By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
Dr. Vassel Kerr, Dean of the School of Religion and Theology at the Northern Caribbean University. - Contributed
THE SCHOOL of Religion and Theology at the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) in Manchester will on May 10 have among its course offerings the degree Doctor of Ministry. The degree will be conferred by Inter-American Adventist Theological Seminary which is in Miami.
The Doctor of Ministry degree is designed mainly for seasoned Christian workers and pastors who are seeking to do academic work on the area of ministry that they are already engaged in. Few theological institutions in Jamaica offer Doctoral programmes. The notable exception is the United Theological College of the West Indies, that also offers a Doctor of Ministry degree, which is conferred by Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia in the United States.
Dr. Vassel Kerr, Dean of NCU's School of Religion and Theology, in an interview with The Gleaner, outlined some of the thinking that is shaping the training of future Adventist pastors, scholars and church leaders.
The School of Religion and Theology is not quite a year old. It had its birth last March. Prior to March 2003, Adventist pastors were trained as part of the Department of Religion and Theology which in turn formed part of the university's Faculty of Education.
There have been benefits associated with the decision to upgrade the Department of Religion and Theology into a school, Dr. Kerr said. As a school, the institution can better manage training persons at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. This was not particularly easy when one formed part of a department, Dr. Kerr explained.
A 1964 graduate of the then West Indies College, Dr. Kerr returned to his alma mater to become the first Dean of The School of Religion and Theology. He holds a Ph.D from the Greenwich University School of Theology, a Doctor of Ministry and Master in Divinity from Andrews University, a Master of Letters in Theology from Birmingham University, and a Bachelor of Theology from Northern Caribbean University.
He administers a school with a student population of 109. There are 88 undergraduate students and 21 graduate students. He is by no means satisfied with the enrolment in the school. Accordingly, he is seeking to implement a strategy to increase enrolment by 15 per cent for next few years.
At this time the school offers:
The Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Religion
The Bachelor of Arts in Religion with a Minor
The Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in Pastoral Ministry
The Associate of Arts degree in Religion.
The Bible Workers Certificate
The Master of Arts in Pastoral Theology
Despite the range of degrees offered and to be offered, Dr. Kerr acknowledged that the school is essentially pastor-centric as it is by design the training arm for future pastors of the denomination. Nevertheless, he said there is significant scope for courses to be tailored to meet students' training needs.
As the School moves ahead in 2004, Dr. Kerr has among his priorities, increasing of the range of degrees offered at the undergraduate level. He is moving towards having Baccalaureate programmes in Pastoral Administration, Religion Education, Biblical Languages, Archaeology, and Chaplaincy.
The B.A. in Chaplaincy, he said, would be for persons who do not want to be pastors but who will need to function in situations that make them akin to being a pastor. There is, he said, a growing demand for this kind of service. On the other hand, he acknowledged that for some of the degrees he wants to see come on-stream, there is not a great demand for such programmes especially Archaeology. But, he stressed, he is seeking to cater also to people who will do degrees such as Archaeology just for their own personal development.
PASTORAL CAREER
Dr. Kerr began his pastoral career serving a number of churches in St. Elizabeth. He then left for England where he served as pastor for 10 years before moving to Canada where he gave another 10 years to pastoral work.
He is passionate about preaching. He is the author of The Power of Biblical Preaching, a book based on his doctoral work. To complement this intention, he is seeking also to build a Preaching Lab, where students will be videotaped as they deliver sermons and thereafter will be better able to critique themselves and stomp out weaknesses with a review of the tape.
As an institution offering theological education on a university's campus, Dr. Kerr hinted that the school's agenda sometimes is constrained to play second-fiddle to the wider needs of the university. As a Christian university, the NCU requires that irrespective of the degree students pursue, that they do a quota of religious/theological courses. Some of the students in his school are taught theology with non-theological students. He is seeking to remove ministerial students from having to do theology with students who are not studying for the pastorate or Christian ministry. He justifies this initiative on the basis that teaching the ministerial students separately allows a subject such as Daniel-Revelation to be explored in greater depth, with a more fulsome exploration of Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek.
NON-DISCRIMINATORY POLICY
Just about anybody may be enrolled in The School of Religion and Theology as the university has a non-discriminatory policy on admissions, Dr. Kerr said. However, members of faculty will have to be Adventists "because it is the training institution for Adventist pastors and scholars and so those teaching have to understand and model the Adventist way," Dr. Kerr said. Students in the School of Religion and Theology are required to give a quota of their time working under the supervision of a pastor. This is one of the avenues that the school, Dr. Kerr said, seeks to secure the spiritual formation (maturity) of its ministers-in-training. The Dean acknowledged that the spiritual formation of students would also be given greater priority in the near future as there is going to be a course by that name. But as things are now, students are able to receive much spiritual formation from the content of lectures, and also through their involvement in worship services on the campus.
Among Dr. Kerr's other hopes for the institution is to establish an endowment chair the proceeds of which would be used to promote and conduct more seminars and programmes. In this regard, he wants to the school to become a focal point for theological inquiry and toward that end, he is looking to have two international theological conferences each year at which top scholars across the globe would be invited to present on their respective areas of expertise.
He will also be pressing the school to be more engaged in theological research. This, he said, will complement the institution in its drive to think and act in a theologically contextual manner.
