It‘s early morning at Morija Theological Seminary, and I am about to begin my class.
Students file in from chapel, shaking their heads and murmuring to one another, in tones so low that I can‘t make out the meanings of their words. As the students settle into their seats and I begin to gather my thoughts and start my presentation, I notice that one student – ―Thato‖ – is missing. I ask the class Prefect if Thato is ill today. She responds that, ―No,‖ he is not ill, and that he has been taken to the office of the Director for ―failing to read properly during chapel.‖
This is not the first time I have witnessed such a thing. Last year one of my brightest students missed an entire class period because he was being reprimanded by the Director for an infraction during chapel. At that time it had been that he had misjudged the weight and opening of the chapel door and had allowed it to close in such a way that it made a noise. His punishment for that offense, the students had informed me, was that he was required to repeat his role in that chapel service‘s leadership for one month.
I ask, ―What will happen to Thato? Will he be in class soon?‖
―We are not sure, Ntate Jeff. It will depend upon whether he can explain himself well to the Director. Perhaps the Director will take extra time to treat him harshly.‖
Nearly forty minutes into the class period, Thato arrives, looking sheepish, and takes his seat. After class he comes to apologise for being late to class. I ask him what he had done in chapel and what the consequence would be. He told me that he had accidently skipped a line of scripture while reading from the Old Testament, and that he would be required to read scripture in chapel for a month until he could do it properly.
―Doesn‘t everyone make mistakes?‖
―We are not allowed to make mistakes, Ntate Jeff.‖
________
Presentation of Research Data
Chapter Four presented the categories, methods, and tools I employed for gathering data about theological education at Morija Theological Seminary within the context of the Lesotho Evangelical Church. This chapter will present some of the key issues and findings yielded by those methods and tools. As I presented at the outset, my programme of investigation named six contextual categories (Campus Life and General Course of Study at MTS; Field Education;
Applicability of Pastoral Skills and Knowledge to Actual Parish and Community Contexts;
Christianity in Culture; Poverty; and HIV/AIDS) as guides for inquiry. The initial category, Campus Life and General Course of Study, yielded data that revealed significant trends and realities within the programme of theological education at Morija Theological Seminary. In what follows I will present and discuss these data received from questionnaires, respondents, observation, and documentary research, as they relate to observable trends or key organisational
82
understandings. I will present, often via extensive excerpts from interviews, seminary and church documents, and field notes, patterns and trends in the data I received. Data and interpretation from this discussion about Campus Life and General Course of Study have bearing on the information my inquiries gleaned regarding the other five contextual categories. Chapter Seven of this thesis presentation will discuss, succinctly, some of these important connections and their implications for the present and future of theological education in the Lesotho Evangelical Church. In general, the information I will present here, in Chapter Five (and, with the help of the interpretive theory of Michel Foucault, in Chapter Six), will build the central argument of this thesis: that specific styles of leadership and personal interaction, as enacted at MTS and throughout the LEC, create, replicate, and reinforce an educational and interpretive atmosphere within which fulfilling the stated mission of the seminary and that of the LEC viv-à-vis the remaining five contextual categories I have named (or, likely, any other contextual categories) becomes difficult or impossible.I have chosen to present interview transcript excerpts, especially, in generously selected segments for several reasons: Firstly, through interviews I was able to hear people relating issues in their own words. Though, as discussed in previous chapters, my voice is in many ways privileged in these conversations (I selected the topics and the questions, and had some power as an interviewer and representative of the academy in general), interview participants often took the conversations in directions I hadn‘t necessarily expected, and presented issues that were important to each of them as individuals. Secondly, I have worked to include wide portions of pertinent interview exchanges in an attempt to present the contexts of the conversations and a sense of the ways in which my own lines of inquiry seemed to fit or force this context. This decision arises from my desire to be as forthright and accountable as possible around questions regarding my own interviewing style and errors. Interview excerpts are always labelled specifically so that readers can refer, if desired, to the full transcripts in order to have a broader and clearer sense of the context from which the excerpt has been taken. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, these excerpts present clear trends of information and perceptions. Many of the issues I present and address are evident in the majority of my interview conversations, and are borne out by documents, observations, and non-recorded conversations. Finally, the interviews have a specific integrity, of sorts, in that each interview participant read his or her transcript, sometimes suggesting that items be removed, and approved the interview transcript, acknowledging it as a representative presentation of the conversation in which we had participated together.92 This thesis presentation,
92 Every interview participant read his or her transcript and signed and dated an ―Approval and Release‖
form, agreeing with the following statements:
I, [name of participant], have read the complete transcript of an interview in which I participated with Jeffrey Moore as a part of his research on theological education in the Lesotho Evangelical Church. I understand that this interview was a part of Jeff Moore‘s research for the PhD degree at the University of KwaZulu Natal. I have been offered no compensation for this interview, and I understand that Jeff may use quotations from this interview in academic papers, articles, and presentations.
in that it is a description, is, after all, their story – the story of the people in the LEC involved in ministry and theological education – a story I have endeavoured to tell with them, and in which many of them are still deeply and meaningfully involved.
As was presented in Chapter Four, LEC pastors and MTS TS students were given the opportunity to complete theological education questionnaires containing mainly Likert-type scale items. Responses to these questionnaires were reviewed for suggested areas of further inquiry.
Because each of these Likert-type items refers to a discrete query, items were reviewed individually or alongside items with similar subject matter and intent.93 For most items in the category, ―Campus Life and General Course of Study,‖ nearly all of which were positive statements, the largest share of respondents answered ―5 – Strongly Agree.‖ For example, for the statement, ―Living at Morija Theological Seminary was helpful to my course of study,‖ of the sixty (60) pastoral respondents to that item, forty-nine (49), or 82%, responded ―5 – Strongly Agree‖
(Figure 1). For the similar item in the student questionnaire, ―Living at Morija Theological Seminary is helpful to my course of study,‖ of the twenty-one (21) student respondents to that item, eighteen (18) or 86%, responded ―5 – Strongly Agree.‖
Pre-Seminary Expectations
For both the Pastor Questionnaire and the Student Questionnaire, however, responses to Item 11 in the section, ―Campus Life and General Course of Study‖ – a statement related to pre- seminary expectations – the preponderance of respondents selected ―1 – Strongly Disagree,‖ or ―2
I have signed each page of the interview transcript, indicating any changes or corrections I have deemed necessary. I understand that Jeff Moore will keep this approval and release form and the signed copy of the transcript confidential, and that they will only be shared with others if I give my written permission first. Jeff Moore has assured me that my identity will not be revealed, but that the interview will only be referred to using the alternative name I have given and a reference number.
The ―Approval and Release‖ for Executive and Board interviews did not contain a provision for anonymity.
93
―
A single Likert-type item asks the respondent to which of several ordered alternatives they belong. Each Likert-type item provides a discrete approximation of the continuous latent variable. A proper analysis of single items from Likert scales should acknowledge the discrete nature of the response‖ (Clason and Dormody 1994, 32).84
– Somewhat Disagree‖ (Figure 3 and Figure 4). Responses to this item signalled a significant area of interest for further inquiry. The strong trend among pastors and students indicating a dissonance between pre-seminary expectations and actual seminary experiences became (as will be shown [below] in the discussion of interview content and procedures) an important investigative and interpretive key for the research project as a whole.
The Executive Committee/Seminary Board Questionnaires contained a similar item, only worded prescriptively, in keeping with the administrative and policy-generating nature of these bodies:
Item 11 – ―The seminary should help prospective students to have a clear picture of campus life before they arrive at the seminary.‖ Of the six (6) respondents, three (3) selected ―Strongly Agree,‖ two (2) selected ―Somewhat Agree,‖ and one (1) selected ―Undecided.‖ Though most Executive Committee (EC) and MTS Board respondents indicated belief that students should have a clear picture of campus life before they arrive at the seminary, the majority of students and former students indicated that their pre-seminary expectations did not match what they found when they arrived on campus. A 6 February, 1986 report to the MTS Board indicates that even at that time, over twenty years ago, students were arriving at MTS not fully knowing what to expect:
Some students come to Koapeng [MTS] not knowing what to expect. Some even write because they do not find admission in High Schools. Then after one year they discover that this was not what they expected and they desert the school.
This phenomenon is surely not unique to MTS. The transition from one institution to another can often be filled with new and unexpected experiences, procedures, and relationships. Wilhelm Meyer (2005, 59) presents one South African student‘s expression of what he calls the ―sheer volume of new experiences in her first semester at university:‖
I think the move away from home was totally a shock; I had to cook for myself and all that. But on the other side, I came here with a faith that was in the box, being a Christian means this, this and this; you know it was all nicely set out. Then I came here and it just was attacked from every angle. . . . I went on arguing that Jesus is God and the tutor was saying ‗no he isn‘t‘ and they wouldn‘t explain why, they were just telling me that Jesus isn‘t God. This in the first year, in the first semester, was totally mind blowing and I just flipped. I just couldn‘t handle it, because the next
person I asked said the same thing and I just didn‘t understand because no one was giving me an explanation.
My first-year students at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, during the 2007- 2008 and 2008-2009 academic years expressed similar experiences of shock and surprise around the question of their expectations for seminary life versus the lived-reality. Virginia Cetuk (1998, 11) suggests in the introduction to her book on pre-seminary expectations:
I am not saying that these students do not expect to have a lot of reading and writing to do or that they do not expect the reading to be challenging in some way. Rather, it is almost as if they are surprised when they are pushed to reexamine the faith commitments they bring with them to seminary and, in effect, led to ask themselves whether they do indeed have a mature faith and if they do not, what they will do about it.
Both the Meyer excerpt and the Cetuk statement suggest issues related to faith commitments or doctrinal understandings.
I was interested, then, based on questionnaire responses, to learn more about why pre- seminary expectations and actual seminary experiences at MTS did not match. MTS holds an
―Orientation Course‖ during one week each semester, during which prospective students are invited to spend time at the seminary, attending introductions to various courses, meeting with current students, and participating in campus life. There is, then, an institutional effort to prepare students for the nature of life at MTS. Were students‘ pre-seminary expectations unrealistic? Were these expectations related to community life, course content, or campus accomodations? Did expectations vary from student to student? These were some of the questions to which I hoped to find answers as I participated in interviews with students and pastors.
Based upon the responses to the Pastor Questionnaire and the Student Questionnaire regarding pre-seminary expectations, I approached the Director of the Seminary to suggest the possibility of beginning a course for TS1 and TS2 students (TS2 students for the inaugral year of the course only), entitled, ―Introduction to Seminary Studies.‖ The course was designed to provide an open forum for students to discuss, review, and navigate their expectations during their initial semesters at MTS. Included in the course were discussion about the experience of campus life and initial seminary studies, introduction to theological terms and themes, library and research skills, academic honesty, and discussions about study habits. The Director agreed that this would be helpful, and cautioned me that this course should complement, not compete or interfere with, the other courses these students would take during their first year. I had the opportunity, during my recordied interview with him, to express appreciation to the Director for allowing this course to proceed:
J: I‘m thinking of a couple of things…
M: Yes.
J: One is you mentioned the openness to new courses.
M: Yeah.