Innovation, Trade-Offs, and the Hidden Costs of Survival
The Future of Formation (Part 3 of 4)
By Geoff Folland
April 2026
I was talking with an academic recently who described the tension his college faced between meeting the rising demand for chaplaincy and counselling courses or continuing to focus on preparing students for traditional ministry roles. Expanding into new programs would stabilise revenue but risk diluting the development of ministry leaders.
That is not an isolated moment. It has become a pattern I’ve observed across Australia and in the US, too.
Across the nation, our theological colleges and ministry training systems are deliberately and intelligently adapting to a set of structural pressures that are clearly here to stay. We’re seeing a shift away from full-time residential pathways towards more part-time and remote study, often alongside existing employment. Simultaneously, regulatory expectations are continually increasing. Compounding this, the ministry landscape itself is fragmenting into various, overlapping forms.
Far from being static, the system is in a state of sustained adjustment.
What is emerging is not a single new model of theological education, but a fragmentation into competing logics of formation, each addressing a real problem and introducing its own risks.
The Pressure Beneath the System
In the previous article, I argued that the defining divide in the sector is economic, not theological. Some institutions are sustained by capital: assets, reserves, and time. Others are sustained by flow: enrolments, fees, and partnerships that must hold year by year.
That distinction now shapes behaviour.
It explains why some institutions can move slowly, protecting core structures, while others must respond quickly, adjusting delivery, programs, or scale. It also explains why similar theological commitments can produce very different institutional strategies.
Once this becomes visible, the patterns of adaptation are easier to read.
1. Scale and Consolidation
One clear response to sector pressures has been expansion, occurring in concrete ways across multiple institutions. For example, Morling College has integrated Vose Seminary and Malyon College, forming a national Baptist training platform. ACOM and Stirling have partnered for a “one national college” structure, with ACOM also launching the Stirling School of Community Care. Alphacrucis operates as a multi-disciplinary university college with national reach and church-based delivery partnerships.
The logic is that scale spreads fixed costs, extends geographic reach, and enables access to students who would not relocate. This is visible at the administrative level, where merged structures centralise functions such as the registrar, enrolment systems and compliance, theoretically reducing duplication. This scaling is also driven by significant demand, as seen by Reach Australia’s target of 300 new churches and 750 leaders by 2030.
However, scale redistributes pressure rather than removing it. Larger systems require coordination across multiple campuses, consistent enrolment flows, and complex governance. Growth assumptions become embedded in budgets, meaning what appears resilient can become exposure under different conditions. The key question is whether scale lowers the cost of forming leaders or simply builds larger systems that carry the same underlying constraints. The evidence suggests a cautious conclusion: scale is an adaptive response, but not a solution by itself.
2. Capital-backed Specialisation
A different response to sector pressures is to deepen rather than expand. Institutions like Moore, Ridley, and MST have reinforced their identity – academically, theologically, and institutionally – by strengthening financial structures, focusing on continuity in faculty, scholarship, and clarity of theological formation, rather than pursuing national scale. The economic foundation of this approach is capital, not growth. Moore College, with approximately $87 million in total assets, gains strategic optionality, allowing leadership to absorb enrolment fluctuations and sustain faculty structures that revenue-dependent models could not.
There is a historical dimension to this model in Australia. In Sydney, evangelical institutions responded to theological pressure from German liberal scholarship by strengthening, not withdrawing from, academic engagement. Moore College developed a model that held doctrinal clarity and serious academic work together, a legacy that still shapes the prioritisation of research and long-term theological contribution.
However, capital-backed stability only buys time. Rising costs force a sharper trade-off: preserving academic depth and theological clarity may compromise accessibility, flexibility, or alignment with emerging ministry pathways, such as creating fewer entry points for second-career leaders. The question is whether institutions built on capital can remain connected to changing ministry demands or risk becoming increasingly well-resourced and detached.
3. Distributed and Flexible Delivery
A third major shift is changing the location, not just the method, of theological education. The traditional campus is giving way to a broader network, operating as just one point of formation. Institutions like ACOM and Alphacrucis demonstrate that student formation can happen effectively within a student’s current ministry or workplace. For example, Alphacrusis collaborates with churches—including Hillsong & C3 (Sydney), and Futures Church (Adelaide)—to capitalise on the practical, hands-on experience gained from serving alongside highly skilled practitioners. Even institutions that historically required residence are now offering adaptable, non-residential study options.
This change is driven by demand and economics: students are older and part-time, making relocation costs prohibitive, while institutions seek to manage fixed campus costs. Distributed delivery addresses both constraints, allowing a student to remain in their job and church. This measurable shift expands the addressable market to bivocational leaders and second-career ministers.
However, it changes the nature of formation. Previously, formation was concentrated in a shared life (lectures, meals, chapel), guaranteeing intellectual, spiritual, and relational coherence. In the distributed model, coherence must be constructed, shifting responsibility from the institution to the network, from the shared environment to the designed experience, and from proximity to intentionality. This places greater weight on local systems and mentors to carry what community life previously embedded. While the model works well in contexts where local elements are strong, inconsistent contexts can lead to uneven formation, making the system scalable but not necessarily uniform. This is a trade-off.
Distributed delivery aligns more closely with how ministry actually happens. It integrates learning and practice in real time. It lowers barriers to entry and broadens participation.
At the same time, it raises a more complex question. If formation is no longer anchored in a shared place, what ensures it remains coherent, deep, and transferable?
That question is now central to the system. And it does not yet have a settled answer.
4. Adjacent diversification
Alongside changes in scale and delivery, a fourth established pattern is the expansion of institutions beyond traditional ministry degrees into adjacent vocational fields. This diversification, which is both missional and economic, stabilises revenue when traditional ministry enrolments soften. Examples include ACOM’s Stirling School of Community Care (focused on counselling and chaplaincy), Melbourne School of Theology’s co-location with Eastern College, and Alphacrucis’ expansion into education, business, and creative arts.
The economic necessity is clear: diversification draws revenue from counselling, education, and community service pathways, reducing reliance on a single vocational pipeline. On the demand side, there is a sustained need for chaplains in schools and aged care.
However, diversification changes the institution’s internal logic. A mixed classroom, including a school chaplain in training and a lay leader, operates differently from a cohort focused solely on pastoral ministry, altering formation by making the shared vocational trajectory less defined. At an institutional level, the growth of adjacent programs influences staffing, marketing, and resource allocation, potentially shifting the centre of gravity. The key question is whether these new programs remain integrated within a coherent theology of formation or become parallel streams that subsidise the institution without being shaped by its original purpose.
This creates a governance issue, as boards now oversee a portfolio requiring clarity of purpose and alignment between mission and revenue. Handled poorly, diversification creates drift—subtle and incremental—until the institution no longer resembles its original form.
The Parallel Formation Sector
While theological institutions are adapting, a parallel system of leader formation is also strengthening. In the evangelical ecosystem, structured pathways like MTS, Reach Australia, and City to City Australia use apprenticeships, residencies, and coaching to identify and deploy leaders. In the Pentecostal ecosystem, programs like C3 Launch, Planetshakers’ formation pathways, and ACC assessment processes operate as embedded, relationally intensive systems of leadership development within local churches, often aligned with church planting. It seems every denomination is developing its own version.
Across these systems, formation is becoming less linear. The traditional sequence (study followed by ministry) is increasingly supplemented or replaced by pathways in which ministry experience precedes or runs concurrently with formal theological education. Apprenticeship and church-based formation now function as primary filters for emerging leaders, with formal study integrated at different points, rather than serving as the universal entry point.
The Changing Shape of Demand
At the same time, the demand side of the system is becoming more complex.
There is no single ministry labour market. There are multiple overlapping ones.
Existing churches continue to require pastors and assistants. Church planting networks are expanding, with explicit targets for new congregations and leaders. Chaplaincy roles in schools, aged care, and community settings are growing, driven in part by regulatory and societal expectations. Parachurch ministries—campus, youth, and mission organisations—form a substantial and often under-recognised workforce, recruiting early and training intensively.
In the Pentecostal sector, movement-level planting goals and leadership pipelines contribute to sustained demand for entrepreneurial and team-based leaders. In the evangelical sector, denominations and networks such as Reach Australia have articulated clear targets for church growth and leader development.
The evidence suggests that demand is not declining. It is diversifying.
But the pathways into these roles are no longer uniform. Some require formal theological degrees. Some integrate them within broader formation processes. Others prioritise leadership capacity, relational intelligence, and evangelistic effectiveness, with formal study playing a secondary or later role.
This resonates with my own journey. Power to Change initially provided me with a year-long, intensive training focused squarely on campus ministry skills—a highly practical approach, with some theological overlay. After about a decade on the ground, I saw the benefit of a formal theological education. This filled a vital academic gap for me; the original languages and deep exegesis were the real gold, honestly. Interestingly, the supposedly ‘practical’ units in that degree were far less applicable to our actual work.
This raises a necessary question, though it is too early to answer definitively. Are our formation systems aligned with the actual structure of demand, or are they still shaped by an earlier model of ministry that is no longer dominant?
The Intellectual Capital Question
This is where the longer-term implications begin to emerge.
In parts of the Australian evangelical tradition, there has been a sustained commitment to theological scholarship—producing research, engaging with broader intellectual currents, and forming leaders capable of sustained reflection. That work depends on stable faculty structures, institutional investment, and time.
At the same time, there is increasing evidence across the sector of the use of more flexible staffing models, including adjunct and sessional teaching. These changes are often economically necessary and pedagogically effective in the short term.
In Pentecostal systems, the emphasis has historically been different. Formation is embedded in the life of the church, leadership development is closely tied to practice, and the priority is often multiplication rather than academic production.
These are not lesser priorities. They are different ones.
But they generate parallel questions.
In academically oriented systems, the question is whether intellectual depth can be sustained under ongoing financial pressure. In movement-oriented systems, the question is where long-term theological reflection is anchored, developed, and transmitted across generations.
A system can operate for some time on inherited intellectual capital, drawing on existing scholarship and external resources. But over time, new challenges emerge that require fresh theological work. The capacity to respond to those challenges depends on whether that work is being resourced and sustained.
The Underlying Tension
At this point, it would be easy to move toward strong conclusions. The evidence does not support that. What it does reveal is a set of tensions that are becoming more pronounced.
Institutions are adapting in ways that improve accessibility, broaden delivery, and increase alignment with ministry practice. At the same time, those adaptations redistribute rather than eliminate economic pressure, shift formation away from shared residential environments, and create a more fragmented set of pathways into ministry.
Across both evangelical and Pentecostal ecosystems, different models are emerging in response to similar constraints. The structures differ, the emphases vary, but the underlying pressures are shared.
At its core, the system is navigating a tension between flexibility and formation—between models that maximise access and responsiveness, and those that sustain depth, coherence, and long-term theological reflection.
Conclusion
The Australian theological formation system is not static. It is active, responsive, and, in many cases, remarkably creative.
Leaders are making difficult decisions under real constraints. Many of those decisions are thoughtful and necessary.
But adaptation is not neutral.
Every model solves one problem and introduces another.
The system is adapting. The question is whether it is adapting toward the future the church actually needs – or away from it.
That is the question the next article will need to address directly.
Geoff Folland
National Director
Power to Change