Recently, I've given some thought to going back to school. I do not have a master's degree, and have thought about pursuing a Masters of Divinity and a PhD. I'm not going to go down that route though, because the more I think about it, the more I realize I don't really want the education, I want the credentials.

Education ≠ Schooling

I was a very young man when I read this famous quote from Mark Twain:

I never let my schooling interfere with my education.

I think that quote was the first time I ever thought of being educated as something different than being schooled. It is, after all, very possible to be self-educated. It is possible (and probably easier than ever) to obtain an education through careful reading and study outside of traditional means.

One of my favorite books is a historical novelization of the life of Nathaniel Bowditch called "Carry On Mr. Bowditch." Bowditch really lived, and due to his families horrible circumstances, was barred from further schooling and forced into an apprenticeship at the young age of 12. Undeterred, Bowditch set out on a lifelong project of self-education through reading and study. He ended up performing great scientific and scholarly accomplishments and being given some of the first honorary degrees from Harvard.

Bowditch is far from an outlier. Plenty of people have managed to become educated without much schooling. One thing that Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Harry S. Truman, John D. Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and countless other very smart people throughout history have in common is that they never finished (and in many cases never even attended) college. Few would accuse them of being uneducated though.

The internet makes it easier than ever to obtain this kind of self-education. You can watch, free of charge, thousands of classes from famous universities. You can carry libraries around with you in your pocket. You can listen to the smartest people in the world freely share their knowledge in podcasts.

Calling it self-education is a bit of a misnomer too. Because you are still being taught. Currently, I'm being taught by some of the best educators in the world, I'm just being taught through their books and public lectures, not through expensive matriculation in their graduate schools.

At this point in my life, I'd be more interested in the syllabus for most master's level classes than I would be in the class itself. If you are motivated, you CAN read textbooks without being enrolled in a class. You CAN even write papers. The fact that they won't get graded doesn't mean you don't learn from the experience.

Education ≠ Credentials

When I say I want an M. Div. or a PhD. What I'm really saying is that I want the credentials, not the education. I want to be recognized as someone who has done the work. I want the diploma for my study wall.

Now, there are at least two problems with credentials: they are at times unearned and at other times unnecessary.

Many people get academic credentials to get academic credentials, but they aren't really interested in ongoing education. If you think that a person with a bachelor's degree is automatically more educated than a person without one, then you need to talk to more people. A person's level of schooling is not necessarily an indication of their level of learning.

The other problem is that credentials are not really necessary for many of the places where they are used. Outside of a few areas (like medicine) why do we need degrees?

In ministry, why does a pastor need to have a Masters of Divinity degree? Is it possible that he could make up the difference using self-study? Why would you care that a preacher has a degree on the wall? Isn't much of that just driven by proud elitism?

Education ≠ White Collar

While we are on the topic of elitism, we need to get away from the idea that working with your hands and being educated are polar opposites. A person can be a farmer, a welder, or a plumber and have interesting and informed ideas. Our nation was founded, in large part, by people who worked with their hands and with their minds.

Let's make #bluecollarscholars a thing again. Let's decouple being smart with working behind a desk.

What happened to the renaissance man? The farmer-poet? Where are the men like the Apostle Paul, whose learning and writing was beyond doubt, but who could also stitch a fine tent? Have you read the Apostle Peter's letters? He may have been a fisherman, but he knew how to spin a phrase.

Credentialism in the church

This leads me to my last point, which is really coming back to where I started, why do we need worldly credentialism in the church? Are we really going to read and preach from books written by Galilean fisherman and then say that you have to have a master's degree to pastor? How can we worship and study a Carpenter and then downplay the ideas of the carpenters in our congregations?

There are biblical qualifications for church leadership. They are given to us in Titus 2 and 1 Timothy 3. They are recognized by the laying on of hands of the presbytery (1 Timothy 4:14). Can't we go back to that?

I'm very much in favor of educating ministers, but education isn't the same thing as credentialism and maybe we in American Christianity have hindered God's work by adding an expensive layer of credentialism not given to us by God.