1. Amidst the proliferation of “missional” everything, we have given scant attention to implications of this paradigm for church-based leadership development.

It’s not that missional leadership has received NO attention. Alan Roxburgh, Tim Keel, and Lois Barrett among others (I especially want to get to this new book by Mark Lau Branson & Juan Martinez) have all written helpfully in this area. However, and this is what Mike and 3DM does so well, none have written quite so practically, providing explicit models for leadership development along missional lines. The reason that Mike and the 3DM team (by the way, I use “Mike & the team” rather than just Mike because having journeyed w/ these folks for a while I know how truly collaborative all their work is. Much to his credit, and in keeping w/ the point of this book, Mike is a rare find these days – an experienced and skillful leader who cares way more about empowering and deploying others then he does turning the attention to himself) are able to write so helpfully here is that they are primarily drawing on their experience. This isn’t theoretical speculation for them, it’s what they’ve done and how they’ve seen God at work. We could stand quite a bit more of this kind of exposition. It’s what, in my opinion, qualifies them to say…

I would argue that our churches don’t have missional leaders, but I’d take it a step further. I also think that most of our churches have next to no leaders. Sure, we have leadership development programs. We have dinners, classes, meetings, and maybe even some training. But leadership means that we’ve been given a vision from the Lord for ourselves and given the power and the authority to execute the vision. This isn’t happening in our churches.

That’s because in most churches, we don’t have leaders; we have managers. We have people who are executing and managing the vision of the few (or the one), not people who are implementing the visions the Lord has given them. Usually we have one genius with a thousand helpers. And to plug-and-play those helpers, we have manager development programs.  (3-4, pre-published version)

It’s statements like this that indicate that the kind of leadership development that 3DM advocates is intrinsically tied to an understanding of the nature and purpose of the Church that differs significantly from its dominant expression in the West.

2. The paradigm of leadership development held out in this book calls for a missional understanding of the church.

For better or for worse, 3DM isn’t explicit about their ecclesiology. But as one considers what they have to say about Building a Discipling Culture, Launching Missional Communities, and the notion of Covenant and Kingdom, you can begin to put some pieces together. Discipleship and mission are at the core of how they understand the Church and they follow this conviction through to its logical and practical implications far better than many others who remain ensnared by the assumptions of Christendom patterns of thought. Their ability to escape these, I suppose, comes from having cut their “ministerial teeth” in the context of Post-Christian Europe. From the perspective of Breen & 3DM, the Church is called to join God in his mission in the world, principally, by making disciples. It’s what compels them to join in the (increasingly common) refrain of, “… if you make disciples, you always get the church, but if you’re really about building a church, you won’t always get disciples.” (14-15, pre-published version) Incidentally, I get what they are doing/saying here, but it’s precisely at this point that I wish they’d do some more constructive ecclesiological work because if discipleship is fundamentally an ecclesial responsibility then there is no such thing as making disciples apart from it, as the quip would seem to advocate.

Nevertheless, the book offers a prophetic indictment against the Western Church’s penchant for celebrity, consumerism, and competitiveness (Ch. 3) as it calls for a a way of being the Church that leads to the creation of movements (rendered impossible by a focus on celebrity), is predicated on fruitfulness as people are invited to be producers (rather than consumers), and invites people to join God’s mission (as opposed to compete with one another over our own). Though it’s not taken up as a topic in the book, this perspective leads to a third and final reason I think this book is so valuable.

3. In holding out a practical model of missional leadership development that calls for a missional understanding of the church, this book will add fuel to the fire of those who experientially or intuitively know that our systems of theological education are largely anemic when it comes to training men and women for this sort of service.

Plain and simple, our currently dominant models of theological education (and therefore our systems of accrediting) are simply not capable of cultivating leaders who can serve and reproduce along the lines sketched in this book (and I say this as a guy well on his way to a third theological degree!). Why? I could name a slew of reasons, but the bottom line is that by and large people have to evacuate churches and other ministry contexts in order to engage in programs of theological education. As convinced that Mike is when he says,

You see, I am absolutely convinces that 100 years from now, many books will be written on the phenomenon that is the late 20th Century/early 21st Century American church. And I am fairly certain that it will be with a large degree of amazement and laughter that people, in reading about it, will say to each other:’You must be joking! Seriously? People actually thought it was a good idea to structure the church as if it were a business? Honestly? (4-5, pre-published version)

I am convinced that in the future we will find the notion of theological training apart from ministerial rootedness every bit as laughable.

Many, and I mean tons and tons, of current and aspiring Christian leaders will read this book and something inside of them will not only resonate with it, but will leap w/ a desire to be led and lead others into the vision of church and leadership development offered within it. Sadly, they will have precious few places to turn for examples, guidance, and training. Good for 3DM, bad for nearly everyone else – really bad for those places of theological formation who are without the flexibility or vision to engage and respond. The model of leadership development offered in this book, predicated as it is, quite simply, on the life and ministry of Jesus, is an invitation to us to reconsider what the purpose of theological education for church-based ministry is really all about and how we ought to be re-structuring our programs in light of it.

Conclusion

That’s really more of a personal reflection than a proper review of the book I suppose, but those were my major takeaways. The book is an easy and accessible read that really seeks to do one simple thing, encourage us to look to Jesus and the pattern of the early church as we think about cultivating leaders around principles related to discipleship and mission. On that count, I think there is a lot of good stuff to be gleaned here. This is a book I would encourage any Christian leader to pick up and work with.

Related posts:

1. Toward a Thepoetic of the Cross (Book Review)
2. Launching Missional Communities (Book Review)
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders

For about a year and a half during and right after college, I got to live in a house w/ a group of guys, most of whom I still consider good friends and interact with regularly. This was one of the most formative (and fun!) times of my life. One memory in particular has come back to my attention recently.

A few of us were sitting around on the front porch talking and the conversation turned toward the future. One friend commented on how he had had a personal epiphany recently. He said that he realized that he had developed, in no specifically methodical fashion, a vision of the man he would be someday. He went on to offer a litany of characteristics that he believed would accurately describe him when he was, say, 40 or 50 years old. That wasn’t what struck him however. The epiphany sprung forth from the idea that he was not just going to magically wake up and be this person that he imagined at some point, but that he was right then and there, in the present, either moving closer toward or further away from actually becoming the kind of man he envisioned. It’s probably characteristic of college-age students to disassociate who they are from the person they hope to become, but in the midst of an impending graduation, my friend, and through him the rest of us, began to wake up to the reality that there is no such thing as the person we imagine we will be someday, only the person we are actually becoming.

The Inevitable Changing of the Guard

This realization has important implications for how we think of our own formation for sure, but it begs the consideration of another reality; namely, that like it our not, in terms of Christian leadership, the younger generation inevitably becomes the older generation. The sad passing of people like John Stott and Chuck Colson bear this out.

At 33, I feel like this is beginning to be important. I occupy something of a shared liminal space. Whereas I could rattle off a long list of Christian leaders that I and others have looked to for theological guidance over the last 15 years or so, the fact of the matter is, in another 15 years, many of these people will have offered most of what they have to offer and a younger generation of emerging Christian leaders will be looking to (gulp!) my generation for the same sort of theological guidance. Which compels me to ask the question, “What kind of Christian leaders are those of my generation becoming and how will these men and women serve and shape the Church?”

I was insanely fortunate to have had the opportunity ride my wife’s coattails all the way to South Africa back in the fall of 2010 for the Third Lausanne Congress. I am equally grateful that I will get to participate in the upcoming Consultation for North American Younger Leaders. The Lausanne movement doesn’t need to be seen as THE locus for a quest to discern the future shape of the Church, but I have to agree with Dave Dunbar, the President of Biblical Seminary, when he supposes that perhaps Lausanne, and especially the Cape Town Commitment, hasn’t really received the attention it deserves (it’s a pivotal document for the initiative I’m working with, the Missio Alliance). They seem to have managed to bring a more globally and ecumenically representative tribe of Christians together than any other endeavor, and for the fact alone, I think it’s a worth-while point of reference. I think this brief video of my friend and Lausanne’s International Deputy Director for North America, Tom Lin, gets at some of this.

From the Experience and Questions of “Wilderness” to the Experience and Questions of “Exile”

Another friend, Geoff Holsclaw, and I have discussed that while Christian leaders of our generation (those under 35) have benefited greatly from the example and writing of many missional theologians and pastors, our actual experience has been quite different than theirs. They have had to navigate a ton of terrain on the journey from modernity to postmodernity / Christendom to Post-Christendom / denominational stability to denominational irrelevance, leading them to ask certain questions in certain ways with certain expectations and assumptions. By and large, this isn’t a shared experience for those of my generation. For most of us, the destination of our theological mentors has been the beginning point for us, leading us to ask (even if not altogether) different questions in different ways with different expectations and assumptions.

To generalize, we don’t wonder about the shift of Christianity to the global south, we take it for granted. We don’t feel the same sense of Western (missionary) guilt, because colonialism wasn’t our project. We aren’t all that interested in conversations about restoring Christianity to the center of culture, because, for the most part, we’ve never known it, or, in a more theological sense, we reject it as not befitting the nature of Christian faith anyway. This list could of course be added to and argued with (as it should be). It also obviously wouldn’t resonate with the experience of everyone across the board (what does?!) But, my sense is that it nevertheless outlines some of the generational realities that shape and inform not only the questions we’re asking, but the way in which we ask them and, consequently, the shape the Church will inevitably take as younger leaders begin to take on more and more responsibility.

I’m curious. Regardless of what generation you happen to find yourself in, what are your thoughts or impressions on the qualities, characteristics, and perspectives of younger Christian leaders and how do you suppose these will influence the future shape of the Church as these leaders shoulder more and more responsibility over the next 30 years or so?

Related posts:

1. Missio Alliance: Discerning the Shape of Theology & Practice for Mission
2. Two Battles of Emerging Missional Leaders
3. Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: The Fruit of the Problem

This is a very overdue post.

A Personal Vocational Transition

At the end of last December I resigned my position at Northern Seminary in order to begin helping direct the efforts of a new theological initiative. The transition was quite seamless as Northern has actually become an early and major sponsor of this new initiative, the Missio Alliance. In this new role I get to work alongside Chris Backert (serving as Ex. Dir. & Regional Dir. for Eastern US), JR Woodward (serving as Regional Dir. for Western US), and Dave Fitch (serving as Regional Dir. for Central US).

What is the Missio Alliance?

This initiative has grown out of the Ecclesia Network, a group I’ve been privileged to be a part of for the last 5 years or so. Whereas Ecclesia has become a home and source of support, training, and encouragement for missional churches and church planters, the Missio Alliance has more to do with bringing a broader array of practitioner-theologians, missiologists, pastors and other Christian leaders together for dialogue, training, and the creation of resources. Here’s a fuller description of the origins and aims of the Missio Alliance from the initial web page that we have up…

As the Church in North America wrestles with the complex realities of an increasingly Post-Christian cultural context, there’s a need to consider afresh what God is doing and calling us to in His Mission. In recent history we have witnessed increasing fragmentation within evangelical Protestantism and sharp denominational decline. Yet even amidst these challenges, we believe there is a unique opportunity to work toward the renewal of the Church for Mission in North America. 

The Missio Alliance seeks to provide a seeding ground for such renewal. We aim to bring pastors, practitioner-theologians, leaders, and missiologists together from across the spectrum of the North American Church to work for a Kingdom-driven, gospel-centered, biblically grounded theology and ecclesial practice for God’s Mission in North America. We seek to provide a place for theological dialogue, training, and the creation of resources to navigate present and future missional challenges. Grounded in The Capetown Commitment of the Third Lausanne Congress, these endeavors will emerge out of a strong and distinctive theological identity that is rooted in relationships. We will seek to cross cultural and denominational boundaries, creating by the Spirit a gospel dynamic for discerning the challenges of our time. 

Dave Fitch has talked about the need for something like the Missio Alliance to emerge. As he wrote in this post…

As I said previously, and as I have said in my new book The End of Evangelicalism?, evangelicalism is at a tipping point. We are cracking. The emergent conversation started by Brian McLaren et. al. has not produced theological leadership (it seems Love Wins is another case of this).  The herds of disenchanted evangelicals are left to either wander or head for the newer coalitions of the Neo-Reformed. Yet as I’ve said here, this isn’t going to take us into Mission. Based in the impulses in both of these movements, we need an alternative place for the work of theology and mission. Without it – it is questionable whether these much needed conversations can place. Without an alternative coalition (that can bring certain parts of these existing factions together into conversation with the Holiness, Anabaptist Missionals), the aftermath of traditional evangelicalism is going to devolve into defensiveness and fail to produce a missional movement. There’s some of us working toward that end (of nurturing an alternative theological coalition). In the meantime, this for me, is the lesson of the Rob Bell fiasco.

Who’s Involved & How can I Connect?

At present, we are working toward a launch conference in April of 2013. Among those who have already agreed to be a part of that conference are Dallas Willard, Scot McKnight, Roger Olson, Cherith Fee Nordling, Amos Yong, and Jo Saxton among others.

If connecting w/ this sort of community sounds of interest to you, feel free to drop your email over here to stay in the loop, or connect w/ us on Twitter or Facebook.

If you’re out West, we are planning a regional conference on Oct. 19-20 near Los Angeles featuring Alan Hirsch, Dave Fitch, & JR Woodward w/ engagement and responses from 6 local pastors. Stay tuned for more info on that as the date gets closer.

We’ve already begun to establish working partnerships w/ a handful of denominations, seminaries, and leaders of various networks, but if you represent an institution or organization that might be interested in partnering with something like I’ve described above, please be in touch via: connect [@] missioalliance [dot] org.

Related posts:

1. Younger Missional Leaders, the Lausanne Movement, and the Shape/ing of the Church
2. #Occupy Empire: Anabaptism in God’s Mission
3. A Look Back and A Look Ahead

Since then, I have only grown more and more interested in the issue and practice of disciple-making (little wonder it has become the focus of my doctoral dissertation Discipleship, as both the core feature of Jesus own life, ministry, and teaching as well as (albeit in a different way) the primary focus of the apostle Paul’s work and writing, has come to occupy a central place in my theological perspectives, my ecclesiology, even my understanding of the nature of salvation and the atonement (thanks Dallas!) However, it’s only been recently that I’ve begin to ask questions and look into non-Western conceptions and practices of discipleship and disciple-making.

I’d love it if anyone had more resources to share on this, but I thought I’d share a three-part article entitled, “Seven Paradigm Shifts in Twenty-First Century Discipling,” by Edmund Chan, a Singaporean pastor, that came to my attention.

I’m not quite sure that everything discussed in these brief articles really qualifies as a “paradigm shift” in the truest sense of the phrase, but I appreciate what he has to say nonetheless. As one who is convinced that one of the greatest needs of the Western church is to shut up and listen to our non-Western brothers and sisters for a while, I appreciate perspective like this. Here are the articles…

Article 1 of 2 | Article 2 of 3 | Articles 3 of 3

Related posts:

1. Alan Hirsch – Making Missional Marketable
2. The Church Emerging and the Multi-Cultural Future of Western Christianity
3. The Oppression of Suburban Youth

…Lots of JR’s, Amy & Aubrey got to coma along, some good basketball games, lots of time to enjoy friendships and start some new one, we officially announced the Missio Alliance (site, twitter, facebook – all in development), and a group on younger missional theologians (plus Dave Fitch got together to discuss doing some work together.

Related posts:

1. Why I’m Going to the Ecclesia National Gathering
2. The Ecclesia Network: Some Reflections and Resources
3. The GOCN, Ecclesia, and the Missional Church

Recently, friends over at the Burner blog posted audio from a recent Presidential Forum at which Dr. Mouw addressed Fuller’s stance on (or perhaps it would be better to say engagement with) homosexuality and homosexual practice (which he helpfully distinguishes between). Mouw also speaks insightfully to some of the dynamics at play with regard to how this issue is dealt with across American evangelicalism in general.

I took the liberty of dividing up Dr. Mouw’s talk and the Q & R that followed – both are very worth of your time.

If you take the time to listen to these, I would love to hear any feedback you might have. Also, are you aware of other authors or groups that you think model this sort of engagement with this topic – showing an ability to be both graciously open as well as convicted?

Dr. Mouw’s talk (about 45 mins.) is here Download audio file (Rich%20Mouw%20on%20Homosexuality%20%281%20of%202%29.mp3)
(download)

The Q & R time (another 35 mins.) is here Download audio file (Rich%20Mouw%20on%20Homosexuality%20%282%20of%202%29.mp3)
(download)

Related posts:

1. The Fuller Seminary Generation
2. Hauerwas at Fuller Seminary on Mental Illness
3. You Should Go to Fuller Theological Seminary

I’ve written before about how I found a theological home w/ in the Anabaptist tradition, so I am really looking forward to spending some time with people who have been swimming in that stream for quite a bit longer than me.  If you can swing it, hope you’ll consider joining us!

Related posts:

1. Anabaptism, Empire, and a Missional Vision of Theological Formation
2. My (Ana)baptism
3. Missio Alliance: Discerning the Shape of Theology & Practice for Mission

Last summer I started to talk about a partnership that was brewing between Northern Seminary and 3DM (Part 1, Part 2).

Well, at long last that partnership has been officialized as Northern now offers a masters emphasis in Discipleship & Mission as well as a DMin in Discipleship and Mission, while 3DM is able to offer those who journey through their Learning Communities as part of a “Scholar Track,” seminary credit for doing so.  You can read Northern’s announcement here and 3DM’s here.

I think this partnership embodies an important and concrete step toward one way to get at the new models of theological education that I’m convinced we so desperately need.

While it’s not a full program – the masters emphasis is equivalent to 9, 3 credit-hour courses and the DMin track leaves only 3 additional “core courses” – what is being presented here seeks to make theological education…

more accessible - through regionally, or ever nationally accessible intensive courses

more affordable - by bringing the support of churches and ministry organizations more centrally into the mix and allowing students to remain where they live and work

more integrated - as all learning is structured around its relevance for and application to actual ministry contexts and diverse subject matter (biblical studies, theological reflection, and ministry training) is interwoven amongst all modules as opposed to segmented out into their own courses

more sustainable - as these options are deigned for those who take a longer-term view to their theological formation

more formational - as students aren’t just offered content, but are invited into mentoring relationships with content experts who are also ministry practitioners

more robust - as students root their education in a community of learning as opposed to simply tackling it primarily on an individual basis

These are the sort of advances and initiatives that those of us who launched thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com and contributed to the production of the video and white paper hosted over on that site get really excited about!

Of course I hope that this partnership and these program options are fruitful.  But even more, I am anxious for what will be learned as schools like Northern open themselves up to models of theological education that are simply better suited for preparing men and women to serve the Church as reflective practitioners, missionary leaders, and Kingdom citizens.

Related posts:

1. Northern Seminary & 3DM: Discipleship Oriented Theological Education
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction

This song happens to coincide with a flurry of reading I am doing on the history of the church w/ regard to its missionary posture and involvement in the world.  Most of said history, if not marked by the absence of mission, is marred by sad if not deplorable actions.  This has me remembering, we too, as the Church, have a “girl in the war,” and it’s near impossible for me to think of anything that ought to be more central to our conversation, and engagement.  Sadly, many things distract, preoccupy, and consume our attention, thereby sabotaging our unity and compromising the integrity of our witness.  It seems that perhaps we too could do w/ an imagination in which the “dove from up above is a dragon and our feet are on fire.”

Lyrics, video, and audio are below…

Download audio file (Josh_Ritter_Girl_in_the_War.mp3)

Peter said to Paul you know all those words we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go
But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun
I got a girl in the war man I wonder what it is we done

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul the only thing I know to do
Is turn up the music and pray that she makes it through

Because the keys to the Kingdom got locked inside the Kingdom
And the angels fly around in there but we can’t see them
I got a girl in the war Paul I know that they can hear me yell
If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell
If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain

No related posts.

Looking back over what I posted in 2011, I count about 32 posts, not including my weekly auto-posting of “Tweets of the Week” that gives me (and others if they’re interested) an overview of things (thoughts, pictures, links, etc) that seemed worthy of mention.  That doesn’t quite hit the 1/week rhythm I’d like to keep up with, but didn’t fall below 1/every other week either.  Hoping for some more consistency here in 2012.  We’ll see

As I survey what I did post, I spent a lot of time writing about theological education from a missiological perspective (initially in March, April, and May and then in a more focused manner in August, October, November, and December). The bulk those thoughts got encapsulated in a paper and video that I had the opportunity to contribute to that will hopefully continue to spur on some conversation over at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.

Theological Education wasn’t the only thing I wrote about however.  Among other things…

• I sketched out the focus of my doctoral research.
• I announced the birth of our daughter, Aubrianna Mae…
• And then offered my conversation with her about why I hope she never goes to Church.
• I talked about my identification with the Anabaptist theological tradition.
• I dove back in to some conversation about the “Missional Movement,” and the “Mega-Problems of Mega-Churches.”

So if that’s a brief look back, what’s in view with a look ahead?  Near as I can tell, 2012 will be punctuated by three major developments.

1. A Major Job Change

As of the first year, I’ve resigned my position at Northern Seminary in order to begin working with a new initiative named the Missio Alliance (no website quite yet, but it’s coming).  The basic purpose of the initiative is to bring together a cadre of theological and missiological voices from various streams of evangelicalism in order to begin to offer training and resources for the theological and pastoral formation of Christian leaders.  I’m excited about this opportunity not just because I’ll find the work personally gratifying, but because I think there is a major need for an initiative like this, one that seeks to be theologically centrist, relationally oriented, and structured around the tight integration of theology and practice.  If this sounds like something you’re interested in knowing more about or participating in, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

2. Giving Ourselves to God’s Work in Elgin

For over a year now we’ve had the sense that God might be calling us to give more of our attention and energy to the people and needs of Elgin.  We are just as enamored with our church community, Life on the Vine, as we have ever been.  But, a huge part of what it means to be committed to the vision of Life on the Vine is maintaining a sense of openness to God’s leading for mission and this is what we feel like we’re responding to in faith.  While what this might mean is still very much up for discernment with others (including the pastors of LOV, our close friends, and those we feel like God has brought into our lives as friends and partners here in Elgin), our sense is that God is leading us to begin cultivating what we would call a “missional community” – a group of 20-50 others who identify with a common sense of mission and seek to invest in one another through common rhythms and practices around that mission.

3. Prayerfully Moving Forward with Adoption

Amy and I have talked about adoption for several years now, since before we were married as a matter of fact.  The big questions for us have been, “when will be a good time?” “and “where might we adopt from?”  We are still talking, praying, and asking questions about the various factors to consider in terms of domestic vs. international adoption, but at this point it’s fair to say that this is something we feel committed to and will perhaps formally begin the process of here in 2012.  Potentially, this could even mean moving to another home in Elgin that offers the kind of space that we might need as we consider getting a home study done.
——

I’m sure that I’ll be posting much more about all of these things through this next year, but for those of you beautiful people that regularly ask what’s going on and how you might pray for us, near as I can tell, these are the things that will factor most substantively into the shape of life for the Rozko’s for the next 12 months.

Related posts:

1. Missio Alliance: Discerning the Shape of Theology & Practice for Mission
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders

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.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction

Shaping Students w/ the Character and Competency of Jesus (lifeasmission | Patheos)

Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)

Again, 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.  Hope to see some helpful conversation emerge there, here, and over at Patheos as well.

In terms of our particular contribution to this forum, we began by suggesting that while we passionately affirm the important role that seminaries play educationally, from a Kingdom perspective, the more important ‘accrediting factor’ is their ability to graduate students who have increasingly taken on both the character and competency of Jesus.   Given those aims and the ways in which our systems of theological education have been corrupted by the (non-missional) assumptions and characteristics of Christendom, we suggested that the central task before us is identifying educational principles guided by a theological vision of the missio Dei as it relates to both the Gospel and the Church that can help us re-imagine and re-shape our processes of theological formation.

In our second post we sought to outline the central features of the first of three of these educational principles, that of being praxeological.   This praxeological orientation to theological education would result in the cultivation of reflective practitioners – leaders for whom the practice of mission and ministry and critical theological and missiological reflection always go hand-in-hand.

Here, we’d like to provide a sketch of a second educational principle, again drawn from the life and ministry of Jesus, that we feel must inform our processes of theological formation, that of being mobilizational – geared toward the training of missionary leaders.

One of the most disastrous effects of Christendom upon our systems of theological education has been the unhelpful assumption that the Church does and should exist at the center of our society.   Under this vision, seminaries have equipped leaders who would excel at managing and maintaining this system.   However, as the missio Dei and its implications for the Gospel and the Church come back into focus in Post-Christendom, we submit that our systems of theological education must be re-imagined for the purposes of training missionary leaders.  These will be leaders whose concern and skill-set revolve not around managing churches as part of a culture believed to be “Christian,” or even further, around church growth, but around mobilizing the people of God for participation in God’s mission in the world.  We submit that a truly mobilizational system of theological education will be, among other things, affordable, accessible, designed to prepare leaders as cultural pioneers, and judged on its ability to cultivate leaders who are competent to make disciples and mobilize others for faithful participation in God’s mission in the world.

Affordable

Unless you happen to live in a certain place, going to seminary requires the time and expense of uprooting your life and moving to another location.  In addition, the vast majority of seminary students are completely on their own to figure out how to pay for a seminary education.  A staggering number of students carry an enormous amount of debt for years, if not decades, following the completion of their program.   Not only is this problematic because of the current costs of seminary education, but increasingly, attaining a seminary degree does not translate into a proportional ability to get any job, let alone one that will alleviate students of their debt.   Moreover, because seminary degree programs remain, in large part, shaped by the assumptions of Christendom, students may quickly discover they are ill equipped to faithfully engage with the practical realities of ministry in Post-Christendom.  In order to be truly mobilizational, it is incumbent on us to re-imagine systems of theological education that are vastly more financially sustainable.

Accessible

Lack of proximity to the kinds of formational education that we are talking about isn’t just an affordability problem; it’s also an accessibility problem.  While we applaud the efforts of the increasing number of seminaries that value distance and
distributed learning opportunities, we would suggest much more innovation is required.  Increasingly, seminaries need to embody in themselves the kind of character they should be instilling in their students.  In other words, just as we need to mobilize leaders, we also need to imagine what it might mean to mobilize theological education itself.  Institutions of theological education that are truly mobilizational will happily release power and control as they give their time and energy to initiatives that make quality theological education more accessible even if they don’t directly benefit.  The future of theological education belongs to those groups and institutions who care more for the work of God’s Kingdom than they do their own.

Prepare Cultural Pioneers

The ecclesial vision of Christendom provided for a system of theological education that mainly had in view the creation of Christian leaders who might well be described as managers or custodians of the church at the center of culture.  But, with the significant shaking occurring as we move from Christendom to Post-Christendom, the maps we previously used for theological education prove unhelpful and misleading.  In direct juxtaposition to a Christendom-shaped reality, a missional understanding of God and the Church compel us to give our time and attention to the equipping of missionary leaders capable of pioneering in a world without maps.  This will require the re-imagining of structures and programs that are designed to impart to students, missionary, as opposed to managerial, skill-sets.

Cultivate Disciple-Makers and Mobilizers

A final aspect of theological education that is mobilizational is the central importance of equipping leaders to be disciple-makers and mobilizers of God’s people for mission.  However, a particular person might be individually gifted, their ability to leverage that giftedness in concert with the biblically unifying commission to “go and make disciples of all nations,” is a fundamental marker of their fit for Kingdom ministry.  Said another way, we suggest that a profound understanding of one’s giftedness and a correspondingly profound track record of the exercise of that giftedness as a means of making disciples and mobilizing people and communities for mission ought to be seen as a basic requirement for the completion of any seminary program.

In short, as the Church is increasingly pushed to the margins of society, it has (we have!) the opportunity to rediscover the missional nature of God, the Gospel, and the Church that was eclipsed within Christendom.   Among other things called for by this rediscovery is the complete restructuring of our systems of theological education as we seek to equip leaders who can serve the Church out of missionary rather than managerial perspectives and skill-sets.   We offer additional thoughts along these lines in the full paper, available here and check out the video and other resources at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction

Based on this perspective, we suggest that the task before us is to identify educational principles guided by a theological vision of the missio Dei as it relates to both the gospel and the Church that can give shape and substance to processes of theological formation that are able to help students develop Kingdom-oriented character and competency.

We will explore two additional missiological principles that we believe ought to guide this vision of theological education in forthcoming posts, but here we would like to suggest that a vision of theological education that is guided and shaped by a missional vision of God, the Gospel, and the Church will be praxeological – given to the training of reflective practitioners.  While other changes are surely called for, we suggest that theological formation that is praxeological calls for elongated programs, training by missionary theologians, diversified learning environments, a high degree of attention to contextualization, and an emphasis on creating learning communities.

Elongated Programs of Theological Formation

Whereas many seminaries seem to be spending their energy trying to find ways to help students achieve degrees more quickly, a praxeological orientation calls for more integrated, and therefore elongated, programs. Obviously an elongated program delays the conferral of a degree, but under the vision of theological education suggested here, the idea isn’t getting a degree so that you can begin to do ministry, but beginning to do ministry so that you are rooted in the proper context for theological education and formation in the first place. If the end goal is not the conferral of a degree but actually becoming a certain kind of person, there simply are no shortcuts to be taken.

Training by Missionary Theologians

A praxeological orientation toward theological education will require a faculty composed not mainly of traditional academic scholars, but of missionary theologians – those whose ability to guide and shape others flows from their own praxeological formation. Again, we are not suggesting that scholarship does not have its place; we are simply saying that the right kind of scholarship will always be driven by and focused on its implications for the life and ministry of the Church. As Karl Barth has famously said,

There would be no theology if there were no ministry specially committed to the witness of the word… If we abstract its origin in the ministry of the community, all its problems are either irrelevant or they lose their theological character… (CD 4.3.2, 879)

Thus, we are compelled to ask whether or not those who are trained and formed by traditional PhD programs are the best candidates for the kind of mentors/teachers needed to equip those who embrace this vision of theological education.

Diversified Learning Environments

Learning theory suggests there are three ways we learn: the passing on of information, apprenticeship to learn certain skill-sets, and immersion. The best learning experience occurs when there is a dynamic interplay between all three. Driven by Christendom presuppositions, our current systems of theological education are designed to do the first, pass on information, but give no real attention to issues of apprenticeship or immersion experiences. A praxeological orientation to theological education will require that our seminaries create all three kinds of learning environments for their students. The issue here isn’t merely the lack of second and third environments, but the fact that that apart from them, the relevance of time spent in the first environment loses the impact it ought to have.

Issues of Contextualization

Ministry never occurs in a vacuum. Students don’t just need to learn what to apply to their ministry context, which under the current paradigm of theological education they may not even have; they need to learn how to apply it to their ministry context, which we are suggesting as a prerequisite. This implies not only the need for missiologically-driven advances in models of distributed learning, but calls for a greatly enhanced focus on the part of instructors and the designing of programs with regard to the application of theological learning to specific ministry contexts.*

*Living into this sort of vision will mean that increasingly, centers of theological education will see having a ministry context as a prerequisite for admission into its programs. In addition, this value should compel centers of theological education to put significant amounts of time and resources into establishing truly meaningful relationships and partnerships with local churches and ministry organizations in which students who don’t have their own ministry context might not just do occasional internships, but root the entirely of their educational process.

Learning Communities

A core component of a praxeological orientation to theological education is the importance of learning in community. Whereas we wholeheartedly agree that there is a unique and important place for those regarded as experts in their field who can offer their wisdom, experience, and insight as they guide students in their formation as Kingdom leaders, there is an equally important and formative dimension to theological education that is rooted within a community of learning. In line with the realities of Kingdom ministry, which always call for a collaborative approach to tasks and problems, seminary students should increasingly develop a capacity to embody an open and discerning posture towards the insights and critiques of their peers. Flying in the face of traditional assessment criteria that are nearly exclusively predicated on one’s individual academic performance, a core component of assessing the formation of Kingdom leaders will have to do with their posture toward and interaction with others in a learning community.*

*We suggest that where theological schools continue to offer residential options, they will do well to structure them around a more monastic model where students come to be immersed in an integrated program of sharing life, resources, learning experiences, and diversified endeavors in ministry and mission.

At the heart of the particular suggestion is the simple observation that, “this is how Jesus did it” – calling disciples to him “that they might be with him and that he might send them out…” (Mark 3:14)

Read the full white paper, The Missiological Future of Theological Education, here and join in the conversation below and over at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction

1) I joined Doug Paul and Mike Breen of 3DM in hosting a forum on this topic at Northern Seminary.

2) We’ve launched a website that is hosting the white paper and video we produced as contributions to the conversation.

3) A number of people have begin conversations in the discussion forums on that site.

4) Dr. Craig Blomberg, Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, offered a response to the paper that is posted on the resource blog

5) A slew of new posts, including the 1st of 4 from our perspective, have appeared in the online forum over at Patheos.

6) And we have received a couple dozen emails from people who are asking everything from, “Can you keep me informed on how this goes forward?” to “Can you come and help lead a discussion on this in our context?” Which we are more than excited to do! (inquire here).

I am actually quite a bit more interested in driving traffic over to thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com as a place where we can try and centralize some conversation and garner insight from as broad a population as possible, but just to generate some interest, I thought I would try and peak your interest with a few words from the introduction of the paper and the video that goes along with the initiative…

The American Church finds itself in a precarious position. Based on current statistics, each year 2.7 million people cease to be part of a local church community and 4000 churches close their doors. Beyond this, 85 percent of all our churches are classified as stagnant and dying…

…while we wholeheartedly agree that we are indeed in the midst of a cultural earthquake, we believe that these statistics are better read as symptoms of a deeper problem. Rather than working toward solutions aimed at helping the Church maintain or regain its position of power and privilege at the center of society, our contention is that a more faithful posture, in the midst of this cultural earthquake, is pausing to ask what God is saying and doing and how God is calling us to respond?

The missiological crisis of Christendom not only affected the Church, but also bore corresponding implications for seminaries and indeed our systems of theological education in general. As such, we believe that a massive re-imagining of the nature, purpose, and practice of theological education is in order. Simply put, the guiding thesis of this paper is that to the extent that our current systems of theological education have been shaped by Christendom presuppositions, they have lost their missiological bearings and are wholly inadequate to prepare Kingdom leaders. Incremental changes and clever adaptations to these current systems only serve to distract from the opportunity we have before us to develop a Kingdom, and therefore missional, vision of theological education. At the heart of this vision is the conviction that the proper telos of theological education is an “accreditation” of students based not merely on the degrees they earn, but on the development and fit of their character and competency for life and leadership in the Kingdom of God.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders

A few weeks ago my alma mater, Fuller Theological Seminary, went live with its, “Seminary of the Future” project that Andy Crouch (of Christianity Today) and Rich Mouw (the President of Fuller) have been collaborating on for the last year and a half or so.  You can follow the rolling out of their various Discussion Points at future.fuller.edu.  You can also follow them on Twitter @futureseminary or join a broader conversation using the hashtag, #futureseminary.

Then, yesterday, as I was running and getting caught up on my Homebrewed Christianity listening, I was struck by the closing discussion between podcast host Tripp Fuller and my friend, guest, Dr. (yeah, he finally finished) Tony Jones on the lingering problems of “residential seminary education.”  The whole podcast is worth a listen, though this wasn’t the topic throughout.  They just touched on it at the end.  Tony is nothing if not straightforward and provocative.  Check out this 4 minute clip.

Then, stuck in traffic on my way in yesterday, I noticed that Patheos, one of the most highly trafficked religious websites is convening a two-month online symposium on “The Future of Seminary Education.”  They have already solicited contributions from some great bloggers with more to be added.  This promises to be a fruitful conversation.

Clearly, this is an important conversation for a growing population of people.

As someone who has written on this topic from a missiological point of view (see sidebar on the blog), whose role at Northern Seminary gives me the opportunity to help develop programs, partnerships, and other initiatives along these lines, and who has been working with 3DM as they attempt to offer what they can to this conversation, I am really excited to see just how much momentum this conversation is gaining.

So here’s a final reminder about an event I mentioned a couple weeks ago, for those of you who are in (or who care enough about this to make your way to) the Chicago area, Northern Seminary is hosting a 3DM event on Thursday, October 27 from 7-9PM that will feature the presentation of a paper and video on the future of theological education.  These presentations will be followed by responses by those who can contribute from different perspectives (pastoral, student, academic), and then open discussion and dialogue.  The event is free, but you need to register here.

And feel free to stick around for the (also free) workshop that 3DM is hosting the next day on issues of discipleship and mission, and then the annual Missional Learning Commons.  More info and registration options for these events availabvle at missionalcommons.org.  I think God is going to do lots of great stuff during these events.  Hope you can join us!

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders