In a privately circulated document describing current research initiatives of the Barna Institute, George Barna reports these significant findings:

“Most pastors agree that they were inadequately trained for the job of leading the local church. Yet, seminaries continue to forge ahead, providing much of the same irrelevant (and in some cases, misleading and harmful) education that has been their forte for the past century. One response has been churches creating their own ministry education centers to raise up leaders and teachers from within their congregations. Another response has been for churches to hire believers who have secular training and experience in professional fields and allow them to learn the content of ministry realities while they are on the job. There is little doubt that churches are in desperate need of effective leadership as the challenges confronting the Church become more complex, more numerous and more daunting.”

“But how will those leaders be identified, developed and nurtured for effective ministry leadership? Is there a role for the seminary in the future of the church? If so, what should that seminary look like and what would its ideal role be? If churches continue to rely on seminaries or some alternative developmental structure to provide them with leaders, it is imperative that the leader training grounds be reshaped. Mere tinkering with a broken system won’t provide the answer; creating a holistic, strategic and intelligently-crafted process is needed.”