Non-Traditional Seminary Students Are Changing the Church

A new class of seminarians emerges.

Misty Hedrick, a real estate and hospitality professional turned writer and stay-at-home-mom, wanted more from her study of the Bible.

“I had a good grasp on the who, what, when, where of Scripture,” she told Christianity Today. “I just needed to back that up with the why and how.”

As a Bible study teacher and lay ministry leader, Hedrick took her kingdom work seriously. “Conveying biblical truths to equip others deserves every effort,” she said. “There’s no higher task than making disciples.”

Hedrick enrolled at Dallas Theological Seminary. Now, she wedges online classes into her already full schedule, but she does so with joy—she’s finally getting to develop the skills and understanding she’s wanted for a long time.

Volunteer leaders like Hedrick, the kind who can’t stop asking questions in Bible study until it’s past time to pick up their kids from childcare or who read Augustine on their lunch breaks, might have long assumed that there was nothing more for them in terms of theological formation. Bible studies and sermons, the thought has been, need to be accessible for everyone, so the church isn’t a place for intense theological study or debate. And seminaries were for training “the professionals”—pastors who preached on Sundays and led the church full-time as their occupation.

The New Seminarians

But times are changing. According to the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), one-third of 2017 graduates planned to enter bivocational ministry, with 57% of black/non-Hispanic and 41% of Hispanic/Latino graduates declaring bivocational intention. Additionally, in a survey of over 5,000 ...