Field service or, as some would rather call it, “field education” is rapidly coming to be a vital, relevant, and necessary part of theological education. The importance attached to this discipline has increased greatly since a recent survey, headed by Dr. Richard Niebuhr of Yale, which showed that the most rapid advances in theological education in the past two decades have been in this area.
To state it simply, field service is the process of learning the vocation of Christian ministry through experience under guidance. It is education by actual contact with people in situations of Christian service. The student through such training learns the arts of communication and interpretation, and acquires the skills necessary for competence in his vocation.
Such education is prevalent enough today that churches need not think of a graduate from theological seminary as a novice in the ministry but rather as a young minister who comes with experience and skills to carry out the service for which he has been trained.
Uniting Theory And Skill
Field education is now a regular part of the seminary course. The work of the student in churches, on campus, in institutions, and in clinical experience is as much a part of seminary education as regular academic curriculum. In fact, more time is spent in this training than in any other course. Field service is looked upon as an instructional course which seeks for training, experience, adjustment, and the acquisition of skills which the minister must have for professional competence.
Those who are directing field education maintain that the division between learning and doing was a false dichotomy. The educational theory which held that the so-called “content” courses were of more value than the operational or skill courses was not true. The old division between factual and practical courses was not a valid distinction. Certainly those who teach the “content” courses do not wish to admit that they are not practical, and those who teach in the “practical” fields will not for a moment admit that their courses do not have content. Therefore, field service has tended to unite things in theological education which never should have been separated in the first place, namely, knowledge and practice, theory and skill.
A young man in the Presbyterian Seminary at Louisville, when asked to state what had been the chief benefit of his field training, said: “Field work has served to make all of the courses of my theological training relevant.”
Supervision And Integration
With this new dimension in training, the seminary has moved into the church. Hundreds of pastors have become associated with the seminary faculty in the training of men and women for the Christian ministry. At the same time seminary students have taken their places on the staffs of churches or institutions or as student ministers to contribute to the life of the church while they are ministers in training.
Field supervisors in churches and institutions where the students are employed represent a key link in the chain that connects theological education with field experience. They are extension members of the seminary faculty, and are related to the students as pastors in the churches where students work, as moderators of student churches, as chaplains in hospitals and penal institutions, and as district superintendents in charge of centers where ministers in training may labor.
There are two points with which field education is most concerned. These are supervision and integration. There is common agreement that field service becomes genuine education in proportion to the amount of supervision young men receive in it.
Field supervisors are now frequently brought to the seminaries for conferences or for periods of instruction and consultation in the requirements of supervision. This promotes the potential of field work as a proper part of the training process for the Christian ministry.
The first published volume on this whole area of theological education (Ministers in Training, Theological Book Agency, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey) appeared last year. It is used as a textbook or reference work in many seminaries, including several in the Far East, Latin America, and other lands. The volume is a symposium covering the various aspects of field education, and is aimed to instruct both the supervisor and the student.
Seminary supervision is accomplished in many ways. In seminaries such as the Southern Baptist, Louisville, where hundreds of student pastors go out for training each week, the supervision takes the form of written reports and interviews. Both reports from the students and from the field supervisors are important. These are supplemented by interviews on campus, visits to the field by seminary faculty members, and by discussion meetings of students in practice or observational groups.
Variety In Field Service
The ideal arrangement is to give the student as wide a variety of experience as possible. During his first year in seminary he may work with a closely supervised group and the following year have more independence as an assistant pastor or youth director in a church. Then in his senior year he should acquire preaching experience and an opportunity to learn the skills of pastoral visitation, counseling and clinical work.
Obviously, this much experience would be impossible within the limits of the regular seminary course were it not for the well-supervised summer service and the year of full-time internship which quite a number of seminaries are requiring before granting degrees.
This whole matter of integration depends upon supervision, for the student needs direction in order to see the proper relationship between the seminary curriculum and the actual work of the ministry. There is also the important matter of the integration of the student’s character for the vocation of a Christian minister. Properly directed field service will aid in the accomplishment of good integration.
When a student enters upon field service, he has three ends in view. First, he has his service to Christ and the Church. Unless this be the basic motive he will lack the necessary spiritual foundation for his ministry. In the second place, he has the responsibility of gaining the education and training he needs as part of his preparation for the Christian ministry. In the third place, he will receive remuneration from the church, in some instances also a scholarship from the seminary, to make it possible for him to meet the expenses of his education. Certainly in cases where students are married and have children to support, the matter of finances can pose quite a problem.
A good field director will keep, however, the emphasis and direction of the student first of all upon his academic work. The reason for this is to keep students from doing too much in their field service. Students are to be continually reminded that they will be in seminary but once, while, God willing, they will have the opportunity to live and grow through practical experience during their service in the ministry.
It may be said, by way of conclusion, that students have now emerged from the ivory tower of the seminary into the life of the church. Thousands of young men are out working every weekend and during the summers and internship periods. Pastors and others who supervise them have become an extension faculty of the seminaries. Certainly all this makes for a new dimension in theological education.
The time has passed when a man is considered ready for the work of the Christian ministry, no matter how excellent his academic training has been, if he has not had real experience in learning professional competency in church situations with people and under proper guidance. Field service is helping to produce Christian ministers who are well-adjusted; mature and skilled; and for this reason it can be considered as valid, important, and necessary as the other disciplines of theological education.
It is a complicated process to communicate to ministers in training a proper understanding of God, Christ, the Bible, and the Church, and their interrelatedness and application to life and to service. It is therefore the task of seminaries and supervisors on the field to aid those who will combine learning, skill, and experience into a creative ministry that will be blessed by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
END
Committees In Heaven?
Does God work by the committee method?
Does He summon members from the far-spanned spheres
To sit together in celestial counsel?
Are agenda carefully prepared by appropriate bureaus?
Does He invite reports from heads of departments,
Call for this opinion or another?
Do they cull and distill from extensive field researches?
Does He request statistics regarding the involved mechanics
Of the very important cosmos?
Finally, when the meeting adjourns, does He send them forth,
All highly pleased with the workings of the group process,
Bestowing the plaudit, “Well done, good servants,”
Amidst the reassuring murmur, “We surely accomplished a great deal today!”?
KENDIG BRUBAKER CULLY
J. Christy Wilson is Dean of Field Service at Princeton Theological Seminary. For 20 years he was a missionary in Iran and other Middle East lands. He is author of many articles and several books (three of them written in Persian).
