Thoughts on ABCS/ACCS

As my signature below notes, I am a graduate of American Bible College and Seminary (now American Christian College and Seminary). I earned the Doctor of Ministry in Christian Counseling from the then-TRACS accredited ABCS in 2001, following my graduation from the ATS/NCA accredited Phillips Theological Seminary in 1997.

My first experience of ABCS was in spring 1994, before I started seminary. I had just graduated from Southwestern Oklahoma State University with my M.Ed. and I was looking for a part-time college-level teaching position. I found something called "The University of Biblical Studies and Seminary" in the Oklahoma City telephone book and dialed it up. I spoke to Floyd Shealy, then-vice president of academic affairs, who scheduled an interview with me. I also met W.R. Corvin, one of the founders of the school, and Woodrow Walton. It turned out they were looking for someone to work in a student services-type position, not a teaching position, so I turned their job offer down. But I was favorably impressed with all three of the men I had met, and especially their sincerity. I came away from that long afternoon thinking that, with accreditation and better funding, UBSS might become the kind of school that Corvin, Shealy, and Walton desired.

Following graduation from seminary in 1997, I got a mailing advertising courses at "American Bible College and Seminary." I recognized the names and gave Shealy a call, telling him I was still interested in teaching part-time. I was hired to teach a graduate-level introductory course in church history. I thought this would be good experience as I began work on my Ph.D. in history at Oklahoma State University. The class didn't pan out, because there weren't enough students enrolled.

Shealy called me at the end of my first semester to check and see how my doctoral studies were progressing. I told him that I didn't think I could continue to pastor full-time and commute 90 miles one way to OSU in order to take doctoral classes, so I was reconsidering my educational options. Shealy invited me to discuss possible D.Min. studies with Walton. I did, and started my D.Min. in Christian Counseling the same semester I started my Master of Counseling Psychology program at Northwestern Oklahoma State University.

It was very interesting to be completing courses at two different schools at the same time. It gave me a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the difficulty level, quality, and other aspects of each. I strongly believed both then and now that the education which I received at ABCS was as good as any training in which I had participated before or since. I do not believe that any ABCS/ACCS graduate has to apologize for her or his degree. While no better, ABCS certainly was not less challenging or stimulating that the other institutions which I have attended.

What ABCS had in educational quality, however, it sorely lacked in administrative competence. I'll never forget the day when I got a nasty telephone call from a woman in the business office who demanded to know when I was going to pay for a particular course. I pointed out to her that I hadn't even ordered that course yet. She remained contentious and rude -- so much so, in fact, that I called the head of the business office at the time and told him that I was preparing to drop my studies with ABCS altogether. It wasn't long before this heavy-handed collection agent had been sent packing, so she had apparently almost single-handedly caused the closing of the school.

I worked closely with Walton, and found him to be a very considerate, gracious, and kind man. He was clearly overworked and underpaid, as was virtually everyone else associated with ABCS. I don't think there's ever been a nicer person on the planet than Shealy, but it's now clear that he was in way over his head in trying to run the institution. Fred Hambrick and Mitchel Beville were on my doctoral committee along with Walton, and I enjoyed working with both of these good men as well.

If there are any lessons to be learned from the demise of ABCS/ACCS, I think they include:

1. UBSS/ABCS/ACCS was designed to be a distance learning institution. Why the powers that be chose to seek TRACS, rather than DETC accreditation, mystifies me. They were forced to create, from scratch, an on-campus educational program, complete with all of the human resources and physical plant necessary for such an endeavor. The Oklahoma City metropolitan area is already saturated with institutions of higher learning.

2. UBSS/ABCS/ACCS grew too much, too fast. There was no plan to manage the institution once it received initial accreditation. It's almost as if the administration worked so hard and devoted so much attention to gaining accreditation that they thought little (if at all) about how to run the school once it was accredited. Increasing enrollment + small, already overworked staff = impending disaster and ultimate doom.

3. UBSS/ABCS/ACCS tried to project an image of being a broad, independent, evangelical school, but its roots -- and student base -- were in the Pentecostal movement. My former students from Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College, who enrolled at ABCS/ACCS on my recommendation, complained to me frequently and repeatedly about the charismatic atmosphere on the campus. They felt ABCS/ACCS should market itself explicitly as a Pentecostal school. Not surprisingly, these non-charismatic students felt uncomfortable attending a charismatic school, and most did not go on to finish their degrees.

4. UBSS/ABCS/ACCS had some utterly unqualified individuals serving on its board. One in particular suggested herself as Shealy's replacement as president -- even though she had absolutely ZERO higher education administrative experience! Steve Kern, who became chairman of the board following Shealy's departure, is a great man and an outstanding Southern Baptist pastor. But his arrival, and the arrival of some other board members, was too little, too late.

I think the impending demise of ACCS is truly tragic. It is tragic for many reasons, but most especially because it is unnecessary. The history of UBSS/ABCS/ACCS is a comedy of errors. Because of incompetence and mismanagement, it appears that ACCS will be just one more piece of junk piled high on the scrap heap of failed Christian higher educational institutions.

 

Hi Dr Schwartz:

Thank you for your poignant and thoughtful post. There was much discussion about ACCS in earlier threads here (use the search function to review if you care to do so).

I took a few courses at ACCS as the decline and fall were beginning. While I was not nearly as impressed as you were by the intellectual standards of the place--*markedly* below my experience in an RA/ATS seminary and in one of very very few genuinely first-rate unaccredited seminaries--I concur in your assessment of Dr Walton's attempts to raise the caliber of ACCS and in your reprise of the total administrative chaos.

I would add to the chaos side of the ledger the advertising of intensive residential sessions designed to accelerate course completion--when in fact the residential sessions did no such thing. I could have saved myself the cost and time of a nearly 900 miles (each way) trip to OKC had the residential sessions been more intelligibly advertised and promoted by ACCS staff.

The school was a failure, not a joke. And, yes, there is a difference. No one with a degree from ACCS has anything of which to be ashamed.

Nil nisi verum mortuis, I guess. Live and learn. Best wishes to you, and welcome to the board.

Janko Preotul, BA, MDiv, MA (all RA)

 

Thanks for the warm welcome, Uncle Janko. I appreciate it very much.

Since you also had experience with ABCS/ACCS, I will mention an incident which took place at my graduation ceremony that I will never forget -- and NOT for good reasons.

I had invited the members of my congregation to attend. My board chairman, his wife, his mother and a friend made the 100-mile trip to Oklahoma City to celebrate the conferring of my doctoral degree.

As reported by my wife later, right at the beginning of the ceremony, a gargantuan woman -- wearing so much make-up that she looked like the victim of an explosion in a Maybelline factory -- lumbered out to the piano. She sat down, began readying herself to play, and apparently noticed that the very high heels she chose to wear that day were going to be an annoyance.

Without embarrassment, she took of her shoes in front of the hundreds gathered, and unceremoniously kicked them across the sanctuary and out of her way. With that, she began to play!

If such behavior didn't leave the impression that I was about to graduate from "Jed Clampett Bible College and Seminary," I don't know what would!

 

I was enrolled in the D.Min in Biblical Studies at ACCS. IMO (1) the several classes I took were equivalent to masters courses not to doctoral courses, (2) No one who graded my papers was qualified to do that as no one at ACCS who graded those papers had an accredited PhD or ThD in the areas in which I was being instructed.

I dropped out when ACCS lost TRACS accreditation. I would not necessarily deny that ACCS might provide sound instruction in MA/MDiv level work or even in a DMin in Practics.

 

Why would this surprise a Free Will Baptist, isn't this standard protocol for a Charismatic Seminary?

 

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If David danced naked howcum a fat woman can't play the piano with her shoes off?

 

ACCS

I too, was enrolled at ACCS and found quite the same situation. I paid for one course but received no support when I called or e-mailed the school. I must have run into that same woman who took care of chasing down finances because I got one bill in the mail for changing courses along with a terse note saying that if the bill wasn't paid in a timely manner it would be turned over to a collection agency! Right on top of issues like that but so lax regarding everything else. I was very disappointed in this school. I ended up going back to LBU. Some may disapprove of LBU because it is not accredited but their administrative issues are handled immediately and they currently have 1000 students to deal with.

Congratulations though, for your finishing your degree.

 

Probably the only reason I didn't encounter these types of problems on the academic side of things was because I lived in Oklahoma and would go by the campus to drop off/pick up homework assignments whenever my pastoral work took me to Oklahoma City.

I distinctly remember visiting the office of a very exhausted and haggard Woodrow Walton, who had a stack of papers to grade at least a foot high, and other papers literally littering his entire office. The man must have slept only two or three hours a night -- trying to grade all of the distance learning students' homework while teaching several courses in the traditional classroom each week!

Is it any wonder that ACCS was unable to retain its accreditation? How was the faculty expected to contribute to the process when they were already stretched too thin?

 

I don't know much about Louisiana Baptist University, although I have read both pro and con comments on this forum regarding it. Do they have a theological objection, as do Bob Jones University and Pensacola Christian College, to accreditation? If they compare favorably to ACCS, it seems it would behoove them to seek accreditation from DETC or TRACS, depending on which is more appropriate. Certainly achieving DETC or TRACS accreditation would diminish the concerns of any reasonable person regarding LBU.

 

Thomas! Hello my friend. How are you doing these days?

 

Hello, Jimmy! I am doing well. I have finally taken the plunge and joined you over here at the degreeinfo discussion forum. I hope you are doing well and enjoying our triune God's richest blessings!

 

God has been good good to us and the church. As you know, when I came here three year's ago there were 22 in the pews on my first Sunday.

That first year we lost 12 due to death and nursing home placement. The church was dying. We are now close to averaging 60 average per Sunday!

We have installed air conditioners, purchased new hymnals, installed a brand new sound system, installed new sanctuary windows, and made other general repairs. We are now looking into new pews.

The blessings of the Lord are all about!

 

One wonders, then, why TRACS accredited ABCS/ACCS in the first place. I began my Doctor of Ministry studies shortly after then-ABCS was accredited, and the same people with Doctor of Ministry degrees were teaching MA/MDiv/DMin courses at that time. Apparently TRACS toughened its requirements after ABCS' initial accreditation and the failed attempt by ACCS to be reaccredited.

 

One wonders, then, why TRACS accredited ABCS/ACCS in the first place. I began my Doctor of Ministry studies shortly after then-ABCS was accredited, and the same people with Doctor of Ministry degrees were teaching M.A./M.Div./D.Min. courses at that time. (I had one professor with only an M.Ed. who taught courses at the ATS/NCA-accredited seminary from which I earned my M.Div.; another had a D.Min.). Apparently TRACS toughened its requirements after ABCS' initial accreditation and before the failed attempt by ACCS to be reaccredited.

I noted with no small amount of cynicism after graduating that several faculty members -- who had only master's degrees or were working on doctorates at other institutions, such as the University of South Africa -- suddenly appeared at the following year's graduation ceremonies and were awarded D.Min. degrees.

Your comments are particularly interesting in light of the discussion I had a year or so ago with one of the administrators of another TRACS-accredited seminary. He encouraged me to complete the requirements for a second Doctor of Ministry degree, rather than the master's degree I was contemplating at the time. Why?

According to him, it would open doors within evangelical academia. When I told him I supposed that I would need a Ph.D./Th.D. in order to teach at the seminary level, he told me that this was not necessarily the case. The D.Min. was winning increasing and wider acceptance as a degree for teaching preparation, he said.

 

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It is not necessarily the case. The DMin IS of course suffient for teaching practics as church building or homiletics at the seminary level but not Bible, Languages, Historical Theology , Church History or Systematic Theology. Why would it be? The DMin is a doc in ministry not in Bible or Systematic Theology etc. If one had a PhD in NT and Greek that would not prepare him/her to teach pastoral counseling nor would a DMin in pastoral counseling prepare one to teach NT and Greek.

It is true, however, that on occasion one will see a DMin teaching other subjects but that may occur when he/she has also a ThM. I can find many seminary instructors with ThMs--had several at Western myself.

A good way to see what degrees applicants for such positions hold is to go to the Evangelical Theological Society website, click on one of the newsletters, and turn to the back pages. There you will find many ETS members listing their education in the hopes of getting a position. Nary a DMin is listed there! The reason is that PhDs/ThDs are specified, not DMins, as reqs by seminaries who advertise positions in the front of the newsletter.

 

Out of curiosity, why did you wait until ABCS/ACCS lost its accreditation before dropping out of the Doctor of Ministry in Biblical Studies program? If you were already concerned about the quality of the curriculum, as you indicated above, and you were already aware that ABCS/ACCS didn't meet TRACS' own guidelines (if such is the case), what made you wait to withdraw? Please rest assured I'm not being argumentative or critical; I'm just wondering why you chose to remain in the program as long as you did. It must have had something going for it!

While I agree with you completely, such a caveat was not issued by the administrator of the other TRACS seminary with whom I spoke last year. Indeed, the very program in which I was interested was a Doctor of Ministry degree which focused on biblical and theological studies.

And, as you have already pointed out, this would be in violation of TRACS' guidelines, which insist upon earned doctorates in these fields before one can teach them on the graduate level:

It seems to me that, on the basis of the examples which you have previously cited, that TRACS' (and, for that matter, other accreditor's) rules are more flexible and less rigid than either one of us might think or like. I had more than one professor at Luther Rice Seminary whose highest degree was the Doctor of Ministry and who was the professor for a course outside of the practical theology department. As well you know, LRS is accredited by TRACS.

 

If I said that I was familar with the TRACS regs BEFORE I dropped out of ACCS, then (if I recall the sequence correctly) I erred in that statement. Did I say that?

I originally enrolled in ACCS because as far as I could find only ACCS offered a DMin in Bible -as opposed to ministerial sort of disciplines. For my purpose, that is what it had "going for it" ! So, with Unizul's permission for about a year I was in two doc programs simultaneously.

The little papers I did for the several classes I took with ACCS helped me think about some of the issues I was researching for the UZ thesis. It was valuable for that purpose.

IMO the ACCS classes that I took were not at the doctoral level. They were not at the ThM level, and the ThM is considered by some schools (as the Baptist in PA) as coursework applicable toward the PhD.

So, what ACCS was offering IMO as a DMin was MDiv level coursework taught by profs who only had experienced the very same MDiv level coursework.IMO a doc should not be awarded for doing more MDiv level work. And, if one has only been exposed to master's level woek then IMO that one probably is not qualified to teach at the master's (seminary) level.

I'm not at all convinced that the ACCS graders of my papers as : 'The Subordination of the Son in Selected Ante Nicene Literature" or "Evaluating Christological Usages of the Ver4b Gennao in Third and Fourth Century Oriental Creeds" were academically up to that task.

Western Seminary is RA/ATS not TRACS. I think Western feels no obligation to follow TRACS regs.

I should mention that not long ago I was "challenged" here on my interpretation of the TRACS regs. So, I looked again. It still is my opinion that those regs say, "The institution employs only faculty for grad assignments who possess the earned terminal degree in their teaching assignments from an institution accredited by an agency recognized by USDE." (TRACS Acrreditation Manual, criterion 15.1) Very probably there are exceptions to this standard, but it certainly is a goal.

. IMO it is normally not a good practice to have DMins teach Bible/Theology at the grad level. . But it is easily conceivable that one might be particularly expert in an area without having done a doc in it.

Nevertheless, as I said, one way to judge the popularity of the DMin as a teaching degree is to look at an ETS Newsletter. I hold one in my hand. In it several schools advertise available positions. Talbot needs someone to teach Old Testament. A PhD or ThD IS REQUIRED . A DMin does not qualify either for the several other advertised vacancies!

Likewise of the 60 or so doc students listed in the letter as seeking a teaching position , nary a one states that what he/she is completing is a DMin.

Anyway, best of "luck" in your learning and working for Him.

 

With this statement I concur wholeheartedly. I would have enjoyed seeing the surprised look on the face of the ABCS/ACCS grader when he/she simply read the title of the paper! The deer in the headlights comparison is undoubtedly in order. I encountered no one on the faculty during my sojourn there who would have been able to adequately interact with such topics.

Again, I agree completely. I'm not defending any perceived or real deficiencies in the educational experience offered by ABCS/ACCS. However, I've read enough doctoral dissertations from ATS/RA-accredited seminaries to know that some truly abysmal stuff passes for "scholarship." One of the worst I have ever read was a doctoral dissertation on liberation theology accepted at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. I had hoped to read a compelling, incisive evangelical critique of this heresy. Instead I was shocked at how poorly researched, thought-out, and written it was. I'll never understand why the writer was ever awarded a Ph.D. for such tripe.

IIRC, there was no small amount of controversy on this forum some time ago -- and I believe you were one of the participants in the debate -- regarding the doctoral dissertation by a well-known Christian distance learning author which was accepted by a South African seminary. So simply earning a doctorate from an accredited international university is not a guarantee of academic quality or rigor.

My brother, your breadth and depth of learning is, alas, likely a rarity in the vast majority of the academy today. That is both a compliment to you and an indictment of what passes for "education" in the Twenty-First Century.

 

One of the worst courses I took at ESR was on Liberation Theology.

I hated it!

It was Marxist theology, pure and simple. Wonder if Dom Helder Camera is still alive.