Once upon a time, a group of cousins inherited a large mansion, one of those plantation houses with wide be-columned porches all about, from which the owners could gaze across verdant lawns down to the river.\u00a0 It had once been glorious, and parts of it still were, though it had recently fallen into decay.\u00a0 \u201cWhat shall we do with it,\u201d said the cousins to each other.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful just the way it is,\u201d said one.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t change a thing.\u00a0 This is the way it was planned, and no one should touch it\u201d\u00a0 \u201cNo, no,\u201d insisted another.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cNothing good ever happened in this house, and nothing good ever will.\u00a0 Tear it down or sell it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of rot and mildew and who knows what.\u201d\u00a0 A third chimed in, \u201cGranted there are problems with the plumbing on the east side of the house, but we don\u2019t have to go there.\u00a0 The west side is where we used to get together at Christmas and tell stories and sing songs.\u00a0 Don\u2019t you remember the time\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Her voice trailed off wistfully.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe we can just stay in this part and not go in the other.\u201d\u00a0 Then the last answered, \u201cCousins, we have to fix the house.\u00a0 It\u2019s got some great bones, but it does need work.\u00a0 We need to fix it for our kids and their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now you might ask me to explain my little allegory.\u00a0 The interpretation is this: Churches of Christ in my lifetime have experienced a two-generations-long identity crisis.\u00a0 The cousins have fought and cussed and argued, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not.\u00a0 Some of us practice systematic denial of reality (both the arch-conservatives and the neo-denominationalists, albeit differently), others seem wedded to archness and snide criticism of the past (the so-called progressives), but some of us must work to repair and remodel the old house so that it can be a fit residence for the future.\u00a0 What must we do?<\/p>\n
Part of the reform will involve the training and support of leaders and thus the purposes and practices of theological education.\u00a0 To reform Churches of Christ, we must reconsider the roles and especially the ends of theological education.\u00a0 We must identify the contradictions and problems in what we inherited, the theological landscape of our time and place, and the resources and strategies for moving into the future.\u00a0 Let me do that as part of this response.<\/p>\n
Where we have been<\/strong><\/p>\n To retrace our steps to this point, we might begin at the beginning.\u00a0 In his 1839 prospectus for Bethany College, Alexander Campbell envisioned a school in which students would learn all that was \u201crational, moral, and subservient to good taste,\u201d in which critical study of the Bible without \u201cscholastic or traditionary [sic] theology\u201d would create an environment hospitable to the formation of Christian persons.\u00a0 No one would be trained for clerical leadership, for the movement neither wanted nor needed a professional clergy. This model for education of all Christians in a liberal arts environment has shaped Churches of Christ profoundly, as can be attested to by the tens of thousands of alumni of our colleges in leadership positions in our churches \u2013 and a lot of other churches \u2013 around the world.<\/p>\n Yet there is a problem here, and we must name it.\u00a0 It became clear by the end of the nineteenth century that the failure to train clergy as such was a serious mistake.\u00a0 Not only was it not possible to teach everyone all the things required by ministry as it had evolved over the centuries, but also it was not possible to train ministers properly in a strictly liberal arts environment.\u00a0 Thus as early as the 1920s, schools like ACC attempted and failed to build full-fledged seminaries, and by the late 1940s Harding and ACC and shortly thereafter the rest of our schools had moved toward a mixed model.\u00a0 Bible departments taught every student the rudiments of biblical theology, and they formed ministers at increasingly advanced educational levels.\u00a0 Faculty carried heavy burdens in doing all this, but they managed, often at significant personal sacrifice, as long as the schools\u2019 student bodies were relatively homogeneous theologically, ethnically, and socioeconomically. It was possible to pretend not to be training a professional clergy because we were also training everyone at some level and because the theological gaps between pulpit and pew were relatively narrow.\u00a0 This mixed model has often served us well in creating vigorous lay leadership but has left unanswered the vital questions of just what it means to be ministers of the gospel in a full-time, ordained sort of way.\u00a0 Our language betrays us here because we seem unwilling to call our ministers what they in fact are (and I think should be), a professional clergy.<\/p>\n This brings me, then, to a second problem.\u00a0 Until the past decade, most of our Church of Christ colleges were extremely homogeneous institutions, especially theologically.\u00a0 Most students, except at Pepperdine, identified their religious commitments with Churches of Christ, and all faculty members did.\u00a0 The insider stories, assumptions, and even jokes formed part of the discourse.\u00a0 That discourse could be critiqued in various ways \u2013 and was \u2013 and students could read far beyond its boundaries \u2013 and did, at least in some places \u2013 but the world of our schools was still comparatively closed theologically speaking.\u00a0 We read about this or that theological movement, but no exponent of them ever taught at our schools.\u00a0 The non-denomination could have many of the trappings of a denomination without acknowledging them.\u00a0 I do not mean that everyone was sectarian.\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 But the non-sectarianism of even our most progressive schools had no practical implications in terms of hiring, student selection, curriculum development, the choice of outside speakers, and other tangible practices.\u00a0 Nor did we encourage students entering full-time ministry to practice their theoretical ecumenism.\u00a0 Rather, theological diversity lay hidden under a bushel.<\/p>\n This double-mindedness has become untenable today.\u00a0 Undergraduate student bodies in many of our schools are well below 50% from Churches of Christ.\u00a0 Brand loyalty is much weaker among all students, so that being \u201cfrom\u201d Churches of Christ need not imply a commitment to stay in them.\u00a0 This means that the practices that allowed us to form lay leaders for Churches of Christ must be rethought in depth, and that we must learn to take seriously the priesthood of all believers and the catholicity of the Church in new ways.\u00a0 The gap between the theological assumptions of alumni and those of current students is wide and growing.\u00a0 Professors increasingly assume a mediatorial role, whether out of conviction or out of necessity.\u00a0 (And the motivation matters!)<\/p>\n For the formation of professional ministers, the changing climate creates new challenges as well.\u00a0 We are presented with ecumenical realities in a much more direct way.\u00a0 We face squarely the call of training ministers who will work in post-denominational congregations of varying forms and structures.\u00a0\u00a0 They will need to work hard to rethink long-held traditions in light of new realities, especially the new reality that Christians today are able to draw on the whole storehouse of Christian practices and ideas, not just those that constellated in particular denominations or traditions (including our own).<\/p>\n In short, the realities that those who created our schools of theology in the 1950s and 1960s could assume simply do not exist anymore.\u00a0 This is the news I must tell you, and this is why I think our conversation today is vital.\u00a0 The apparent solidarity of the 1950s and 1960s has vanished into the past.\u00a0 It has been vanishing for a long time.<\/p>\n Now some people would see all this as bad news.\u00a0 I disagree.\u00a0 Quite to the contrary, I think it\u2019s the best possible news.\u00a0 It means that we are now \u2013 finally \u2013 poised to take seriously what our teachers taught us about a vision of a non-sectarian Christianity in which human beings reflect adequately the justice and mercy and goodness of God.\u00a0 What must we do now?<\/p>\n To be continued….<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once upon a time, a group of cousins inherited a large mansion, one of those plantation houses with wide be-columned porches all about, from which the owners could gaze across verdant lawns down to the river.\u00a0 It had once been glorious, and parts of it still were, though it had recently fallen into decay.\u00a0 \u201cWhat 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