisdom.  You may of course agree, disagree, or dismiss me as a crackpot.  All I ask is that you will use this as a prompt to hold our Bible colleges accountable.   Let me outline six of my concerns. 

1   The cost of Bible college is very high.  After two years at one of our colleges, my daughter is back home taking class at a local community college.  We simply could not afford the cost.  She worked about 20 hours a week as a waitress, applied for every scholarship she could, kept up her grades and lived frugally.  But at the end of two years, she concluded that $16,000 a year (before aid) was too much.    I am sure that her’s is not a singular story. 

I am not sure what, if anything, can be done.  But we may price ourselves out of higher education if we are not careful.

2 We have a dependence on federal money.  Most of our colleges would close within a matter of months, if not days, if their students did not receive Federal grant and aid.  This is either the result of high college cost or part of its cause.  This dependence on Federal money comes with certain strings attached.  These strings, I fear, will become more numerous, more egregious, and stronger in the years ahead.   What if our colleges were given the option of providing gay-married housing or loosing eligibility for Federal Money?  “That will never happen,” some might say.  Sorry, I just don’t trust our government that much.  Never forget that the one who pays the fiddler gets to call the tune.   Our Federal government may call a tune we can’t accept.

3 Related to the above is the relationship between accreditation and federal money.  One of the ways that the tune is being called from the outside of our colleges is via accreditation.  Accreditation is voluntary, but it is needed in order to have access to the Federal money.  I remember taking classes that were utterly useless, completely unrelated to ministry, but required because of standards set from the outside.  Might this be the door through which a Trojan horse enters?  I am not sure who coined the term, “Follow the money”, but here it needs to apply.  Are we submitting to accreditation standards because we are hoping to obtain a vigorous academic stand or because it is a pathway to money?

If you are not convinced that I am crackpot by now, allow me to bring that conclusion home now.

4 I am deeply concerned that our Bible colleges are moving away from an emphasis on specialized ministry.   One Thursday night at Christian service camp the preacher at Vespers said, “Some of you young men need to stop running from the call of ministry.  You need to make a commitment to specialized Christian Ministry.”  I made a commitment to answer that call.  I think we should extend that challenge to our Bible Colleges. 

Yes, we need Christian businessmen, teachers, councilors, and for that matter, all the other trades.  By the way, notice how none of our colleges seem to be offering vocational-type training.  Maybe we don’t need Christian plumbers, carpenters, or auto mechanics.  Or maybe we are being smoke screened.   We need preachers, evangelists, church planters and missionaries more than ever.  Somewhere (and I suspect it has a lot to do with more students, more money, and more bragging rights) many of our colleges have made vocational ministry just one of many options.

Hiding behind the guise of “all our students are preparing for ministry,” some of our colleges have lost the commitment to help men answer the call to be a preacher.    Some of our schools are still doing a fine job of preparing ministers, but, at some, the ministry training department is POINTLESS. 

5 For reasons that escape me, many of our colleges are pushing for athletic enrollment.  Once up on a time Bible Colleges played each other in sports for the fun of it.  College athletics were a recreational outlet.  Now it seems that college athletics have become a recruiting tool. Sometimes called the Flutie Effect, there is said to be a correlation between athletic success and enrollment.  It is argued that having extensive athletic programs allows our colleges to recruit students that would go to state/secular schools.  But allow me to offer an observation.  This gets back to, “Why do we have Bible colleges?”  It seems that this is another de-emphasis of ministry.

When I was getting ready to go to Bible College, I wanted to be a preacher.  All other considerations aside I was going to make my decision on that criteria.  Now students are asked to choose a Bible college because they run a spread offense or they need a shooting guard.   

6 My final point of rambling is many of our colleges are experiencing an identity crisis; there is a loss for the heart of the Restoration Movement.   I believe it is a mistake to think that we have perfectly and fully restored the church of the New Testament and that we can’t learn from any other faith community.  But it is also a mistake to divorce ourselves from our historic plea and effort to restore the church.  Many of our colleges are doing just that.  In fact, some of our colleges have no tie to the thought and commitments of the Restoration Movement, except taking money from Christian churches.  It is possible to graduate from some of our schools and be completely comfortable in a commitment to a denominational church.  In fact, I worked for a time with one of our colleges that had no Christian Church/ Church of Christ staff, no classes on the Restoration Movement and no students from any Christian church.  Their only tie was the monthly contributions made by some Christian Churches. 

Which is the point of all these ramblings and ranting.  Our church leaders, ministers, elders, and mission committees need to hold our colleges accountable.  They need to ask tough questions and refuse to accept vague generalities and clichés.  I don’t believe we should hold colleges hostage with our giving, but we do need to ask the hard questions and, if those answers are wanting, reconsider support.  If, however, those answers are faithful and true then our support needs to be aggressive and generous.  I fear we are betting the future, with all our chips on the table, on what may be a bad bet.