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The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens
Below is the fourth and final article that we’ve submitted to Patheos as a contribution to their forum on “The Future of the Seminary.” I don’t believe it’s actually up over there yet and it seems like that forum has sort of run out of steam, so I thought I’d go ahead and post it here. If it does make it up over at Patheos, I’ll update this post. If this happens to be new to you and you’ve got some interest, here’s where you can find the first three articles:
Shaping Students w/ the Character and Competency of Jesus (lifeasmission | Patheos)
Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)
Ministers are Mobilizers, Not Managers (lifeasmission | Patheos)
As I’ve noted in previous posts, this is some edited content from a more comprehensive white paper that I worked on. You can find the whole paper here as a resource at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.
I hope to round this all out with a (more brief!) summary post soon. Thanks to those of you who have been following along and weighing in. Engagement is the only way to refine these sort of ideas toward the creation of something truly new, helpful, and concrete.
This is the 4th and final article in a series that we have been happy to offer related this Patheos forum on, “The Future of the Seminary.” For our part, we have sought to call attention to the idea that inasmuch as theological education seeks to locate its purpose and aim in the missio Dei, its shape and future can be most helpfully understood from a missiological perspective. This is the fundamental point of the white paper from which these few posts have emerged, The Missiological Future of Theological Education.
We first offered a video, which summarizes the issues surrounding the way in which Christendom obscured our view of God’s missionary nature, thereby mis-shaping not only our theology, but our ecclesiology and the systems of theological education that we constructed to prepare leaders for these Christendom-shaped churches. The video also suggests that…
as we seek to re-imagine theological education along missional lines, the most important ‘accrediting factor’ for our schools lies in their ability to do their part in producing leaders who are able to demonstrate having taken on the character and competency of Jesus.
If you haven’t seen it yet, the video is embedded below:
After this initial post, we offered two more that sought to outline the missiological principles that we believe best contribute to creating processes of theological formation along these lines:
1) Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God, in which we suggest that missional approaches to theological education will be praxeological – geared toward the training of theologically reflective practitioners.
2) Ministers are Mobilizers, not Managers, in which we suggest that missional approaches to theological education will be mobilizational - geared toward the training of missionary leaders.
In this final post, we’d like to outline a final missiological principle that we believe will guide a faithful re-imagining of theological education, that of being spiritual – geared toward the training of kingdom citizens.
Spiritual, of course, can mean many things. For us, it simply means that everything about what theological education is and does, ought to be predicated on the centrality of a vibrant and growing relationship with the triune God and his work in the world. In other words, just as Jesus’ efforts to train and form his disciples would have had no ultimate significance apart from their connection to God and God’s work in the world, so too are the efforts of seminaries wasted apart from this same connection.
Having lost its proper missiological shape, theological education within Christendom made it possible to separate ones intellectual development from ones spiritual maturity. This is a dichotomy that our centers of theological education must repudiate if they hope to lend any support to the shaping of leaders for Kingdom ministry. Moving forward will call for, at the very least, processes of theological formation that shape convictions, impart spiritual knowledge, re-frame our relationship to Scripture, and embrace the irreplaceable role of the Holy Spirit.
Shaping Kingdom Convictions
As theologian James McClendon once said, “Convictions are not so much things that we have but things that have us.” As important as we believe Christian doctrine and truth are, if we fail to cultivate leaders who are as convicted by them (as evidenced by life transformation) as they purport to be convinced of them, we will only continue to contribute to the collapse of Western Christianity. If seminaries are to make any sort of meaningful contribution to the mission and witness of the Church in Western culture, they must show primary concern, not only for the information that their graduates possess, but for the convictions that will shape, drive and sustain them through all the trials and tribulations of not only ministry in a Post-Christian context, but amidst the sort of suffering and persecution which the Bible tells us always accompanies faithful witness.
Imparting Spiritual Knowledge
Seminaries and churches are full of people who know plenty of things about God. What our seminaries and churches seem in desperate lack of are people who truly know God in the way the Apostle Paul speaks of when he says, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…” What we have to accept is that this kind of “knowing” cannot be manufactured or controlled. The impartation of spiritual knowledge is finally the work of the Holy Spirit as we live in relationship with God and participate in his mission in the world in the way of Jesus. Thus, it is incumbent upon seminaries to create environments where God can do this kind of work in shaping Kingdom leaders.
Re-framing Our Relationship to Scripture
It should go without saying that in the endeavor of theological education to contribute to the shaping of Christian leaders, there is no text more important or sacred than the Bible. Unfortunately, the experience of many a seminarian is that the Bible is reduced to little more than an object to be examined and dissected. However, when you abstract an engagement with Scripture from a predisposition towards inviting the work of the Holy Spirit, we miss God’s intention for this discipline. Therefore, in terms of truly honoring a spiritual disposition towards theological education, not only will the Bible occupy a primary place throughout the whole of our programs (as opposed to being confined to individual courses), it will increasingly need to be seen as the very story out of which seminaries derive their own identity, purpose, and function.
Embracing the Irreplaceable Role of the Holy Spirit
Our prevailing systems of theological education train and equip people to be leaders in such a way that they assume an ability to succeed based upon their own intellectual capacity and/or skill-set rather than upon their ability to discern the Holy Spirit’s leading and therefore upon the Holy Spirit’s power rather than their own. We suggest that to the degree that centers of theological education want to contribute to preparing leaders for faithful service as Kingdom citizens, they must re-imagine theological education in such a way that the work and role of the Holy Spirit in the theological formation of leaders, as well as in the world, will be given primary attention.
Concluding Thoughts
One of the great travesties of our current Christian landscape is that emerging leaders often feel like they have to make a choice between “going to seminary,” because it will provide the sort of “accreditation” that many denominations and organizations require, or “going into ministry,” in order to give themselves fully to the sort of life & labor they feel like God has called them to. As we re-imagine theological education along the lines of God’s Kingdom and God’s mission in the world, our hope and prayer is that these emerging leaders wouldn’t feel like this is a choice they have to make. Instead, we envision truly missional systems of theological education, so radically committed to a Kingdom vision of accreditation and to commissioning Kingdom leaders on account of their character and competency rather than their GPA, that ministry becomes the context for all our education and formation as we train reflective practitioners, that the aim of our education would become the mobilization of God’s people for loving and faithful service as we train missionary leaders, and that all of this emerges out of a vibrant and growing relationship with the triune God as we train Kingdom citizens.
“Going to Church” Is Not A Reality I Want For My Daughter
I am one of those people who happens to believe in the importance of words. While it’s a good thing to have a broad vocabulary, that’s not what I mean. I mean that I think words are powerful. Words aren’t just symbols and they certainly aren’t neutral. Words actually DO things when we use them or hear them.
Ever been called an idiot?
Ever made a verbal promise?
Ever double-dog-dared someone to do something?
Yes? Then you get what I mean. Words are powerful tools. I would even go so far as to say that words contribute to the shaping of our realities. Just ask any teenager whose parent has told them on a consistent basis for years that they’re worthless.
This is why I have abandoned the language of “going to church.” This language reinforces a false reality. A reality in which church is understood to be a place or an event rather than a Kingdom community or family of disciples. I would submit that the idea of “going to church” is a chief hallmark of cultural Christianity, the sort of thing that, while having a ring of sincerity to it, actually reshapes our imaginations and our reality in ways counter to the biblical narrative and the purposes of God. So, a few weeks ago, as Amy and I prepared to take our daughter to a gathering of our church community, she and I had one of our first father-daughter chats.
I began to speak the kind of words to my daughter that I want her to grow up hearing – words that I want to shape her into the sort of person capable envisioning and receiving the story into which she has been born and invited – words that I hope will instill in her the sort of sorrowful/sick feeling that her father gets when he hears people relegate the Church to something we merely “go to.”
I said to her,
Daughter, you are a part of our family and our family is part of a very special group of people. This group of people has a long, long history, filled with incredible stories that you will get to hear as you get older. But here’s what you need to know. God loves this world – everyone and everything in it. He loves it more than we can even possibly imagine. He loves it so much that he actually gave himself up for it – can you believe that?! He did. But lots of things are wrong. Not everything is quite the way that it is supposed to be. But don’t worry, God is at work. He will see to it that in the end, all things will be made right again. And guess what, God has invited us to join him on this mission. He wants us to be a part of it with him as his people. With God’s help we try to live out God’s dream for the world. And because God’s own son, Jesus, did this better than anyone else ever did, we always try to follow his example. That means that in many ways, the way we live is very different from the ways that other people live. In fact, and this is difficult for me to say to you because I love you so much, it means that the more you live your life for God, the more likely it is that some people will not like you, maybe even hurt you like they did Jesus. Even still…
Like Jesus, we talk to God and listen as he speaks to us rather than living life on our own terms.
Like Jesus, when people do mean and bad things, we offer forgiveness rather than hold grudges or try to get even.
Like Jesus, when people are hurt or in need, we offer to help rather than let them suffer or assume that it’s their own fault.
Like Jesus, we go out of our way to be friends with people who don’t like or make fun of rather than ignore them or do the same.
Like Jesus, we give our money and things to people who need them even if they can’t pay us back rather than keeping everything for ourselves.
Like Jesus, we will lay our lives down for our enemies rather than try to injure or destroy them.
And that’s just the beginning! These are just some of the ways that we get to enjoy God’s dream for the world.
Now listen, there’s a special name for people who live this way together, they are called “Church.” They are the people who have been called out of the ways of the way the world is, in order to live out God’s dream for the way the world should be and will be someday. Some people think that Church is some thing that you go to, like going to a movie or a restaurant, only religious. But that’s not what it is, not at all! I know you won’t really understand all this quite yet, but the Church is a group of people who embody a whole new world! Nothing you ever do will be more important than being part of this people and adventure. Now, let’s go meet some of the people we’re on this mission with.
The first of many more conversations I hope to have with my precious daughter along these lines.
Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Conviction Shaping
Previous posts in this Series:
Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | The Fruit of the Problem | New Soil | Community Rootedness | Character Formation
One of the greatest needs of missional churches is leaders who have been trained how to think as opposed to what to think, who are able to equip others for deep incarnational witness, and whose character and giftedness has been practiced and affirmed in the context of a local community. This was the point of my previous post – the centrality of character formation in a missional vision of theological education.
From here, I want to go on to say that a missional vision of theological education will emphasize the shaping of Kingdom convictions in leaders.
No one is more responsible for my appreciation of this dimension of a missional vision of theological education than the late Dr. James Wm. McClendon. His work was the center of my masters thesis and continues to shape my life as a disciple of Jesus is all its forms.
The most admirable Christian leaders are not those men and women who have sought to do great, big things for the Kingdom, but who have faithfully responded to that which God has done in their lives. They were and are men and women of conviction and as McClendon points out,
Convictions are not so much things we have, but things which have us.
Christendom, as a system of coercive power, naturally emphasizes control. This emphasis has resulted in two dominant emphases in the shaping of leaders – the passing on of systems of belief and/or the training in particular models of ministry. I am against neither of these things in themselves. I am merely suggesting that they need to be peripheral, not central to the training of missional leaders. I advocate for the centrality of conviction shaping for three main reasons.
1) The shaping of Kingdom convictions is primarily the Holy Spirit’s work.
We have fooled ourselves into believing that the passing on of right doctrine or refined training in ministry models are of prime importance in theological education. When these are our emphases, not only do we create one-dimensional leaders, but we run the greater risk of making Christian leadership development primarily a human enterprise – like training a mechanic or a sales person. The shaping of convictions in correspondence with the reality of God’s Kingdom is much more fluid and finally contingent on the work of the Holy Spirit. We need leaders who not so much “get God,” but ones “God’s got.”
2) The shaping of Kingdom convictions is more in accord with missional theology.
We all see and interpret things through various lenses depending on our background, experience, education, culture and so on. Thus, missional theology is never fixed, but exists in constant interaction with Scripture, our community & its tradition, and our broader context & experience.
As I’ve said before, theological convictions are not the same as theological foundations. Churches built on theological foundations and hell bent on being right are brought low when those foundations are assaulted. Missional churches on the other hand, more concerned with being faithfully responsive, embrace the notion that,
The convictions that cohere within any community are in principle always subject to rejection, reformulation, improvement or critical revision, and the church is no exception to this principle.
We desperately need leaders who are more convicted about a way of believing, living, and following, than they are a way of knowing or structuring.
3) The shaping of Kingdom convictions naturally flows from community rootedness and character formation.
Convictions are the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in the midst of our community-rooted character development. As McClendon has shared, the shaping of Kingdom convictions are not
…so many ‘propositions’ to be catalogued or juggled like truth-functions in a computer, but are inextricably interwoven with ecclesial practices such as baptism and eucharist, hospitality and reconciliation, peacemaking and the mutual bearing of burdens, where they ‘give shape to actual lives and actual communities.’
They are,
generated by ‘a shared and lived story, one whose focus is Jesus of Nazareth and the kingdom he proclaims.
This is what we see when we look at the relationship of Jesus to his disciples. The cultivation of a community of followers who, dense as they were, and prone to weakness, were convicted of Jesus’ Messiahship, his judgment and triumph over the evil powers at work in the world, and the beginning of the renewal of all things in his resurrection.
Think for a moment about the people who most inspire you and you enjoy following. Chances are the reason is that something has gripped them, you sense it in all they say and do and you’re interested, if not desperate, to know it for yourself. This is what I am saying, for the Christian leader, is the work of the Holy Spirit in accord with a missional theology that finds its home in the midst of community of people following Jesus on mission together.
Can you offer examples of this? Anyone who has counter-examples? How have traditional approaches to theological education helped or failed you in this regard?
Next up – the place of contextual training in a missional vision of theological education.
Some quotes and ideas stem from: Harvey, Barry. “Beginning in the Middle of Things: Following James McClendon’s Systematic Theology. Modern Theology 18:2, April 2002.
Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses
This is a bit old by now, but I am just running across it. Taken from the 2004 Emergent Theolgical Conversation, these are 19 theses from Dr. Walter Brueggemann which, in concise fashion, sum up the grand scope of the “cultural problem” for the church in the United States. These 19 theses, especially number 12, also pertain to the short comings of systematic theology, and the importance of narrative theology. You can find the audio of the talk as well as some great Q&A here, but I will reprint the theses below. I hope to say more about some of the points he is making here in conjunction with the idea of a missiology of the midwest, so I hope we can get some conversation going here. Enjoy.
1. Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or
explicit. It may be recognized or unrecognized, but everybody has a
script.2. We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process
of nurture and formation and socialization, and it happens to us
without our knowing it.3. The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.
4. That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism)
enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on
the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us
happy.5. That script has failed. That script of military consumerism
cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy. We may be the
unhappiest society in the world.6. Health for our society depends upon disengagement from and
relinquishment of that script of military consumerism. This is a
disengagement and relinquishment that we mostly resist and about which
we are profoundly ambiguous.7. It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us.
That is, too enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists
and indeed never did exist.8. The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is
accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an
alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.9. The alternative script is rooted in the Bible and is enacted
through the tradition of the Church. It is an offer of a
counter-narrative, counter to the script of technological, therapeutic,
consumer militarism.10. That alternative script has as its most distinctive feature,
its key character – the God of the Bible whom we name as Father, Son,
and Spirit.11. That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It
is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and
disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by
many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent
because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in
sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence
– [a] huge problem for us.12. The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the
counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless.
[I think the writer of Psalm 119 would probably like too try, to make
it seamless]. Because when we do that the script gets flattened and
domesticated. [This is my polemic against systematic theology]. The
script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of
the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the
dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about
certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about
certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must betaken to let
this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible
self.13. The ragged, disjunctive character of the counter-script to
which we testify invites its adherents to quarrel among themselves –
liberals and conservatives – in ways that detract from the main claims
of the script and so too debilitate the focus of the script.14. The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we
say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?”15. The nurture, formation, and socialization into the
counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of
ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialization by
the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action,
spirituality, and neighboring of all kinds.16. Most of us are ambiguous about the script; those with whom we
minister and I dare say, those of us who minister. Most of us are not
at the deepest places wanting to choose between the dominant script and
the counter-script. Most of us in the deep places are vacillating and
mumbling in ambivalence.17. This ambivalence between scripts is precisely the primary venue
for the Spirit. So that ministry is to name and enhance the ambivalence
that liberals and conservatives have in common that puts people in
crisis and consequently that invokes resistance and hostility.18. Ministry is to manage that ambivalence that is crucially
present among liberals and conservatives in generative faithful ways in
order to permit relinquishment of [the] old script and embrace of the
new script.19. The work of ministry is crucial and pivotal and indispensable
in our society precisely because there is no one [see if that’s an
overstatement]; there is no one except the church and the synagogue to
name and evoke the ambivalence and too manage a way through it. I think
often; I see the mundane day-to-day stuff ministers have to do and I
think, my God, what would happen if you talk all the ministers out. The
role of ministry then is as urgent as it is wondrous and difficult.Narrative Preaching for Christian Formation
Prompted by my friend Billy, I picked up a new book by John W. Wright, Telling God’s Story: Narrative Preaching for Christian Formation. A student of Hauerwas and with commendations from Ray Anderson, Marva Dawn, and James K.A. Smith, I knew I’d like the book before I even cracked it open. I am almost finished and it has not disappointed. For now, I offer just a few quotations for the sake of discussion…Preaching has largely ceased to incorporate individuals into the concerns created by the Christian Scriptures. Instead, preaching has become the application of individualistic, theraputic biblical language to contemporary concerns of disembodied calls to social justice. The church in North America has become adept at translating the Scriptures into the narratives that already shape the lives of believers and non-believers alike, By providing a private, theraputic, individualistic biblical discourse, such preaching maintains the presence of the church as a voluntary grouping of individuals living in a society that looks to the church for personal fulfillment rather than public guidance… The question is not, How can we make the Scriptures relevant to individuals in need of therapy? but, How do we translate human lives into the biblical narrative to live as a part of the body of Christ in the world? (19)
And a quote from Hauerwas…
The enemy, who is often enough ourselves, does not like to be reminded that the narratives that constitute our lives are false. Moreover, you had better be ready for a fierce encounter-offensive as well as be prepared to take some casualties. God has not promised us safety, but rather participation in an adventure called the Kingdom (44, from “No Enemy, No Christianity: Preaching Between ‘Worlds’).
This shift from trying to get individuals to incorporate Scripture into their lives to trying to cultivate community seeking to live out a biblical reality is not an easy one. The implications are vast and deep. Wright’s book is helpful for beginning to understand how the practice of preaching can be transformed so that people and communities are able to have their lives re-narrated by Scripture.
Jesus – A Theological Deconstructionist
I just came across a great post by David Fitch on why Emerging Church people are drawn to deconstructive theology. Actually, this post is a follow up to one he wrote for The Church and Postmodern Culture. In the original post he does a great job of answering the above question and in his follow up he clarifies that in his opinion, which I share, there are a handful of Christian theologians who have been speaking to the concerns of “Emerging Church people” for quite a while, but oddly, don’t seem to get as much credit as their more atheistic counterparts – people like Hauerwas, Lindbest, Milbank, etc.) Not ironically, in my opinion, these are some of the same theologians who have been most helpful in framing how the church benefits from a narrative approach to theology and a missional approach to ecclesiology. Simply put, they understand that the church forms its theology based on its mission in the world and that the church’s mission in the world is correspondingly and simultaneously shaped by its theology (this was the thrust of my masters thesis). This is a constant ebb and flow of action <-> reflection (envision a really cool circular diagram here!).I think folks like Derrida, Focult, and other deconstructionists (Tony Jones would have me inform you that “Derridaian decontruction does not mean ‘to tear down’ but ‘to break through.’”) have good things to offer and ought not to be dismissed out of hand, but when push comes to shove, we ought to give more credence to those authors who seek to submit their lives and work to Jesus as Lord and the church as their family.
Here’s what I really wanted to say – when we understand it rightly, it is easy to conclude that Jesus was a theological deconstructionist. He took commonly held theological assumptions and practices and “broke through” the ways in which people misunderstood and misappropriated them in order to refreame them rightly. That’s the rub. Deconstruction, for the Christian, can never stop at merely exposing weaknesses and fallacies. Rather, to be truly Christian, there must also be a rebuilding, a restoration, a movement forward into a better, more faithful way; such is the nature of the Trinity and God’s mission in the world.
A Christian is not one who simply acts in unknowing, this is an agnostic. Neither is a Christian one who acts without any reason or cause, this would be a retreat in to fidesm. Instead, a Christian is one who lives and acts in accordance with their faith and reason, but always in humility and with a reverence for the mystery of God. This enables the Christian to invite others into a future with no sure, fixed foundation, yet centered around a God who desires relationship as opposed to one who remains largely unknowable (which I think is the alternative offered by at least one stream of “Christian” deconstructionist theology).
The people of God, through the story of Scripture, have gone through countless cycles of orientation (when all was well), disorientation (when things began to unravel), and reorientation (when God worked to restore and recreate). The church in Western culture, I would say, finds itself in the throws of disorientation. I am not advocating that we race through that phase as we grasp for some sort of reorientation, but I am saying that we need to look toward and expect it.
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