What I loved most about the college on the Cape Flats was that we did not only learn theology, but we also applied it to real-life situations. Given the challenges that our country faced at the time, it was crucial that we understood how to use theology in context. However, this changed after the end of Apartheid. I noticed a subtle shift in myself and others, where the focus shifted from practical application to theoretical knowledge. Suddenly, having lecturers with the right qualifications and theoretical knowledge became more important than being able to use theology to solve real-world problems.

Tim Dearborn, a leader in theological education during the 1990s, articulated the growing concerns within me. Although he was writing about seminaries in North America, his words could equally apply to South Africa."

To state the problem in extreme terms, I am coming to the conclusion that there is no other professional organization in the world which allows its primary professional training institutions to produce graduates who are generally as functionally incompetent as the Church permits her seminaries.

 Most pastors feel unprepared by their seminary education for the demands of pastoral ministry. Can you imagine a medical school retaining its certification if its graduates' first exposure to surgery was as surgeons? They may have had brilliant lectures on anatomy and oncology. They may even have seen color slides of brain surgery. Possibly they were provided with cadavers upon which they could practice. They successfully complete difficult written examinations, and at graduation, they are given their first stethoscopes and scalpels. Now, for the first time in their life, they see human flesh being cut into. They watch surgical saws cut through human skull bone. And their hands are wielding the weapons.(1)

Edward Farley's two books on theological education had a profound impact on seminary educators' thinking in the 1990s, including myself.(2) Farley's main concern was that seminaries tend to neglect the ecclesiological and spiritual elements that are fundamental to church and ministry. Instead, they tend to focus primarily on techniques. Theological disciplines may serve as a mere theoretical basis for pastoral activities, or pastoral activities may be largely ignored by theological disciplines. This leads to a disconnection between theology and practice, rendering religious thought irrelevant. (3)

The apparent disconnection between theory and practice seemed unabated in North American seminaries. Some today argue that the decline in student numbers at seminaries can be traced back to this issue. For instance, David Lose says, “The single most significant cause of decline is far simpler: most seminaries are training leaders for a church and world that no longer exists.”(4)  The theory has not kept up with the practical demands of ministry. Those who teach in seminaries across America may be specialist in their academic fields of study but are often out of touch with local church ministry. Daniel Aleshire, the former Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Theological Schools, the accrediting body of the Theological Schools in North America, observed that “Many faculty in ATS schools spent time in congregational ministry, but that was some time ago for many of them."(5)

In 2000 I was given a chance to design a theological course for leaders in a Cape Town, South Africa church plant.(6) While most of these church planters were employed outside the church and could not leave to go to Theological College, their sense of call to the local church was unmistakable.  Seminary or Theological College was not an option for them; they were concerned that they would be exposed to esoteric knowledge that would have no immediate bearing on the work in the local church. I was concerned that they would only focus on simple techniques and neglect theological reflection and thought. This led me to initiate a project in theological education where I could teach them how to do theology.

Since I was a student of James W. Fowler, I was familiar with his definition of practical theology. Fowler defines practical theology as the “theological reflection and construction arising out of and giving guidance to a community of faith in the practice of its mission. Practical theology is the critical and constructive reflection on the praxis of the Christian community’s life and work in its various dimensions.”(7) Theological integration, or praxis, is the key concept in this definition and in the course I would design for the church planters.

The definition of Fowler inspired me on many levels, but the idea that theological education could start with "the dimensions of the life and work of the church", the practice of the local church, inspired me most. Could we build a course that does not start with theory but starts with the practice of the local church and then move to theory and back? Could we build a course that would teach students who are in ministry how to "reflect critically and constructively" on the local church practice?

During my time as Academic Dean on the Cape Flats, I became familiar with the work of the Liberation Theologian Gustav Gutiérrez, who deepened my understanding of the meaning of praxis "as purposeful action that is guided by theory."8 I understood from Gutiérrez that praxis is not theoretical knowledge that can be acquired through study - though it certainly includes it. Nor is it like the practical know-how of a master chef, although, once again, this kind of knowledge is included. Instead, praxis refers to a creative ability to keep theory and practice in tension, although it does more than only keep these in tension; it also integrates them into a pattern in which action and ongoing reflection mutually indwell each other.

I imagined a course with praxis as its organizing principle, with local churches across the city as the classrooms. I imagined the faculty of academics and pastors as equals in critical and constructive dialogue. Students could then learn how to do theology in their ministry context, answering the questions that matter most to them. This would be a seminary without walls, one that is open.

The Experiment

The church planters in Cape Town that I mentioned before were concerned with how to lead and build this new community, in a time when a new South Africa was emerging.

The traditional approach would have been to find appropriate biblical and theological resources on the topic, but instead, we started with the pastoral concerns that emerged from their experience of ministry in the new community, the real issues they were facing. The range of questions that they identified prepared the agenda that we needed to address. Only then did we turn to theological disciplines in search of answers.

We emailed weekly-readings in the Old Testament, New Testament, Systematic Theology, Historical Theology, and Pastoral Theology, to students who gathered in cohort-groups. Together they read, engaged and wrestled to understand the topic and find some answers to their questions. As a group, we set a week aside to visit pastors in the city who were known for their ability to integrate theory and practice, people who were known for their leadership and the health of the communities they were leading. These trips allowed the church planters to learn from leaders at the coalface, all over the city. It was vital for them to see how theory informs practice and how the practice of ministry shapes theory.

Armed with this experience, the church planters constructed their theological answers to their emerging questions in a theological paper. From my time on the Cape Flats, I knew that these answers would not be the final answers, but just the next best answer for now. Even so, the answer had to be pregnant with practical possibilities. They then were then given an opportunity to test their ideas with others in the community.