Transcript
One of the most amazing things to me when I am with in the company of Princeton alums is the music, the tune that as John Black is so forcefully spoken, just the singing of God's song. Music is such a rich part of the life of this community and it certainly was this morning and I just want to thank and have an opportunity to thank you. And Martin thank you for your presence with us. We're the gathered
community of Princeton alums who have been in diaspora, you have come back, not all of you, there are over 10,000, over 11,000 if you gather in all of who are overseas. It's a remarkable story and in many ways it's told every year when alums come back here and tell your stories. I heard the stories, you could hear them reverberating from the class of '60 and from the class of '50 as you gathered and told
those stories and shared where you are in life now. So I welcome you back for the story of Princeton Seminary and no one can tell it more eloquently than our president, Dr. Thomas Gillespie, who many of you, if not most of you know in a personal way. Many of you perhaps heard Tom this year as he traveled about. It always astounds me the schedule that he keeps. He was on the West Coast for a week with
starting a breakfast in San Diego and ending with a lunch in Seattle with stops in Laguna Beach, two meetings, two lunches, dinner and a lunch in Los Angeles, a lunch in San Francisco, a lunch in Portland and a lunch in Seattle and that was from Monday to Friday. And he preached on Sunday morning in Seattle, five services, five services. Tom Gillespie can tell you that story, his story and Princeton's story, Tom. What Dean means to tell
you is that presidents eat a lot and often. That was an amazing trip by the way. We ended up in Seattle and I don't know how many of you are familiar with the University Presbyterian Church where Earl Palmer is the pastor. But the rule there is that if you accept an invitation to be a pulpit guest you preach at all the services. And that means three in the morning and two at night. Now I know very
few Presbyterian churches that have one evening service but they have two. Now it's the same service at all five occasions. Sanctuary seats 1,200 people, it was filled five times, a church of 3,800 members that has over 5,000 people in church every Sunday. At five o'clock in the evening it is a young couple's service, they have a full Sunday school at five o'clock in the evening and then seven o'clock is the
university service. The church is right across the street from the University of Washington and it's filled with collegians. It's just an amazing place. So if people tell you Presbyterianism is doomed I can name that one and a variety of others that belie that claim. Well this has become sort of known euphemistically around here as the state of the seminary address to the alums every year and what I want to say to you very simply is the
seminary is in a great state. Bottom line, the seminary is thriving. You always look to vital signs in an institution and the first vital sign of an academic institution of course are the students. Does anybody want to go to school there? Princeton Seminary has the best record of any theological school in the country between the ratio between the number of applications, the number of acceptances, and the number of admissions. This is the most competitive theological school
in the country to be admitted to. Most schools today are simply open enrollment and they're happy to have the bodies. This is a very selective institution. We have good students. Their GPA averages are very high. We look not only for their grade point average but we also look for their commitment to Christ into the church, their seriousness about ministry and year after year now as they have gone by the faculty say to me where do you
keep finding these people? Or people like Dr. Johnson who has just come here from another seminary he said the students here are just extraordinary. So we do have the cream de la cream we think. We certainly have our share of it. And year after year we have a very, very high enrollment. We aim for 150, probably enroll anywhere from 140 to 155. You never know until the last minute how many of those who say they're coming
will actually show up and be here so it varies. But 150 M.Divs a year is our goal and we probably have 10 or 15 in the Master of Arts program in Christian education. We'll probably have 50, 60 in the Th.M program. This is where most of our international students come to. This is what attracts them, the one year program. It's an enrichment degree. It won't get you a job anyplace but it's an enrichment degree. And for
many it's a stepping stone into a Ph.D. program. But we have international students from all over the world every year from all six continents. I'd love to say all seven continents but we don't have any penguins from Antarctica. So all six continents, they come to Princeton Seminary and you cannot be on this campus during the school year without being confronted every day by the fact that the world's a lot bigger than Princeton, New Jersey. It's a
lot bigger than New Jersey and it's a lot bigger and more complicated and more diverse than even the United States. So we have these international students. We receive 20 Ph.D. candidates every year into our doctoral program. In fact, this last week we graduated 20 Ph.D.s so we cleaned out the pipeline a little bit. But there are 20 admissions for over 200 applications. It has become an increasingly competitive doctoral program. In fact, not long ago the Chronicle
of Higher Education did a peer review of all doctoral programs in all fields. And under the category of religion, Princeton Seminary was listed fifth in one category and eighth in the other. And we're the only seminary listed and the only church-related institution listed. So our doctoral program is gaining increasing respect in academe to the point that the ATS folks, the Association of Theological Schools folks, tell us that we are now placing as many of our
Ph.D. graduates in religion departments, college religion departments, university religion departments, and other theological seminaries as Yale and Harvard and Chicago. So the doctoral program here has grown enormously. That's a very expensive program. You buy doctoral students the way you buy quarterbacks in college. And that's the truth. Students will go where they get the best offer. And so it's a very expensive program. But the church needs to worry not only about who will be its future ministers,
it also needs to worry about who will be the teachers of the future ministers. And we want to have in that pool people who have been trained theologically as well as in religious studies. So that's a very important part of our program. We graduated 268 people on Monday of this week, 268. The first man up to receive his Ph.D. was Kosi Ayedzi. He received a thunderous applause from all the students. Kosi is from Toga. He is
now Ph.Deified. He's going back to become the principal of the one and only theological college in all of Toga. He will be the first Togan national ever to have a Ph.D. in theological studies. And that's Princeton Seminary's contribution. Barbara and I were in Geneva in April for the induction of another one of our African Ph.D. graduates. And I'm coming up blank on his name at the moment. Setri Naomi, thank you. Setri graduated in 1992 with
a degree in pastoral theology. He's from next door to Toga. He's from Ghana. And he has just been inducted as the general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the first African ever to hold that position. And so we were there for his induction in Calvin's Cathedral. It was really very, very impressive and very, very special for all of us. But Setri, on three occasions, in the service itself and then at the big luncheon that
followed and in another setting, paid tribute to Princeton Seminary and said how much his years here had meant to him and that he would not be where he is nor would he be able to do what he now does had it not been for his educational experience at Princeton Seminary. Well, naturally, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, actually there are two Presbyterian churches in Ghana that have nothing to do with splits, just the history
of missions. Both the moderators were there. And one of those is also a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, Joe Nebo. And Joe and Setri got to giggling about Princeton Seminary in Africa. And they told about this grand pan-African church gathering in Addis Ababa a year ago presided over by Abouna Palos, who is also a Ph.D. graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the patriarch of the Ethiopian Coptic Orthodox Church. And they said that while there,
the Abouna had a reception for Princeton Seminary graduates. And it looked like they said, who's who in African church leadership today? So those stories I love to hear and I love to tell because I think we need, we who are the place is throughout the world. So the students are very important. The international students are very important. Many of these people come from lands where, well, Coase himself, for example, comes from a land where it would
take a year's salary to buy an airplane ticket one way to Princeton. Now, how do they get here? Well, we pay their way. We pay their airfare. We give them full scholarships. We provide funding for their families and their living while they're here. It is an investment in leadership for the future. And it's not a gift. It's not a gift. It is an investment in human life that is offered in service to Jesus Christ. And people
go back to their native lands and there they become leaders. I remember every year I tell the students here, I said, make a friend of an international student. Do not leave this place without having one friend that you will exchange at least a Christmas card with. And our American students just ignore me that they love to ignore the president anyway. But they don't get it. And the international students don't get it. I tell them, make one
American friend. Make a friend with somebody you will be in correspondence with across the years. You never know where God will take you and how God will use you. And my illustration is that I lived on the third floor of Brown Hall and next door to me was a young Indian student by the name of Paul Verghese. Well, Paul Verghese became ultimately one of the seven presidents of the World Council of Churches. He became the presiding
bishop over the Syriac Orthodox Church of the North in India. And just before I came to Princeton, it was in the spring of '83, in June of '83, before Barbara and I had moved, there was a big Council of Churches gathering in San Francisco at which Metropolitan Paul Verghese was the guest. And so I couldn't resist. I had to go to this meeting. And so I stood in line as he was greeting and there he was
and all of his regalia. And I came up to him and he took one look at me and I took one look at him. And as the Brazilians would say, imbrasio. And everybody was aghast. Who is this brash American who would dare hug the Metropolitan? Well, it was two young guys who lived next door to each other in Brown Hall and who hadn't seen each other since 1954 when we both graduated. But whose lives had taken
different tracks and here we were in positions of leadership that neither of us could have imagined or would dare to have imagined in our student days. So the presence of our international students is extraordinarily important and that's expensive. That's made possible by the resources that the seminary has and I'll come back to that. So students, we have lots of students. We have a full class. I heard the other day that we have more people who have
confirmed their acceptance of admission at this point in time this year than at any point in time in previous years. We have 137 already confirmed and there will be more because some people still apply in June for admission to seminary. So the students are really terrific and there's been a change in my judgment, a visible change in the attitude of students since I came in 1983. There was a lot of anger still in '83. There are
a lot of people who had an edge to them. There are people trying to pick a scab more than be redemptive in the world and that has changed. These students are a different generation and they have a greater interest in pastoral ministry than has been true in the past and certainly a great seriousness about their studies. Nobody has to tell them that they need to study when they're here at Princeton Seminary. Second is the faculty, the
strength of your faculty. I have been gratified to hear so many of you say to me that you have been most impressed with Stacy Johnson, our new Adams Professor of Systematic Theology. Stacy is indeed a very gifted young man. You've got to keep your eye on him though. He was a lawyer before he became a theologian and you know what the lawyers have done to theology. There's Calvin and then Tertellian and so forth. But Stacy is
an interesting person. He's a child of the church. He's a Sunday school success story. He grew up in the Southern Presbyterian Church and heard the call to ministry in a small group as a lawyer in one of our churches in North Carolina. He is just bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He along with Ellen Sherry and Bruce McCormick, all of them in their 40s, are the future Theology Department of Princeton Seminary. Now Dan Miori presides over this
group and Professor Sang Lee also. But if you want to see the future of the Theology Department at Princeton Seminary, you will find it in Stacy Johnson and in Ellen Sherry and in Bruce McCormick. And we are well grounded. I would say that all of the appointments are of that quality. At least appointments to tenured positions are of that quality. We have a faculty now that exceeds 50 and they are a gifted group of people. So
we are in the process of trying to fill positions that are open. We have two positions in what's called the Loose Chair in Mission and Ecumenics. We've had the Loose Chair. The endowment is now such that it can fund two positions. And it's one of those things where the first position was defined really by the occupants and all three of the first occupants of the Loose Chair were historians, trained to be historians, Dick Shaw and then
Sam Moffat and then Alan Neely. And so the chair has been really defined by its occupants and has become the history of Mission, the history of the ecumenical movement and so forth. But when the opportunity came to add a second Loose Chair it was clear to us that we needed somebody who was going to deal with the missiological issues theologically. Is there a mission of the church in a religiously pluralistic world? The deep fundamental basic theological
issues of missiology need to be addressed. We are in the process of seeking to fill that position and after we have filled that position we will then fill the second Loose Chair in the history of Mission. There are other positions that are open and we're seeking to fill also but I won't go into all that detail. But right now there are six openings on the faculty and that means that the president not only eats a lot
when he's on the road he eats a lot when he's home because we're constantly interviewing candidates for these positions and so that's usually done over dinner at the Nassau Club and and one of my friends from California used to say global men for global tasks you know. Well so the faculty is is exceedingly strong. I'd put our faculty up against any faculty in the United States today any any faculty. In my student days we were the
country bumpkins to union in New York. That has all been reversed. Our faculty are now beginning to write the books that other faculty have to read to stay even and I think that's a great tribute to them and a great tribute to the seminary. Another vital sign of a set of an academic institution of course are its financial resources and our greatest blessing is in the eyes of so many our greatest burden namely the endowment. That
always tickles me I have to tell you. I've learned something in these years. I've learned that secular people give to success. Harvard has no trouble raising money even though it has the largest endowment of any university in the world. Princeton across the street has no trouble uh raising money because it's perceived as prestigious and successful. Stanford has no trouble raising money even though it is extraordinarily endowed. Secular people give to success. Christian people when they give
to secular causes give to success. Christian people when they give to church causes give to perceived need and I find that extraordinary. In other words, Princeton has no need so why should we support Princeton? They would not take that attitude if they were talking about supporting their university. Christian people give to success when they give to secular causes they give to perceived need when they give to church causes. When I came to the seminary in 1983
the endowment was 167 million dollars. John Templeton said to me one day with a straight face, Tom it's like I used to tell Jim McCord the first hundred million is the most difficult and I said yes John I found it to be in my own experience. I'm still working on that first 100 million. Now back in 1973 the seminary's endowment had increased from from 5 million dollars to 36 million dollars and then there was a huge
drop in the market in 73 and it dropped to 18 million and the board really went into the panic mode and at that point John Templeton said that he would voluntarily pro bono manage the seminary's account if the board would allow him to do so and do it through a committee which he did. So by the time I came here from 1973 until 1983 the endowment had grown from 18 million to 167 million. When Dr. Templeton
retired from the endowment at last count in March it was 913 million. Now we do operate in terms of our drawdown from the endowment we use a 12 month a 12 quarter rolling average so it's a rolling average of the last three years which is considerably less than 913 million. But what Dr. Templeton meant was that when you hit a hundred million dollars it begins to grow. It's like a money tree and do you know that
of the 10 heaviest endowed theological schools in the country six are Presbyterian. There are five Presbyterian seminaries now that have over a hundred million dollars in their everything. Now the endowment is there to serve it's not there just to accumulate and I keep telling the trustees to read Luke 12 read Luke 12 read Luke 12 and in in Luke 12 there's that terrible story Jesus tells about the guy with the bigger barn complex. You know his
barn is full he'll tear it down and build a bigger one and I think Jesus said at the end thou fool. So the point is not accumulation the point is what you do with what you have and then Jesus has that other awful saying in Luke 12 to whom much has been given shall much be required. So the seminary should be judged not by how much it has but what does it do with what it has.
We give five million dollars a year in scholarships to students who come to Princeton Seminary and even with that our students this class graduated with an average debt of twenty thousand dollars. That's a lot of debt to go out into the practice of ministry at entry level salaries and try to get into the home market try to buy a car and and and and and have a twenty thousand dollar debt. We're trying to keep that debt
down. We we try to make it possible for students to graduate from here with no more debt than they entered with but we give more money in scholarships than any that than the total budget of most of our other theological schools. So that's one thing we do. The second thing we do with our money is that that we we fund these these doctoral students and fund them not not extravagantly but but handsomely to get them to
come here and we fund all of these international students who come provide scholarships for them room and board give them jobs when they're here for for penn money and provide them airfare to come and to go home and that's not extravagance either. That's an investment in the lives of people who otherwise would never be able to come to Princeton Seminary. So the seminary should be judged not by what it has but by what it does with
what it has and I can tell you that the administration of the school and the board of trustees agonize over issues of responsible use of the resources that we have and I think frankly the board does an extraordinary job in doing that. Our budget this year is over 40 million dollars. 40 million dollars and that money makes it possible for this place to operate. Finally institutions are evaluated also by how much deferred maintenance they have and
I think we have next to none. We're able to maintain this campus these wonderful old buildings. Alexander Hall, Alexander Hall was constructed in 1812 to 1815 for 47,500 dollars. It was renovated in 1981 for 2 million dollars. It would probably cost 15 million dollars to do Alexander Hall today what it cost in 1981. You will appreciate the fact that increasingly we're trying to air condition the place for the summer programs which continue to grow here.
The buildings have all been repointed. The seminary has received recognition from the historic architectural societies of New Jersey for the work we have done on repointing Alexander Hall, repointing Brown Hall. The buildings are not allowed to deteriorate. We will be renovating extensively Payne Hall this summer. That will be a 2 million dollar project. That's one of the minor projects that are before us. We have building plans. We're going to have to build a parking garage. I
remember when Bill Lauder who was then the vice president when I came pointed to our parking lot and he said someday that's going to have to be a deck lot and I remember saying over my dead body and I've never met a parking garage I didn't hate and the thought of doing that on that beautiful college road there you know is almost obscene but we're at the point where that is going to have that is on
the on the drawing boards we're going to have to do something to alleviate the parking requirements the parking needs here at seminary we have plans for a new classroom building and office space for the faculty we really I'm when I'm negotiating invitations to new faculty and they ask finally the question well where will my office be and I point them to a tree house or a cave that is that's not that's not a selling point we
have faculty squirreled around this place like you wouldn't believe and we're going to build an office building for faculty it'll be adjacent to spear library and our plans ultimately are to renovate spear library but to do that we have to do that we have to provide the classroom space that will disappear from spear when it's renovated and so that's another big project and in order to get the burl to allow us to do another building we
provide parking to get the cars off the street so all of that is is in the mix and on the one hand it's exciting and on the other hand it's draining as you can see from the from the mess on the campus it is it's just it's not princeton seminary to have all of that construction going on I feel sorry for the seniors who were not able to finish their careers here in miller chapel we have
met here and it's been very very effective but everybody's looking forward to getting back into miller in the fall and the new building named in honor of the William Scheide family will be an extraordinary place for the music program this little place has probably the best music program in town it really is if people come out for the concerts here like you wouldn't believe from the towns folks so it's going to be a home for the
choirs and a home for the for the ministers and we're looking forward to having that done one final word the board just approved the attempt to endow a new position here at princeton seminary in honor of bryant m kirkland who died on easter sunday just short of his 86th birthday and the position is going to be called minister of the chapel it's going to have faculty status and it's a whole new concept of how of how
the chapel will be led the chapel programs here have been like the architecture this is now entering into his fourth architectural incarnation and the program has developed across the years in my student days it was what we used to call the we kirk service the choir would march in with their black robes and two seniors were invited to lead to lead worship on a given day and you that meant giving the call to worship reading scripture
and the other person would give the pastoral prayer and the benediction and then of course Dr. Mackay would stand there and give his announcements every day of the week that was chapel well during the '60s and the '70s everything changed including the chapel service and the developed into more of a laboratory than it did a classroom and students used it as their right to vent on any particular subject that was troubling to them at the moment
and the surprising thing is that chapel remained as vital as it did through all those times so we're looking forward now to making the leading of chapel a class experience again the new minister the chapel will you will sign up for a class to lead chapel you'll be a part of 24 people there'll be two students per week and it'll be a class experience in planning and conducting and then critiquing the leadership of chapel during that
week the other days will be filled out by the faculty the faculty has committed itself to leading chapel one day a week the president leads chapel one day a week when he's on the campus and the new minister of the chapel will lead chapel one day a week and we're very excited about this new possibility well i probably told you more than you care to know certainly more than you need to know but i'd be happy
to field a question or two if you have such a question yeah we have a very high retention rate david yeah i would say we've been 95 to 98 retention some people always want to know how many women and how many men and princeton seminary is one of the few schools where men still predominate over women in the student body but we figured out finally why that is the case in the presbyterian church if you take
all of the women who are under the care of a presbytery anywhere in the church two-thirds of them two-thirds of those candidates are over 35 years of age and only one-third are under 35 years of age now you take all the male candidates for the ministry in the church and it's just the opposite two-thirds are under 35 and only one-third are over 35 and because we require full-time residency for the
for the program here that means that many people who are doing seminary part-time or who are doing it on a commuter basis are unable or unwilling to enroll here so the other side of that is that princeton seminary has the youngest student body of any theological school in the country the average age of seminary students today is 38 to 40 and ours is 27 so a third of our students every year come directly from college
and university and many of them have only been out of in between for two years or so so we have a could be here for the long haul so the money invested in them will have an opportunity to see service for many many many years hopefully any other questions uh well those are denominational statistics and i have no way of knowing how that impacts our particular graduates but the precise statistics are that although all of our
seminaries are full all 10 of them are full only 56 percent of the students who are in our seminaries are presbyterian i thought it was only princeton that was fighting that battle but apparently it's all of the schools 56 percent of all students in presbyterian seminaries today are presbyterian of that number across the board only 50 percent will go into the pastoral ministry of that number 20 percent will have dropped out in the first five years
and that the average ministry today in the denomination is 17 years yeah way in the back yes harry eight thousand dollars you mean for for continuing education yeah i think you and i should go i mean i think we should go to take it take them up on that i could go for 12 weeks uh we have nothing like that we do not provide uh provide well we do underwrite the program at the con ed center
but we don't provide those kind of scholarships uh a part of it is is lily has been very generous but the vice president for religious affairs at lily is craig dykstra who was a former faculty member here and for obvious reasons we have not tried to abuse uh that relationship and embarrass him in any way so we have not been the recipients of great lily grants yes here uh i'm sorry oh about 60 about 60 yes
yeah i think if i hear you bob it's 56 percent of all students in our 10 presbyterian seminaries are presbyterian of that number only 50 will go into the pastorate and of that number 20 will be dropouts within the first five years those are national statistics and there are reasons for that it's it's ugly out there um you've seen the book i'm sure the clergy killers uh in which i forget who the author is but the
but the he claims that he can he can document uh statistically that 40 percent of all protestant mainline churches are seriously dysfunctional and that they eat up their ministers like sherman marching to the sea on the other hand we all know that a lot of ministers go out and shoot themselves in the i'm sorry okay thank you one more yes i have a two-part question perhaps unrelated first is uh my concern for the students who
have just graduated who are in debt 20,000 dollars each and yet uh your endowment is over 970 million and in addition you uh you give full scholarships to people from other countries who come here and you indicate that they're an investment these young underage students just graduated are also an investment it seems to me that with that you know for you to say that what you do with the 970 million is not only the money
that you put in the warehouse but the money that you also use it's in service it would seem to me that it would be appropriate and i'm wondering what what needs to be done to ensure that those youngsters who graduate from here are get free when they leave is there anything that can be done that's the first part of my question the second part i will that the president during church is really quiet as we know
for three years it's been that way we're making an effort to make it my father was a president during minnesota i've been a president during all my life i've gone to president during school the president during church has been very different the country has been very different when i graduated i i lost that three because people were has given me money to come here scholarships were available to the person in st. paul and then i was
also i'd also been in the military so i had a g.i. bill that made it possible for me to pay part of my tuition and it seemed to me that uh yeah well if i gave the impression that we were not supporting american students in the program i gave you the wrong impression the five million dollars in scholarship aid predominantly goes to american students so that 90 percent of our students receive financial aid and 80
percent of those receive the equivalent of full tuition and fees so this is not a tuition driven institution it is an endowment driven institution seminary does not feel that it's responsible for the debt which students bring with them into the program and it would be improper for us you know to invest money in in that and to pay off their debt secondly i have to say in all honesty a lot of american students live high off
the hog while they're here they drive cars that are better than the faculty cars and they run up all kind of debt because they want to live they want to live well uh and i think that's a lack of discipline in their own stewardship and i don't feel responsible for that nor should the institutions needed to do well i think we are as far as the hispanic community is concerned i haven't i didn't touch on that
well let me just finish the first the first question sam um first of all we talk about an average the majority of the class went out of here debt-free so we're just talking about those who have debt and i think the total debt of the class was two million dollars so there's a certain group that has a great deal of debt and their and and their average was 20,000 20 made it 20,000 across
the board but not all students went out of here with debt i think that a lot of need to learn personal stewardship in their own lives so the seminary did not does not feel responsible for the kind of debt that people run up on their credit cards and run up because they they wish to live well while they're here that's number one secondly with regard to the racial ethnic diversity on the campus is really remarkable 10
of our students now would be african-american and 10 would be asian-american and we have a growing number of hispanic students now that's definitely on the upside and the reason for that practically is that the seminary through its center of continuing education developed a a lay training program for our hispanic churches in new jersey and new york and they came here saturday after saturday after saturday and took courses and were graded and received certificates of
completion when they when they had completed the program and first of all that helped us understand that not all hispanics or roman catholics are pentecostals and it also introduced all of these folks to princeton seminary they found that it was accessible and that it was friendly user friendly and so now out of those graduates we are beginning to get people into the ma and to the end into the mdiv program so that number is in fact
growing the seminary now serves as the host institution for the hispanic theological initiative the hti and that doesn't mean anything it's no cost to us except that we offer them space which is at a premium here but because this is funded by the pew endowment but the hti is an attempt to enlist hispanic people in academic work that will lead to the ma and then the phd and it's a beautiful program not just a funding people
but actually mentoring them people who are hispanic and who have Ph.D.s in religious studies or in theological studies become the mentors to these other students and this endowment makes it impossible makes it possible for them to travel twice a year to visit with these folks and wherever wherever they are studying and also they have the annual their annual meeting and now that annual meeting is here which means that every hispanic phd student and ma student in
the country who's studying in new testament or old testament or church history or theology or one of our disciplines is on our campus and this is good for princeton seminary too so that's that's a growing part of our outreach and by the way it's 913 million not 100 970 yes say that say that again for me is what happening well that's certainly my personal emphasis i i'm a little strange i admit i i honestly believe that
whatever it takes academically to get into a good program it takes to get into the pastorate but the pastorate is not second rate to the academic office i do believe the pastoral office is the first office of the church the teaching office is the second office of the church and so when people say to me well don't go to princeton go someplace where they just prepare you to be a pastor my teeth begin to itch because
i do believe that whatever it takes to get into a doctoral program it takes to get into the pastorate and i think the demands on the pastorate are far greater than they are upon the academic academics have the great privilege of focusing on less and less and knowing more and more about less and less and uh and and becoming experts in a very narrow field i mean in new testament studies for example it used to be
you had a new testament expert now you have people who are synoptic experts or johannine experts or pauline experts or you get even further down Lukacs a gospel of mark and that's wonderful i mean i really do uh i do i really do respect that kind of scholarship but i i have to say that the pastor is the person who goes out of here and has to take everything that's been learned in bible and history
and theology and in the practical disciplines and use them and use them and i think that's far a far greater challenge in my judgment students students shy away from the pastor today because uh well who knows why for sure they hear these horror stories about what happens to ministers our daughter graduated from here in 1989 she went to a church uh as an associate pastor she got caught in the middle of a church fight between a
very ugly elder and a foolish young minister and uh and uh and he was run out finally and and she after two years departed now she was not involved in the fuss but she said to her mother and to me she said if i didn't know that the that it didn't have to be this way if i hadn't had all those years in the burlingame church to see what church can be she said i ought to
walk away from it so the kids hear the students hear all these horror stories you know and the salaries are not terrific and on and on and on so the church the church has got to wake up it's got to it's got to wake up and make make the make the pastorate more attractive and then it needs to send better students we all we do not recruit people for the ministry we recruit people for theological education
and the church has to recruit people for the ministry and it or send the best if it wants the best back i always had a rule never send anybody to seminary as a session never send anybody to seminary you wouldn't call back as you as a pastor on your staff i don't know how i mean most most sessions i've known i've been so glad to see a warm body they would send anybody well anyway that's another
story well yes well one last one last question we have to go but yeah behind our well there is vocational counseling that's offered here yeah well to offer the graduates you know the students go all over the country and they're just not we're just not accessible to most of them they just can't jump on an airplane and come back for counseling but we do offer continued education programs that are aimed to fill in the fill in
the blanks to teach all the things that they weren't ready to learn while they were here and are ready to learn now and so we make that kind of an effort but it's more and the denomination looks to its seminaries to solve all problems there used to be a board of christian education you know that did a lot of these things and now it's the seminary everything is devolving upon the seminaries and it's not right it's
not fair we don't have the resources to do all these things well anyway thank you so much it's always a pleasure to be with you it's about 20 of there will be some refreshments but remember the lecture is at 11 same place stewart six and this is the final lecture so please join dr. johnson