Q: “Why do you want to get a D.Min?”
Good question.
As I was talking with Susan Kendall (director of the D.Min. program at Pittsburgh) I said something about wishing I could go back to seminary now that I’ve been in ministry for awhile (9 years in September) and know what I need to learn.
“That’s the purpose of the D.Min,” she said.
There are oodles of things that I wish I had learned in seminary. Probably more than I could count. That’s not to say that they didn’t try to teach them to me. I went to seminary at 22 — about 6 weeks after graduating from college and about 3 weeks after getting married. Not only that I was pretty burned-out on school.
Plus I really didn’t know that much about what it meant to be a pastor. Growing up Catholic, I knew the priests in our church pretty well, but I didn’t know a lot about what they did. I joined the Presbyterian Church in college (officially 1993) and didn’t know much about what they did either.
A lot of what is taught in any school is theoretical rather than practical. Business school teaches you business ideals, not necessarily how to run a business on a day to day basis. Seminary is no different. My recollection is that there was not a lot of room for many electives. It would be difficult to add much more to it.
I remember going into the Senior Pastor’s office at my first church, sitting down in a chair and bemoaning, “They don’t teach enough political science in seminary…”
His dry response, given without looking up from what he was working on, was simply, “That’s because no starry eyed seminarian would take it.” Well, I was far less than starry eyed, but he was right; I wouldn’t have taken it either.
Doctor of Ministry programs can’t fix that either. There’s simply too much material to cover. You could easily add a 4th year to seminary and I’m not sure if they would cover it all either.
None of which really answers the question.
I’ve had some amazing opportunities for continuing education, especially in the past 4 years. At a certain point I felt a desire to do something that would be both educational and productive/practical in a way that most other Con Ed opportunities just aren’t.