This small book calls for an academically stringent education that makes a measurable difference between an undergraduate and post-graduate education for ministry. Often, the accrediting process and other demands have removed the focus of seminary education so that the master’s level student is ill-prepared for a pulpit ministry.

Seminary classes are often nothing more than navel-gazing, philosophical, methodological ponderings. And at average expense of $40,000 per year, they are creating a new generation of pastors that cannot handle the Word of God (let alone rightly divide it) and that is deeply in debt and unable to move to the remote villages of our country (which are so underserved in quality preaching) or to the urban areas (which are perishing because there is no proclamation of God’s Word) or to the mission field (which has become a testing ground for social-justice ministries rather than a place of teaching the Word to those who have never heard it).

If you are a seminary president, read this and evaluate your program. If you are a seminary professor, read this and change your subject matter. If you are a Bible college student, read this and choose your seminary carefully and wisely. If you are a pastor, evaluate your own education and the abilities it gave you. If you are a church member, ask questions before you pay for the preacher boy to attend the traditional seminary.

Author David Spurlock has over 50 years in pastoral ministry and over 40 years as a seminary level professor.