Is Accreditation Necessary to Make a Seminary Legit?

The concern a lot of people have with institutions that don't have accreditation is the concept of the diploma mill.

And I know that you have probably heard that term and the fear of what that is.

And so how do people know your seminary is legit? Like you said, the masters will accept your stuff, but say another seminary is a diploma mill.

How are they going to know the difference? Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

And I'm continuing to do interviews here at the 2023 FIRE Conference, the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals.

And I am joined right now by Chris Johnson, who is a friend.

We've been friends for many years, spent time together.

He is one of the pastors at Crosswalk Church in Daytona.

And he is also the newly chosen academic dean at Christ Bible College and Theological Seminary.

It's a mouthful.

It is.

CBCTS.org.

There you go.

Well, the reason why I asked you to sit down with me, Chris, is one, you know, we've been friends for a long time.

I'm on the show.

Yeah.

I mean, this is a world renowned show.

Oh, boy.

I feel intimidated and I did radio.

Yeah.

In a minute, I'm going to get you to tell a little bit of your history, but what we're going to talk about today is the concept of seminary and whether or not seminary is really something.

Is it what it used to be? Do we see changes coming in the future? Things like accreditation? Yeah.

Are those playing a part in the future of seminary? You know, our church has what's called Sovereign Grace Academy, which is not a seminary, but we try to provide a seminary-like experience to students where students can come in, take classes that are rigorous, take tests, and we provide certificates for the people who do it.

And my thought has always been that at some point, if the government makes it more difficult or if accreditation becomes more difficult, these types of smaller seminaries that are coming up in churches may become the default answer for men who need training versus going off to college, going off to seminary like Southern or something like that.

And Southern is great.

I'm not saying it's bad, but is that the long-term or do we see these smaller institutions? So that's part of what I wanted to- It's going to be a good conversation for sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

So right away, your background, you said, is in radio.

Yes.

So since 2005, worked at Cornerstone Broadcasting and had the joy of being the program director there.

So worked with a whole bunch of radio programs, Grace to You, Truth for Life, Haven Today, others.

And then did the music side with a number of hours of music that were on the radio as well.

But my favorite, obviously, was the Bible teaching, getting solid biblical teaching out to the community.

And then, of course, using the internet, that was a worldwide thing.

So not only was our local three counties covered, but you could get around the world, listeners all over the place.

And what an avenue to get the gospel out, not only through, obviously, the message of the songs, but much more so the preaching of the truth.

Yeah, absolutely.

It was a lot of fun.

Great, great season of life.

But you're no longer doing- Stepped away from radio in part because I was able to finish seminary.

And when that happened, wanted to transition more into a greater role at the church.

I've been able to serve right alongside that.

So for the past 20 years, I've served at Crosswalk Church, as you mentioned, and been able to just enjoy that season with my father-in-law, who's the pastor there.

And then- I love your mother.

Mitch is such an encouragement to me, and I know he's going to see this.

I just want him to hear my words.

He is such a humble, such a wise, godly man and a man I very much appreciate having in my life.

And I'm sure you do as well.

Without a doubt.

I've known him since I was 11 years old.

And so, seeing his humility, his tenaciousness, and just the faithfulness of a man who has plotted through the scriptures, who's taught clearly, loved well, and as we've learned this week here in this conference, is finishing well, and in the process of that has suffered a lot at the same time.

Ministry's rigorous.

But for me, especially having an education that was slow, to say the least, it wasn't that I went off to college and got it all done.

It was a slow go, but doing ministry alongside of that educational process helped me to really have a better perspective of what is pastoral ministry? Is this a real, true calling, and what about the long haul? So that's been helpful.

So, leaving radio helped to allow me more time at the church, and at the same time had an opportunity to teach logic and Bible at a classical Christian academy for a year.

And then, as you mentioned, the Lord opened a door recently to serve at the seminary that I graduated from.

So that's been an unexpected blessing.

Now, you went to seminary while also serving, like you just said, and you were working at the radio station.

You did all this while you were in seminary.

How long did it take you, and what degree did you attain over that amount of time? Right.

So, early on, back in the early 2000s, did Liberty University and graduated with an associate's degree from Liberty.

And then, there was a short period of break, went to Master's University online, did their online program.

How's that? John MacArthur's? Yes.

Okay.

So I had a chance to, and was so excited for that, waited for that window to open.

And they contacted and said, hey, we have a pilot program.

Will you do it? I said, I'd love to.

So I did a Bachelor's in Christian Ministries with Master's, and that was a fantastic experience.

Some of my favorite professors still are from those years.

And then, came back, well, was here, never went anywhere.

So was thinking through, all right, what about seminary? Had been a goal, and had been something I wanted to do, but didn't know exactly how the Lord was going to line that up.

So there was some places, could have gone to TMS, loved the brothers at the Expositor Seminary located in Jupiter and other places.

But in God's kind providence, he brought a seminary to our town.

We had been praying for one.

There's nothing like that in our area.

And so, in God's kindness, brought it in 2018.

So the next four years for me was serving the local church, continuing to do radio.

But at night, three days a week, during the weekend, one on Saturday mornings, it was seminary.

And it was a rigorous four years, but it was fantastic.

It was everything I could have hoped for.

And that is at Riverbend Community Church.

Right, yep.

That's the host church.

For people who might remember, I've mentioned Riverbend over the years, because when I was going through my time, formative time as becoming more reformed in my theology, the previous pastor who was there, Pastor Ray Hargrave, was such an influence on me.

A godly man, a man who preached the scriptures.

I used to have five CDs, his tulip CDs, and I would listen to them over and over.

And I've heard his anecdotes and his stories enough that I could probably recite them myself.

But to know that that went on to give birth to a seminary.

Well, and that was his vision too.

That was something that he, 12 years ago, said, we need to do this.

And in God's kind providence, it was literally three months before I graduated from master's, got a knock on the door saying, hey, this is what's coming.

Can you be part of that? So I had a chance to join another, several of the brothers, and be part of that four years.

We're now in the sixth year, haven't just finished another graduation last year.

And so really excited to see what God's doing.

And yet at the same time to see, as you've been talking about, some of the changes and shifts that will come in college and seminary, I think, in the years ahead.

Well, one of the things that I have been concerned about, and this is one of the questions I wanted to ask you, particularly COVID sort of put some things on my radar that hadn't been before.

And again, I may not be 100% right about some of this, this is why I want to ask you, is it seems like the government having more authority in places that have accreditation, having the ability to speak into who is your faculty, who is in charge, what rules are you placing on your students? And the reason why COVID comes up into that, things like masks and vaccinations and forced things like that seem to me to be an issue for places that are so big that they are receiving like government assistance and grants and student loans, things like that.

So speak to that for a minute.

Do you see that as maybe something that's going to create change in the seminary environment or do you think that I'm exaggerating? Yeah, no, I think you're right on.

And part of that is all of those fears.

And there are a number of brothers who are thinking through how can we create and foster a better system that can help local churches, like-minded churches like we're talking about.

I don't know where that is, but I know that's in the pipeline from a number of brothers I've talked to that said, hey, there are some guys behind the scenes that are really working on fostering a better accreditation for these type churches.

But in the meantime, we're stuck with what we have, which typically costs a lot of money.

There's a lot of rules you have to cover, as you said, even library size, number of students, faculty, what are their degrees, all the things that go into that.

And I don't even know all the details there, but I do know that for us at CBCTS, it was something that we said in time, if the Lord desires that, amen.

But right now our focus is we want to raise up godly men who can fill the pulpit, disciple their families, disciple their churches.

But also we have degree programs for ladies who can serve in children's ministry, serve in women's ministry, get a master's degree or even a bachelor's degree in biblical counseling.

How can we bring that to the table for the everyday man or woman, and for us specifically the working man or woman, who they can't run off, they can't move, they can't relocate to go off to college, but at the same time also provide an opportunity for these students to be discipled in their local church.

You know, churchmen teaching other churchmen how to do this well, instead of moving away.

Now, it's not a one size fits all, right? So there are those who go to Southern or TMS or others, and that's fantastic.

I mean, I know I'm going to pursue my DMN degree with TMS, and I'm excited for it, but for me at the master's level, when I was doing the MDiv degree, CBCTS was what I needed and God provided it.

And that raises an interesting question, because when you talk about accreditation, some schools don't accept credit from schools that aren't accredited, but you, the school you're at now that you're the dean of, it's not accredited in the traditional sense, certainly has credentials because you have godly men teaching there, that's the most important credential of all, but accredited from a state perspective or regional perspective.

Is the master's academy accredited? You know, that's a good question.

I'm not sure as far as TMS, I do believe they are, but I know this with regards to even the investigation that I did for well over a year before initially applying was, okay, CBCTS was not an accredited institution, will my work work with TMS? And they said yes, there is a segment of their student populace in that program that they consider, where did you come from, but what load, what was your rigor, what was your studies, and so obviously your transcripts play a big part.

One of the things we did is we made it a little bit more difficult for you to just walk away with honors cords.

So it's 3.7 or higher, many institutions it's 3.5 for the lowest of the honors, ours is not, it's 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, in fact one of our graduates literally just missed the honor cord by tenths of a point, but he said hey, I wouldn't trade a cord for the diligence and the study and the rigor of what we did.

So that was helpful and it didn't, by God's grace, stop me from being able to get in and move on to the next step.

Now as far as transferring in the middle of a degree, that could be troublesome, we will accept others obviously, we want to take a look at whomever is coming in and their transcripts, but one thing we're investigating, I haven't gotten very far in this yet, I'm only into this job a few months, but investigating how can we partner with other institutions to say hey, if our students want to take some gen ed programs or they would like to take a specific class that you offer, we don't, can we negotiate that with you, with them, or is there a way that we can find out how we can be like-minded enough in our syllabi that you will take some of our credit, so we're still looking at that, how can we establish strong relationships with some of these other institutions.

I gotcha, I gotcha, and I like what you said earlier, you said that in your school you're focusing on men remaining serving and still being able to come to school, and the school I attended was that way, all the classes were at night, I jokingly sometimes call my seminary pastoral trade school, because it was like you were learning the trade of pastoring, and in a sense I joke, but at the same time there's some positive to that as well.

So in regard to the average man who wants to go, who feels God's calling to pastor, who feels God's calling him to do this, and in a lot of situations people will say, oh you don't need to go to seminary, you just go preach, but you and I both know the value of rigorous study, and how I learned really how to study by going to seminary, so do you think that a man really needs seminary to be a pastor, and I know that's a loaded question.

No, it's a good question, because I wrestled with it, at one point in time I thought that an MDiv degree was an idol, in fact I had a dear brother who was older than me in the faith said, you know what, you want to crush that idol before you go off to seminary, because what you're thinking it is and what it actually is, is two different things.

Would I trade what I learned and the discipleship that I received, the pouring in, absolutely not, but I have seen many men who have been, if you will, they are faithful self-studiers, so some just don't want it at all, they don't want to go through the rigors, in fact I was talking to a gentleman not too long ago that wanted to get into ministry, and looking at the track record I thought, well, but where has been the faithfulness along the path of your life actually for a church to say, yeah we're going to take you on, that helps, you know going through those four years, going through the diligence of whatever that course load takes, it weeds some out, I'll never forget the first morning of seminary, our dean at the time said, there will be many of you at this table who will not be here in four years, and when we graduated, four years later, I was shocked at the ones who weren't with us, I was amazed by that, because he was right, and some of the ones that had, were, for whatever reason, some of them family, some of them health, some of them just, well, didn't cut it, and that was sad, but that was helpful, is it totally necessary, no, not every time, but my question for any man is, what is the reason that you would say no, I know a dear brother that I love, he always quotes Lloyd-Jones as saying, that it wasn't a necessary thing, even though Lloyd-Jones ended up being the president of the seminary, so, he valued education, obviously he's the doctor, but at the same time, what is going on in the life of that man, and how is he personally giving himself to the rigors of study in order to do what we're talking about better, pastoring, shepherding, leading, all the things that are required, or is he just winging it, and we can honestly say there are several guys out there, many guys who might just be in that category.

Yeah, and that's a dangerous place to be, you don't fly a plane without being trained, you don't lead men into battle without being trained, and as a pastor, you're called to do many things that require you to learn, and people say, well that's me and the Holy Spirit, you know, and yeah, you have to be careful with that attitude.

Again, ask the question, what prevents you, and what sacrifices are you not willing to make to make that happen, even if it comes well, it would really push into my family life, okay, then that would either, for me, say, then you might want to think about a location closer to you, if you're wanting to move away, and that's just not possible, okay, what about a location closer, or maybe doing it part-time, it might take you longer than the four years, is there a different route that you can take, different track that you can be on, and then at the same time, maybe this is not the season of life that the Lord would have you to do this, is there another way for you, again, not totally disqualifying and saying you can't serve in pastoral ministry without the degree program, but really probing the hard issues and asking what is the reason that you would shy away from this opportunity, you know, we think about this, how many times do we talk to missionaries and those who serve in seminaries around the world, and those students are hungry to be there, gentlemen said earlier today in one of our sessions that you don't see men falling asleep in seminary classes in the middle of, I think it was India he was talking about, but wherever he's talking about, and that pricked my heart, thinking, okay, true, what is my attitude about how we have this at the tip of our fingers, I mean, there's so many opportunities.

Yes, and you're right, I heard the same thing, the Macedonian call, those guys want somebody to come and teach them, and I heard that because, you know, my desire is to teach and having those opportunities.

But for me, any guy is, are you teachable and correctable at any level, if you have any education at all, if you're thinking about education, if you're coming to, hey, I feel like I have a call to pursue this, okay, let's look at that, and what does your life look like now at whatever age you are, and are you willing to be instructed and taught and grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, both inside the institution, but also outside, because I say this all the time, whether it's the doctrines of grace or education, both of those should foster the greatest humility in our hearts, not pride.

And yet, sometimes it's the opposite, which is like, what's going on? Well, I have one other real quick question, then we're going to close up.

The concern a lot of people have with institutions that don't have accreditation is the concept of the diploma mill, and I know that you have probably heard that term and the fear of what that is, and I have seen, you know, send in $50 and we'll send you a degree of ministry, and you can become a doctorate of theology, and, you know, and I remember when I was first, when I first felt the call to ministry, I was at a karate event, and a friend of mine who did karate, he was not a Christian, but I told him I felt God was calling me to ministry and that I was going to go to seminary.

He goes, why do you want to go to seminary? I can get you ordained over the weekend.

Just come with me.

He was into this sort of like holistic thing where they ordained people, and so how do people know, and this is something I think would be really beneficial to people to say, okay, your seminary is legit.

Like you said, the masters will accept your stuff, but say another seminary, and it might not even be a seminary, I'm using seminary in quotes, is a diploma mill.

How are they going to know the difference versus, I mean, obviously if it's $50 for a weekend, you know the difference, but how do people know? That's a good question.

So I think for us, we have a goal, and that is to be something that's attainable, something that's accessible, and something that's sustainable.

All three of those.

And then we have a board of directors who are committed to creating a program all four years where when you're finished, you have a thorough knowledge of the scriptures, but not only that, practical knowledge of the scriptures that you can actually take what you've learned and apply it, but you have been applying it.

So for example, we're going to teach you in the second year, not only your systematics from year one, but also now how do I teach a class? How do I prepare to teach a class? We want from Sunday school level up, these folks to be able to know how is it that I teach well.

So part of that is the process of even coming into our institution, the application process.

In fact, I had a lady not long ago say, I'm not even sure I can fill out the application.

It wasn't that it was too difficult.

I said, well, don't be intimidated by that, but understand that it's intended to make you think, make you think about your own testimony, think about are there five people in your life who would say, I believe he or she belongs in this institution.

Um, you're going to meet with me.

You're going to meet with our, um, some of our other board of directors.

You'll meet with the president.

If you're local, we're going to add the online factor.

So there are going to be some zoom meetings and other opportunities.

So it's not just, as you said, send the money in and we're going to send a degree back, but also there might be, do you have writing skills? If you don't, you're going to have a course prior to even starting with us on how to do research, how to write a paper, how to cite properly citation.

People don't know what that is.

How many books have you picked up where there's no footnotes? And they're like, well, what, what do I hold? Who's the sources behind this material? We're going to make sure that not only, you know that, but you can actually write your own and you can develop over the course of time to be a strong writer, a good writer.

Because as our president has said many times, we are looking for pastors, teachers, Sunday school men and women, and those who could write those who will write those who will help in Christian schools, wherever the Lord would call them to be.

So although our school would be small and that it's newer, six years old, although we don't have all the big names that might go behind it, if you will, we have the word of God.

We have the clarity of what we're trying to accomplish and our commitment to you and making that something that's again, accessible, attainable, and it's sustainable.

I don't know if that answered your question.

No, it absolutely did.

To provide confidence in the person saying, you know what? This is a legit opportunity for me to grow in grace.

And that's our goal is discipleship.

And then for me, it's one of those things I remember going to college thinking, all right, some of these things I've learned before, but I'm a little bit deeper and then a little bit deeper.

And then you keep going down.

It's not that you're learning new things all the time.

There are certainly new things, but it's how do I handle the word better than I did? That was my whole goal.

I said years ago, I have no care in the world about whose signature is on the bottom of that diploma.

I know it opens doors.

And so I do want to pursue education, but my goal is how can I pastor to the glory of Christ better? Amen.

And whatever that requires, Lord, wherever you take me.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, Chris, thank you for sitting down with me today.

One more time, tell everyone how to get ahold of the seminary.

People are interested in what you guys are doing.

Maybe there's a pastor out there who wants to further his education, or maybe there's a young man like I was 25 years ago, feeling the call to ministry and saying, where can I go? How would they get ahold of you? We love that.

And we're actually, as I said, we're opening the door to the online platform this fall.

So head over to cbcts.org.

That's Christ Bible College and Theological Seminary.

We're located in Ormond Beach, just north of Daytona Beach.

But by virtue of the internet, we're so excited to be able to branch out.

We're hoping that we have students already from Memphis and maybe even from Arkansas.

There's others around the nation and world that are looking.

Maybe you too.

I hope you will.

Cbcts.org.

Fill out the application.

Give us a call.

We'd love to hear from you.

All right.

Thanks, Keith.

Yeah, thank you, Chris.

And thank you for listening today to Conversations with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.