Over the past decade, many churches have begun reconsidering the metrics they use to evaluate health and effectiveness. For years, the dominant measures of success were attendance and giving. The language surrounding those measures became so common that entire generations of church leaders could recite the shorthand from memory: “nickels and noses,” “people and pennies,” or “butts and bills.” The existence of so many alliterative phrases says something about how deeply these assumptions shaped the imagination of the contemporary church.
Over time, however, dissatisfaction with those measures has prompted deeper reflection. Do attendance and giving tell the whole story? What about baptisms? What about participation in disciple-making? What about evidence of spiritual maturity, congregational care, or meaningful engagement within the local community? Is it possible for a church to decline numerically while growing spiritually? And if so, how would we recognize it?
Conversations like these are increasingly taking place within theological education as well. Many schools continue to rely heavily on enrollment numbers and financial indicators as primary markers of institutional strength and overall health. In some ways, higher education has its own version of “nickels and noses.” Student counts, tuition revenue, and enrollment projections often become the dominant language through which success is interpreted and shared.
One of the most common examples is the use of “Full-Time Equivalency,” or FTE. FTE attempts to translate varying enrollment patterns into a standardized numerical figure that approximates the number of full-time students a school effectively serves. For example, during the Fall 2025 term, Winebrenner Theological Seminary reported an FTE of 63.10 while serving a graduate headcount of 127 students. During that same term, the seminary generated 713 credit hours. These types of figures are commonly used throughout higher education and are publicly available through organizations such as the Association of Theological Schools.
At one level, these metrics are understandable. Organizations need ways to describe scale, allocate resources, and compare trends across schools and systems. But the choice of metric also shapes the story we tell. FTE, for example, privileges one particular model of educational participation: the full-time student moving steadily through a traditional academic pathway. Yet many seminaries increasingly serve students whose lives do not fit that pattern. Students balancing ministry, family, employment, and community commitments often move through theological education at different rhythms and intensities. Those students still matter fully, even when they do not count fully within the FTE calculation.
That distinction carries important implications. A school serving a large number of part-time students deeply embedded in ministry contexts may appear smaller or weaker through the lens of FTE, even while maintaining significant educational and ecclesial impact. In that sense, FTE can create an appearance of precision while obscuring the actual scope and nature of a school’s work.
Headcount tells one story. Credit hours tell another. FTE tells still another. None of these measures are entirely wrong. But none of them are neutral either. Each metric emphasizes certain realities while minimizing others. Each carries assumptions about what matters most.
In Winebrenner’s case, with a $300/month tuition, the FTE doesn’t really answer any particular question other than “what is the FTE?” Headcount provides the clearest connection to both enrollment and financial health. FTE, if it ever was very useful, is a required reporting figure that no longer serves any real value organizationally. And that brings us back to the broader themes running throughout this series. Questions about governance, credit hours, grades, outcomes, and assessment all ultimately converge around a deeper issue: how do we determine and measure what counts?
Metrics are never merely descriptive. Over time, they become formative. They influence priorities, shape organizational behavior, and direct attention toward particular definitions of success. The challenge, then, is not simply to reject existing metrics. Schools need measurements, reporting structures, and shared forms of accountability. The deeper challenge involves discerning whether the metrics we rely upon are aligned with the mission we claim to pursue.
If theological education exists to cultivate faithful leaders for God’s kingdom, then our measurements should help illuminate that work rather than reduce it to the easiest items to quantify. That may require a broader imagination. It may also require the courage to acknowledge that some of the most important realities within theological education resist easy measurement altogether. And perhaps recognizing that limitation is itself part of wisdom.
- Brent C. Sleasman, President