A problem with professors is that they are often old. That's not really a problem in and of itself, but it is a problem when they teach something that requires knowing the now. The field most in need of being up to the minute for the Seminary student is Evangelism. It is speaking to the culture as it is now, but some my first Evangelism professor didn't know what now was.
The night after I attend a successful and thriving young adult's meeting where people were drinking, I was told that if I drank alcohol as a minister I would fail. He imagined churches to be the Baptist hollows of his past, and constantly sighted his forty years in the business. What business you ask? Being a professor at a seminary. A place were people in the audience pay to come hear about Christianity. Sounds like Evangelism to me . . .
Another problem that comes up in a lot of fields is that Professors tend to think what was liberal or forward thinking when they were younger is forward thinking still. The constant lecturing on how to get by in a post-modern world is useless. We have left post-modernism long ago into a world that drives knowledge accessed on passion. To learn about the selfish yuppie mind of the nineties is a ridiculous exercise. Christians don't face uncaring people any more. We face people who passionately care about other things and not worldly things either.
We live in a world where the monetary victory is a villain. The term lost is a backwards old term, and we must refuse to let Billy Graham shape our Evangelism.
