Fallout continues from the changes of “four testing years” at Wycliffe Hall, the theological college in Oxford…where there are “some deeply wounded spirits”, says an inspection report prepared for the House of Bishops.
The five-yearly reports on theological colleges used to be confidential. The Wycliffe report was published on the Church of England website this week, along with one on St Stephen’s House, Oxford. The colleges were graded in 13 areas with “Confidence”, “Confidence with qualifications”, or “No confidence”.
The Revd Dr Robin Ward, Principal of St Stephen’s House, said on Wednesday: “We were of course surprised that the reports came to be published in full, with unexpected assessment criteria, which we didn’t know until after the inspection process had finished.”
Both colleges are declared “fit for purpose”.
[blockquote] But the inspectors expressed “No confidence†in Practical and Pastoral Theology. Students lack tutorial direction in choosing placements, and are not sufficiently challenged “to move beyond their comfort zonesâ€.[/blockquote]
Good. The disaster of TEC seminary education is that it is all “pastoral theology” – let’s affirm each other’s feelings!
robroy,
As one who teaches in a seminary, I can assure you that good pastoral theology is not about “affirming feelings.” Pastoral theology is where future ordinands are taught about such inevitable parts of their ministry as helping their parishioners deal with death, illness, conflict, spiritual direction, etc. It is crucial, since Christian faith is not only about doctrine and ideas, but about the practices of spiritual formation–becoming conformed to the image of Christ.
[blockquote]We were of course surprised that the reports came to be published in full, with unexpected assessment criteria, which we didn’t know until after the inspection process had finished.[/blockquote]
As someone with a background in program evaluation it concerns me that the evaluation team did not let the school know in advance all of the ways it would be evaluated. It would be interesting to know how much of this process was subjective and how much is based on an objective evaluation template that would include such things as looking at Syllabi, student and instructor interviews, interviews with employing entities, followup surveys for graduates. Are there evaluation forms for field supervisors, handbooks for students, a program philosophy etc.? Does the school need to submit a self assessment prior to the assessment visit? In other words, what is the evaluation process itself like and how is it conducted? Is this learning outcome based and what are the assessment criteria for the learning outcomes? How are students evaluated? If the schools received an overall “passing” score, how are individual areas of failure or less than satisfactory performance to be addressed? If I was on this evaluation team, I would be expecting a revisit before the next evaluation cycle.
Professor Witt, I hope I did not offend. At your fine institution, I am sure they have the right mix of basic and clinical sciences for the training of clergy (to use an allusion to my medical training). In contrast, I am sure that at a warm and fuzzy institution like Church Divinity School of the Pacific they do not.
roboy,
Point well taken. However, Wycliffe Hall is supposed to be an Evangelical seminary, not at all the British equivalent of Church Divinity School of the Pacific. If they received a failing grade in Practical and Pastoral Theology, this does not bode well for the time when their graduates have to preach, lead worship, and provide spiritual counsel.
It depends on whose doing the grading. If CDSP types came out to TESM, they would probably flunk your students because for CDSP-ers, pastoral theology is affirming people’s feelings (and sexual deviations).
should be “who’s doing the grading”, of course.
robroy,
Of course it might depend on who is doing the grading, but the specific criticisms in the article focus on lack of use of the Prayer Book (or the new Common Worship) in the chapel, and lack of biblical material in the same. These issues should be of concern in any Anglican seminary. My understanding is that, in England, Evangelicals in particular have become lax about Prayer Book worship, being often indistinguishable from free church Protestants in their worship. And, of course, lack of biblical material in worship is the last thing one would want in Evangelical worship.
I confess that both of these are major sore points with me. I have noticed among “renewal” and “seeker oriented” groups in particular a tendency to eliminate liturgy or reduce it to the bare minimum, to reduce Scripture reading to perhaps one or at most two passages, sometimes ignoring the lectionary completely and choosing a Scripture reading in accord with the preacher’s intended topic for the morning, and the preaching of topical sermons loosely (or not at all) related to the biblical text rather than expository preaching.
Whether this is a legitimate criticism of this seminary or whether I am reading between the lines based on my experience elsewhere I have no way of knowing, of course.