TEDS and the Future of Seminary Education
A Big Domino Falls, But It Won't Be the Last!
Like many of you, I was a little shocked, deeply grieved, and highly concerned at the news that Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) will be leaving Deerfield in Illinois, to merge with Trinity Western University (TWU) in British Columbia in Canada. This is like the Bank of Montreal taking over J.P. Morgan Chase.
I have had the pleasure of knowing a former Ridley College Principal Dr. Graham Cole who was also a Lecturer and then Dean at TEDS. I know several of the TEDS faculty who are fantastic Christian scholars and who now face some very difficult decisions about the future of their ministries, academic careers, and family situations. No doubt the TEDS alumni and current cohort of students have strange feelings about the decision as well.
During the 70s to 00s, TEDS was one of the premier places in the world to do theological education. It has had such great luminaries as D.A. Carson, Douglas Moo, and Kevin Vanhoozer among them. It is a great school with thousands of brilliant graduates around the world. My colleague Scott Harrower has a PhD from TEDS!
Oh Canada!
Is TEDS moving to Canada going to work?
The EvFree denominational link is really what makes the TWU acquisition of TEDS possible and potentially a success. TWU is doing very well right now and adding a seminary to its institution provides new offerings while eliminating most of TEDS overheads. But let’s be honest, if you are an American seminary, and Canada is your salvation, then you have a problem. That is because I don’t think too many Americans are going to move to Canada to go to seminary unless there is a really big carrot in an over-crowded and declining market.
Also, it’s not like British Columbia has a desperate need for more theological schools since Regent College and the Vancouver School of Theology are a half-hour drive down the road in Vancouver.
Is TWU just diluting further an already over-crowded market in British Columbia?
We Know What The Problem Is!
The decline, restructure, and acquisition of TEDS by TWU should send alarm bells ringing among seminary presidents and deans around America and the world.
The challenges are demographic (shrinking Christian populations in the West), cultural (churches are less likely to recruit and send people for ministry training; people are less willing to enter full-time Christian ministry), market saturation (over-supply of seminary providers), and educational-demand (a big preference for online over campus/residential).
For instance, the seminary population in Australia has declined by 30% in the last five years. While the decline may have slowed in the last couple of years, it is certainly not abating! Added to that, most seminaries with an online program have more students online than on-campus.
As a deputy principal for academic affairs at an Anglican theological college, this is what keeps me up at night! Colleges that are built upon a full-time residential model, with large over-heads, ineffective marketing and recruitment, detached from key stakeholders, surrounded by lots of local competition, they are not going to be around for long.
There are a few options for seminaries and theological colleges as they face these challenges.
The Cushion of Old Money
If your seminary has a massive endowment or is bankrolled by a denomination, then you can teach as many or as few students as you like, where you like, and how you like. Similarly, a denomination can dump huge money into a seminary, cover any losses, subsidise degrees, and offer all students scholarships. Such a denomination might also insist that a would-be gospel worker seeking denominational sanction must do a three-year BTh or MDiv and it must be done full-time and on-campus. So you have a captive market, a prescribed pathway, and (mostly) a single provider.
If that is your college, then great! However, I know of wealthy colleges that have more scholarships than applicants. They literally cannot give away free theological education and free accommodation. I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.
As long as the endowment distribution exceeds costs or the denomination has the desire and ability to subsidise the seminary, all is good. But things like the global financial crisis can eat your endowment and eventually denominational leaders start to ask why they are pouring 5 million dollars into a college for 10 graduates.
So even that cushion of old money is no guarantee of continued viability or success.
Cheap and Nasty Online
Another option a college might take is to pursue an online program that is very cheap, scaled for mass enrolments, pays third-world wages for adjunct lecturers, each course goes for 8 weeks, two easy-peasy assessment tasks, nobody checks for AI or plagiarism, and everybody gets an A.
Even worse, to compete with other providers of low-quality teaching and formation, these dodgy-bros seminaries have a race to the bottom to provide the cheapest and least effective form of education. It’s then that you reach the point where you are basically watching 180 minutes of YouTube videos, answering a multiple-choice quiz, and then graduating with an MDiv at the bargain price of $5000 from McSeminary.
Alas, such places do exist.
Phone a Friend?
In the current environment, mergers and acquisitions are not a bad idea. If you live in a city with 3-5 theological colleges, you could argue that the town ain’t big enough for all of you. Getting colleges with shared values and vision to start collaborating, sharing resources, and then fully merging is a wise idea. You create scales of economy, reduce costs, gain new resources, acquire new faculty, plug into new networks, enlarge donor base, add new offerings, etc.
Sadly, however, most struggling theological colleges are reluctant to merge. What I’ve heard happens more often than not is that a college board waits until it has liquidated its capital, racked up debts, scaled down to a skeleton crew, and is about to go bust before it looks for a helping hand. But by then it is too little too late. In the end, such schools end up being cannibalized by competitors and need to have their students farmed out to finish their degrees. This is what happens about 95% of the time.
All I can say is that if you are going to merge, it is always better to do it sooner rather than later, and have a medium-length runway to make it happen. It is sure better than realizing that the seminary president was hiding the scale of the problem or the board was dilly-dallying while the Repo guys were being called in.
Adapt, Survive, and Thrive
When I was in military intelligence, we learned about the OODA loop, the decision making process in warfighting. In a nutshell: observe, orientate, decide, and act. If you can do that faster than your adversary, then you will win, in war or commerce. Or, if you want me to put that into corporate speak, it comes down to analytics, resourcing, and execution.
You have to analyse what is happening in the churches, the educational sector, among your stakeholders, look at the requirements of potential student employers, and closely investigate the needs of and obstacles for potential students (observe). Then you have to project future trends, interrogate market statistics, benchmark against competitors, determine resources required and those which are superfluous, and develop a marketing and recruiting strategy (orientate). Then you have to have a robust but timely decision-making process that gives you clarity on the institution’s mission, model of education, and the resources needed to prosecute it (decide). Then you have to execute the plan with efficiency, flexibility, constant review, and for the glory of God (act).
As I’ve written elsewhere, The Future of Seminaries is Not What You Imagine, and the model for theological education needs to change. Look, you can whinge and whine about online and hybrid education all you like, but unless you adapt to the market and digital world, sooner or later the insolvency accountants are going to ask for the keys to your office.
When I lay on the couch in my office and stare at the ceiling, what I think about is how best to attract, equip, and encourage men and women for the variety of ministries they feel called to serve in, in a rapidly changing and complex world. I’d love to have them living with me on-campus, rising by 8:00 a.m. to do the morning office, then a quick work-out before 9:00 a.m. classes, communal lunch, more classes, and a short eucharist before retiring for the evening. But I need to think about online course development; what is the best time-table for 2026; how to keep faculty excited and engaged in what they are doing; how to create a common experience for campus, hybrid, and online students; look for potential partners in education; think about what type of library we need for a mixed-mode student body; constantly investigate how to give people the very best learning experience wherever they are; how to sell the benefits of high quality theological education even with the financial cost and years of your life it requires; and how to connect students to potential ministry employers.
I stare at the ceiling because I know if I can do that well, then Ridley College will still be here in 2040, men and women will still be training for gospel ministry, and I can do my part to advance the kingdom through theological education. (NB: I don’t do this alone, I have a great boss in Rhys Bezzant and I’m part of a forward-thinking executive team).
While Australian and American theological colleges worry about not enough students, and a glut of PhDs for too few payable teaching positions, in the Majority World there are Bible colleges and seminaries inundated with students, an enormous thirst and need for educated ministry workers, and not enough qualified instructors. What's wrong with this picture?
Certainly on site study was invaluable for me. Worth the 2-3hrs of driving each day. Though not the greatest student, face to face learning, debate, in small and large issues, pastoral care by staff helped enormously in formation and ministry approach. The staff showed care and love for students as well as academic excellence in many ways