lifeasmission

Missional Church and the Future of Theological Education

June 22, 2007

The gulf which exists between the life of local church communities and centers of theological education is an atrocity created by a combination of a Christendom context and the effects of the Enlightenment within modernity. Just as truly right faithful Christian living cannot happen apart from theological reflection and study, truly good faithful theology cannot be done apart from the actual participation in the mission of God in the world as a part of a community of faith. Both the Emerging and Missional Church conversations/movements, tend to get this.

In general, the way theological education is offered favors the pre-service Christian leader. Seminaries utilize a University model of education whereby students come to be trained as professionals before launching out in to the world and life of ministry. There is little or no thought given to whether or not these individuals are called, gifted, or spiritually formed in such a way that they even ought to do the job they are supposedly being trained for. Consequently, word has it that about 50% of the leaders Seminaries graduate aren’t doing “ministry” five years later. Here, the mindset is, “Once we figure out what it means to be successful, we’ll be able to live it out and help others do the same.” Sadly, the observation above and the disconnect between ideas and reality discredits this mindset.

At the same time, there are thousands upon thousands of churches out there who are convinced that they have the gospel all figured out and they know basically everything they need to know about what being the people of God in the world entails. These churches (and therefore the people they mean to serve) suffer for lack of reflection, insight, and the sort of spiritual refinement which comes from deeply wrestling with who God is and the implications which flow from that. Here, the mindset is, “As long as we are achieving our definition of success, we can rest in the assurance that we have it all figured out.” Equally as sad, the fact that most people either can’t tell a Christian from anyone else or they can and it makes them sick, discredits this mindset as well.

Both these mindsets are woefully deficient.

Allelon, a group I have been enamoured with for some time now seems to sense this unfortunate misalignment and is trying to do some things to move toward a more unified and holistic system. Below are two videos in which Alan Roxburgh (on staff with Allelon) is interviewing Ryan Bolger (professor at Fuller Theological Seminary) about the relationship between the missional church movement and theological education. If you care about such things, both are worth your time. If you don’t care about such things, then I doubt you bothered to read this far! Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions.

I touched on this issue in my masters thesis and will include some of my, more constructive, thoughts in a future post.

Posted in: church, emerging church, missional, modernity, school, spiritual formation, theology