An entrepreneur of ministerial training

Few people drop scriptural citations and business terms like ''branding" in the same breath. But the Rev. Nick Carter, the new president of Andover Newton Theological School, is not your garden-variety career theologian. An entrepreneur who helped found a consulting firm that advises religious and nonprofit groups, Carter has business experience that could be valuable in the midst of the school's $13 million capital campaign.

Yet with Andover Newton financially sound -- Carter said it has eliminated deficits that plagued it in recent years -- he sees his main job as theological, and monumental: reinventing how Protestant ministers are trained. Carter, who became president at the beginning of this month, succeeded Benjamin Griffin. Excerpts from an interview this week follow:

You've said Christianity faces the greatest challenges to its mission since its first century. That's quite a claim.

Because the world has changed. Denominational identity has been utterly transformed. Our sense of global community has expanded, [creating] significant challenges of increasingly diverse communities.

Are you referring to the collapse in membership among mainline churches?

Yes, and it is a fact of life that over half the membership of churches is people who didn't grow up in that faith tradition. It's increasingly become the norm in America to find families who claim some other tradition in their background. Churches can no longer assume that because someone was raised a Baptist or Methodist or Congregationalist that they will continue to be one.

Is that a sign of spiritual health, in that adults are making conscious decisions to join a faith, rather than indifferent participation based on childhood nostalgia?

There's reason to be optimistic in this change. But it presents a challenge to denominations about their identity and what distinctions they offer. We're seeing exciting things happening. There's impressive work within the United Church of Christ in their ''God Is Still Speaking" campaign, an attempt to communicate to the public what the church stands for, an advertising campaign rolling out nationwide.

Is there a clergy shortage in Protestantism that is facing seminaries like Andover Newton?

Yes. Other than conservative evangelical churches, there are more jobs than clergy to fill them. The numbers are running about seven-and-a-half ordained clergy for every 10 jobs.

How should the church and seminaries respond?

It's nothing short of having to transform the ministry as we know it. There's an ecology between the churches and the seminaries, working in partnership with the churches as they nurture leaders. Theological education five or 10 years from now will be radically different. It will no longer happen in one place. It's a shift toward the churches. There are traditions of seeing seminaries as a place of reflection, of spiritual formation, to go out into the world. But the dynamic is shifting to a dimension that says theological education starts in the church. Every minister is, in a way, an adjunct professor.

Part of business is looking at what your competitors are doing. Are there lessons to be learned from the astounding growth in conservative evangelical church membership?

I think they have been good in their communications and branding. St. Paul in the 14th chapter, First Corinthians says if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who will get ready? One of the challenges mainline seminaries face is that our trumpet has been giving an uncertain sound. The essential element of branding is looking at the relationship you have with your target audiences. How are you distinctive from any other seminary? Why is your brand distinctive?

You say you're inspired by ''prophetic freedom fighters." Which ones?

Well, my buddy Bill Coffin [former Yale chaplain and minister of Manhattan's Riverside Church]. I'm inspired by the abolitionists and suffragists. Martin Luther King was a prophetic freedom fighter. There are many people whose faith turns inward. For me, the real question [is] when you get onto the highways and byways of the world, what happens to your faith then?

Does that mean you intend to emulate them? Bill Coffin got on a Freedom Rider bus and drove through the South.

I take inspiration from men and women who are interested in acting on their faith. There are lots of ways that you can do that. It doesn't always have to be seen in your arrest record.

Rich Barlow can be reached at rbarlow.81@alum.dartmouth.org.This is the last Spiritual Life column. The Globe will continue to cover spiritual issues, leaders, and writers as part of its regular religion reporting.