The Wise Way for Calvinists to Get a Seminary Education: Free!
Jan. 19, 2011
Free at last! Free at last! Seminary education is free at last!
TNARS is The North American Reformed Seminary. It is not accredited, that it, the board has not crawled on its collective belly to beg recognition from liberals who Reformed theologians say are going to hell. What a concept!
The accreditation game is for Christian faculties that want the U.S. government to lend small fortunes to young men so that they can get a degree that qualifies them to write term papers and preach them to small, struggling congregations.
Free is better. Apprenticeship is better. TNARS offers both.
The class credits are transferable to accredited seminaries.
When transferred, the course work becomes accredited retroactively.
Still, maybe transferring credits is too much to pay for. Some presbyteries will accept its graduates.
Get the degree from TNARS and move to a cooperating presbytery. Get ordained. Serve locally for a few years. Then move wherever you choose. Most presbyteries accept a transfer after a perfunctory interview.
This should have been done by conservative presbyteries beginning no later than 1808: the first year of the first seminary: Andover. But they all fell into the trap of distant formal education taught by non-pastors. This is like business schools taught by Ph.D.-holding bureaucrats who have never run a business. It makes no sense, but it is universal.
Now there is a better way.