The future of the church in North America must include the recovery of its missional identity. Robert Banks does a masterful job of taking the fact seriously and bringing it to bear on the way we do seminary education. His analysis is thoroughly grounded inthe ferment of recent decades about the character of theological education. Based on that, he dares to open up a spacious vision for the reformantion of church ministry and seminary education along lines that a missional model wourl require. All of us in the seminary establishment will have to engage the issue he raises and give serious consideration to what a missional understanding of the church implies about training for pastoral leadership.
