A rising tide of concern is growing from the shortage of pastors replacing the aging shepherds currently in our pulpits. This is a problem across denominations. The Malphurs Group and Barna Group research noting this issue, can be found here and here. With this succession crisis looming over churches, we should be thinking now about how to address these issues before the problem gets worse and more churches close because they cannot find a pastor.
While there are many factors contributing to this problem, one frequently discussed issue is the cost of education. For most churches, an M.Div or other seminary degree is required, usually in addition to completing an undergraduate degree. Some students are piling up close to or even over $100,000 for their education, but the prospects of ministry afterward are typically either bi-vocational or significantly lower pay than their families can afford.
As someone who has worked in enrollment for three universities, I think I can offer some vital information to drastically reduce the cost of attending college and seminary.
Reducing the Cost of Undergraduate Programs
An undergraduate degree can be more expensive and take more time than the seminary program, but it doesn’t have to be this way. I will present two examples of universities with the real costs and how those can be significantly reduced. For starters, both will be online offerings, as that alone will save tens of thousands of dollars on the cost of college if you don’t mind taking classes remotely.
Liberty University
One of the largest Christian universities and one of the earliest adopters of online education is Liberty University. Even as a private school, their tuition is on the lower side.
120 Semester credits x $390/credit = $46,860
That’s a lot of money. Let’s see how that can be reduced. Liberty allows for 75% of credits to be transferred in. That means, 90 credits can be taken elsewhere and allied to the degree as long as the classes taken are a match to the degree program in question. One of the best deals to reduce your cost is to take advantage of a partnership Liberty has with Study.com. This is a subscription-based platform that offers self-paced classes. You pay a flat rate fee every month and can complete as many classes as you want in that period. Your effective tuition for those classes could be less than $20 per credit.
What about other classes not offered by study.com or specific religious-oriented classes you might want to take? Liberty offers something called Institutional Challenge Exams. These are $130 tests you can test out of classes. Your effective tuition for these is $43.33 per credit.
If you want to maximize your savings with the above options, you may want to get a Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. This allows the most flexibility for degree requirements, so you would get the most out of any transfer credit. Another option would be the BS: Business Administration and Data Analysis. This is more specific if you’re potentially looking for bi-vocational employment, and with the use of both Study.com and ICE, your tuition could look more like this:
390 x 30 credits = 11,700
Study.com $100/Month x 12 months = $1,200
ICE $130 x 5 = $650
Total= $13,550
Purdue University Global Campus
Purdue Global is part of the Purdue University system in Indiana that exclusively covers online students. Their base tuition for a degree is considerable.
180 Quarter credit x $371/credit = $66,780
That’s more expensive than Liberty University, at least if you did all the credits as traditional classes. Like Liberty University, they also allow up to 75% of their degree as transfer credit and have a partnership with Study.com. What’s unique about Purdue Global is that if you complete a course with Study.com, your tuition at Purdue Global is reduced by 20%.
Purdue Global also offers testing-out options with the Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (ASK) for $100, and these do not count against the 75% transfer credit maximum. They count as classes taken at Purdue Global. If you pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Management and took full advantage of these policies, here’s what it would look like:
Study.com $100/Month x 12 months = $1,200
ASK $100 x 8 = $800
Capstone Course 6 credits x $296.80 = $1,780.80 (plus the $345 Resource fee)
Total = $4,125.80
Understandably, this is still thousands of dollars, but it’s much more manageable now than what would typically be paid, especially if you also have tuition assistance or reimbursement through an employer. Even if you needed financial aid, paying less than five thousand dollars for a fully accredited college degree isn’t a bad deal.
Seminary
It’s a little hard to find inexpensive seminary programs, but if you dig hard enough, you can find ways to pay for school. I’ll make it easy for some of you. If you are a resident of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, or West Virginia, and are a Baptist, you can go to seminary for free. Yes, free – if you can give up one weekend a semester for the residential requirement by the Charles Keesee Foundation. You can find the applicant requirements and the list of schools here. They even cover some doctoral programs.
For other denominations, there are other ways to help pay for school. One thing to consider would be going to a seminary that isn’t accredited. Small denomination seminaries often don’t have accreditation, and the denomination supports the seminary and allows the students to attend for relatively low cost. Without the administrative cost of accreditation (which does nothing for the academic value), the cost of schooling is drastically reduced.
Other seminaries offer payment partnership programs where they may reduce the cost of tuition if the remaining balance is split between the student and the sponsoring church or denomination. Sometimes, these arrangements may be negotiated.
If you are a pastor, you may want to consider education benefits in your employment package. If you are a church leader, especially one who expects a person to have a seminary degree to be your pastor, you may want to help your candidate or pastor get the education while he’s there. It may take hard decisions like forgoing or reducing your missions budget. It’s time to consider that the men who desire ministry may not be the only ones who have to sacrifice financially for a time.
If you have a medium or large church and haven’t considered a succession plan, you should. You should also have in your budget an allowance for raising men and sending them to school if that’s a requirement you set for pastoral ministry. The burden of declining pastoral candidates should be shared by us all, because all of us will either share in the solution or the consequences of not finding one.
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