I need to say congrats to my buddy Nick for Gadjiating Saturday from the “Hill” in Cochrane. He now joins the ranks of hundreds others who are wandering around wondering what to do with our acute ability to understand Biblical Hebrew. (Impressing people at parties cuz it sounds like Klingon, Putting it on a piece of Art, or clearing your throat are great suggestions). There has been a lot of discussion as of late in regards to the future of Christian education and seminaries, which I think is under continual change. One of the current criticisms is that it does a great job of preparing a person for church life, and not much else. And to a great extent I would have to agree. In my experience there was this preparation for being able to navigate leading all of the standard church activities. This is good especially when we see the Sunday service as the bottom line in church activities…except that is not. I know it is so hard to get our minds off of it being the base line of everything, I mean what is the second question asked after someone says they attend a particular church?... How many attend…? I do it too! It’s hard to break, a missional church however sees community transformation as the bottom line. “Ya but we have no control over that…” Well…I guess your right to some extent but, and I know it kind of sucks, but the reality is if people are failing all around us we are failing. I know there is personal responsibility etc, but we need to take our mission a little more seriously and take responsibility for the people we have been put in our circles of influence as a gift from God. Anyway, back to the original discussion, to be fair I know a lot of post graduate schools are rethinking things and I think a lot has changed even since I went (I feel like I’m 100 “back in my day”). And I am grateful for my grad studies because they truly equipped me to read and think critically, they gave me the skills to be a continual learner as well as a lot of deeper insight into a variety of fields, right now I can’t imagine myself not having that experience, but preparing me for community transformation… I don’t necessarily see a lot of it in my education. So when I bring that forward into BCCC how are we equipping people, are we helping people succeed in mission? Now hear me I think studying the Word is vital and continually learning is so important… (I know I just contradicted myself, so much for the critical thinking), but I think we are heavy on theory and abstract based education and light on the down and dirty experiential learning, lets not just talk about feeding the poor lets go do it. I love what Melissa is doing with the youth right now. She continually has Bible teaching times etc., but every month there is a lesson in service not out of a book, but in action. The kingdom of God is not lived out by having an abundance of information, (servant burry and protect that talent!) but by living it out (invest it).
3 comments:
Somtimes the chuch feels like a star trek convention with its own sub culture.
Thanks for the congraduation! Sorry it took me forever to finally comment. As to seminary, I agree that academic training isn't enough, but I find myself feeling bad for seminaries. People heap all these expectations on them when they are, at their core, academic institutions built on the medieval university system. Forcing them to try to provide evangelism or cultural exegesis training only results in we poor students sitting through lame classes that attempt to impress knowledge on us that simply cannot be learned in a classroom. Maybe we should stop expecting seminaries to produce true leaders, and instead see them as a small part of leadership training that does a pretty decent job of historical, biblical, linguistic, etc. training. My favorite classes were all academic in nature, because that's what seminaries do well. Of course, it's all the same to me, because I've graduated!
Should "we" (larger church denomination etc) then be encouraging or requiring training beyond seminary? Or should we encourage seminaries to step it up? Right now we see seminaries as the final before min.
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