Unlike most of the new seminaries, however, it will be church-based rather than linked to a university. It will offer ministerial training through networks involving faculty and student exchange programs, teleconferencing and internships with Baptist and non-denominational ministries located near the nation's capital.

The seminary, which eventually will offer three degree programs targeted to train vocational ministers, laity and internationals, was announced Jan. 29. Classes are scheduled to begin late this year or in early 1999 in a building owned by Columbia Church in Falls Church, Va., a suburb about six miles from Washington. It will be named the John Leland Center for Theological Studies. Leland was a Virginia Baptist pastor whose battle for religious freedom in the 18th century led to the establishment of religious-liberty guarantees in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

For most of this century Southern Baptist theological education has been centered in large seminaries scattered around the country. But the final quarter of this century has been an era of sweeping change.

In the 1970s the six Southern Baptist seminaries started setting up satellite centers in cities around the country to allow students to train for ministry without moving to one of the six central locations. Along with this decentralization of education, the six seminaries were targets for ideological change as the Southern Baptist Convention took a rightward shift.

Riding the pressure for decentralization and the dissatisfaction with what they saw as an increasingly fundamentalist approach to theological study, some Baptists began developing new schools in the 1990s.

Moderate Baptists started a free-standing theological school, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, in 1991. Divinity schools or seminaries opened on the campuses of Baylor University, Samford University, Campbell University, Gardner-Webb University and Mercer University. Wake Forest Divinity School is slated to start classes next year.

Baptist houses were established at non-Baptist seminaries like Duke Divinity School and Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

But until now the only models for church-based theological education were in fundamentalist churches such as Mid-America Seminary at Bellevue Church in Memphis, Tenn., and Criswell Studies Center sponsored by First Church in Dallas, Texas. (ABP)