Centre For Christian Studies Inc in Winnipeg

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  David Null

  :: 01 December 2017 11:51:21

  If you're looking for a place that will prepare you to follow God in ministry today, look somewhere else. CCS trains their students on how to function in a society that no longer exists. They fly a rainbow flag outside the door, they have a rainbow candle, and rainbow wall hangings. But the only type of gay people this these people will ever accept are ones who do their best to act like 80 year old straight people. I spent three years of my life studying here, and it's one of the few genuine regrets I have in my life. I won't claim that the experience was 100% bad. Half the time something or other was in flux so I kept telling myself that things were going to get better. But after seeing the school continually side with abusive "learning facilitators" (ministry personnel who supervise you on practicums that you have to set up with no help from the school's staff) both against me and other classmates, I realized I should have dropped out at the first sign of trouble. My staff person David would meet with me on a regular basis to pick apart my personality and imply that I'd be more fit for ministry if I was a humourless moron who consistently assumed positive intent. (Apparently I should have assumed positive intent with the learning facilitator who made stuff up about me to get me fired, because she didn't like hearing people at the church talking about how good of a job I was doing with the kids programming.) The school also heavily emphasizes the importance of hearing ignorant feedback about yourself from classmates, who haven't been trained to rationally reflect on what would be useful for you to hear. So expect to hear some useful stuff, and a lot of passive aggressive drivel about how you should act more like a straight person, how you should pretend that you don't know anything about areas you've already studied, and how expressing any confidence in skills you acquired before attending CCS is a grievous sin (of course they won't use the word sin, because God forbid anyone have a well reasoned theology of sin). I highly recommend this place if you want to be spiritually abused, and forced to stay in situations where you have to deal with sexually predatory clergy people (that was my first year). Also a great place to go if you have absolutely no self-confidence but like the idea of being a minister, they love people there who are total door mats. Also a great place if you like being forced to see a counsellor that you have no money to go see, after the school has forced you to continue to work with a sexual predator. I don't recommend this place for anyone who likes to have any sense of their own autonomy. I don't recommend this place for anyone who has any sense of comedic timing (you will be treated like this is a bad thing). If you don't like having teachers who treat contemporary psychological research as if it's scary witchcraft, I also don't recommend. Also not good for anyone beyond Fowler's third stage of faith development (again, personal autonomy is strongly prohibited). I guess that's all I've got to say, time to go back to paying off 20 grand of student debt. (Oh lastly after I dropped out, they sent me a letter that I haven't read, but they said that they'll send it along with any transcript I might request for another school. Not a huge concern for me because this was enough to permanently turn me off a career in ministry. But if you think you might want to go to another school afterward, these people will do their best to blackball you. This isn't a one off either they also did this to a friend of mine who thankfully is doing very well at a different UCC school.)