Introduction
Accreditation is a familiar idea for colleges and universities. Bible colleges and seminaries also have a long history with accrediting agencies. In these settings, accreditation confirms that a person has completed certain requirements. It allows a student to move from one stage of study to the next. It also helps employers and other institutions understand what a credential means.
Churches have usually managed without accreditation. In the church, growth is seen in visible character and in faithful service in ministry and mission. The congregation can see who is growing. Leaders emerge through their service, and the congregation recognises them.
Over time, many churches have found that they can offer only limited theological education. Some members leave their home churches to study at seminaries. These seminaries are often accredited by national and international agencies. Sometimes a seminary credential becomes the reason a person is accepted as a leader when they return to a church.
Is Accreditation Necessary for the Church?
This history raises the question of whether the church needs accreditation at all. At GAAMT, we see accreditation for local churches as a pastoral matter. Our main interest is how churches care for and form their own members. Measuring churches against a standard is a smaller part of our concern.
In recent years, many churches have stopped developing their own training. They trust seminaries to do the training for them. Sadly, many members who leave for theological training never return to the churches where they grew up. This loss of trained people makes it urgent for churches to recover theological education that meets the needs of their congregations. Churches need more intentional training, so that they can train their own leaders for the mission of the next generation.
In this situation, accreditation can help churches in several ways. It can affirm churches that their training programs have value. It can also encourage church members to invest in their church's education. When churches work together with other churches and networks, accreditation can create a sense of accountability. It also helps churches to know that others share their efforts.
GAAMT exists to support this work. GAAMT accredits church-based ministry training so that churches can grow as communities that serve the next generation well.
The Current Direction in Accreditation
If accreditation has value, then a further question follows. Some people may ask whether seminaries and churches should aim for one common standard.
In recent years, many accreditation bodies have begun to speak positively about non-formal theological education. Recent guidelines often use the language of competencies and learning outcomes. These documents suggest that non-formal and formal education can work alongside each other. GAAMT welcomes this development. Most educators now accept that learning happens outside seminaries as well as inside them. In some models, credits from non-formal programs can even count toward recognition by formal institutions.
The desire to honour learning that happens in ministry settings is important and positive. The effort to name competencies, instead of relying only on classroom hours, is a real and positive change in global theological education.
The Challenge Beneath the Promise
Alongside this promise of partnership between seminaries and churches, a difficult pattern has also appeared. In practice, the standards used to recognise non-formal theological education are usually taken directly from formal seminaries.
Competencies are often defined by academic expectations. Rigour is measured by criteria that assume access to libraries and protected study time, along with trained staff. Teachers are expected to meet the standards that a seminary uses to define a teacher. Local churches struggle to meet these expectations. As a result, their training looks weaker when it is judged by seminary standards.
This result is usually unintended, and it is still real. Recognition can slowly turn into comparison. Partnership can shift toward conformity with seminary standards, and churches can become dependent on seminaries again.
GAAMT Accreditation Has a Different Starting Point
GAAMT's understanding of accreditation begins with the church. Our first question concerns how churches can recover their vision and mission as Scripture describes them. We ask what a good church looks like according to Scripture. We also ask what faithfulness looks like in ministry and mission.
We believe that a good church, rooted in Scripture and attentive to its people, will naturally develop good theological education. That education may look different from a seminary. It may move more slowly, and it may leave out some subjects that a seminary would consider essential. At the same time, it can be deeply relational. It can form character that the community is able to see. It can also prepare ministers who rely on the church in ministry and work with the church in mission.
Competency-Based Education from a Church Perspective
Many of us who work with GAAMT have studied in seminaries, though not all of us have. We recognise that seminary thinking has value for church-based ministry training. Some of the language that shapes theological education today is also encouraging. We hear about competency-based learning, and we see good signs in the use of micro-credentials. We commend the use of portfolios in place of exams. We also value the focus on outcomes and impact.
GAAMT strongly supports competency-based theological education (CBTE). CBTE focuses on what learners can actually do as well as what they know, and this focus lies at the heart of ministry training. However, GAAMT is concerned about how some competencies are defined and applied. For this reason, we are cautious when CBTE protocols are used mainly to check compliance.
GAAMT encourages churches to think about competencies in biblical terms. We may ask local church leaders what Jesus wanted his disciples to become. We may also ask what the apostles wanted the various churches to develop. Another important question is how the Bible describes growth in these competencies in the life of the church.
Scripture shows some broad competencies that apply to every church. Believers are to become like Christ and to be filled with the Spirit. They are to show the fruit of the Spirit and to fulfil the Great Commission. Scripture also shows much diversity, and it gives no single training program for reaching these goals. In his letters, Paul focused on some competencies for one church and on different competencies for another church.
GAAMT wants to protect the space where churches think about competencies in light of their own needs and abilities. These competencies grow out of the church's own life and ministry. Seminaries can help guide this discussion, and the competencies themselves will vary from church to church.
Seminaries and churches need to work together. Formal theological education can help point churches back to Scripture and help clarify what faithfulness looks like. Even so, the local church remains the main place where faithfulness is tested and shown.
Conclusion
GAAMT's work in church-based ministry training stands alongside formal theological education. We want to learn from global trends in theological education and stay aware of them. Our main concern is to keep the focus on local churches. We want local churches to develop training programs that are consistent with Scripture, doing the best they can. Some churches will do this better than others, and this gives churches the opportunity to help one another improve and grow.
GAAMT works with the conviction that healthy churches produce meaningful theological education. Accreditation should strengthen this work. A good church that is faithful to Scripture and engaged in mission is already a place of deep formation. GAAMT's task is to recognise and support that formation.
