What Is Theological Education

1
What Is Theological Education?
2
Bangor Theological Seminary

• 1. A Mission Driven School
• 2. Four Points in the Mission Statement
• Prepare ministers
• Serve as an intellectual center
• Promote the scholarly study of religion
• Provide a public ministry to Northern New England,

• 3. An ecumenical school in the Congregational
  tradition
• 4. Although we welcome students from other
  faiths, we are a Christian school that bases its
  curriculum on Christian theology

3
What is Theological Education?

• Theo (s) logiathought about God
• Ancient Greek idea of a critical view of
  religious tradition.
• Christians have often used many other words for
  what seminaries do
• Sacred doctrine
• Formation

4
The Scholarly Study

• Of the Scriptures
• Of the Tradition and History
• Of Christian Teaching

5
Scholarship is scholarship

• The posing of questions
• The use of sources and resources
• Writing clearly and concisely to summarize
  investigation.
• Seeks understanding

6
Why Scholarship?

• For many, study is prayer
• Many religious traditions have a special place
  for the scholar
• Jesus said love with all your mind

7
Scholarship As Center

• Religion as a liberal art
• The need to understand the worlds faiths
• Learning to respect the Other
• Understanding culture

8
Practice As Center

• How are we faithful persons in our culture?
• A culture is a pattern of doing and thinking
• Many times we learn from our culture as well as
  critique it
• We live in a culture in flux

9
Preparation for Ministry

• Every believer is a minister and every minister
  benefits from knowledge
• The Benediction idea of sacred reading.
• Every believer is called to study and reflection

• Leadership in the Church
• Skills are needed
• Many have secular analogs and sometimes secular
  roots.
• Storytelling

10
Where is the theos? (see next slide)
11
Not on this slide
12
We Cannot Study God Directly

• God is not a thing among other things
• God hides in light
• We know God through Gods traces in history and
  nature
• We know God through our and others relationship
  to God
• Loving and being loved
• Fidelity and Covenant

13
Your Goals

• Everyone approaches education differently
• Your ideas need to set direction to your program

• Work with an advisor
• If you want to be a minister, work with your
  church and its standards

14
Summary

• Theological education involves
• Head
• Heart
• Hands
• To be a complete theologian one must think, love,
  and do.