What is the best ecclesial context for doing theology as a “pastor-theologian”: a mega church or a small church?
This is the question of my previous post, and I take up on those thoughts here focusing on the small church context…
Theology in the Small Church
The vocational model of “pastor-theologian” sounds a bit too highfalutin’ for the “1st Baptist Church of Smalltown, USA” or for the village parish somewhere in rural northern England. High-brow theological training at multiple academic institutions can leave a minister feeling licensed for “bigger and better” positions in greener pastures (let’s just be honest… and the burden of student loan debt will certainly cause some of us to look for a certain salary range).
If we pastor-theologian-types can wrestle against our personal sense of ministerial grandeur, we might find that the small church setting can be a rather exciting environment for serious theological work.
Pastors of small churches cannot rely solely on their efficient management skills: they must relationally lead as well; nor can they rely on managerial executive pastors to run the church on their behalf while they devote the majority of their time to study: they must help balance the budget while reading Barth and Calvin. A small church pastor has to get into the relational, administrative, and political messes of parish life. There is no insulating layer of a highly qualified staff.
These messes may at first be viewed as distractions from the pristine work of doing theology.
Not exactly. In fact, theology that cannot engage and address a local church’s relational, administrative, and political messes is too shallow for the people of God and for the God of the people.
And when a pastor is personally wading in the muck of the parish, that’s when the parish will listen to theology and care about it.
Personally…
I’m not sure yet whether I will end up serving a local church or working in a seminary/divinity school when I complete (Deo volente!) my PhD program. But when I was working on a Master of Theology degree a few years back, I was also pastoring a small Baptist church.
The rush and thrill of learning in a high-profile environment was exhilarating.
But if I didn’t have theology thick enough to sit in Jo’s living room after paramedics had just removed her husband’s body from her house, then the classroom experience was all for naught. If I didn’t have a theology thick enough to sit at a hospital bedside and help a nurse adjust the position of a sedated parishioner, then the impressive theological training was suffering a disconnect.
Of course, it is not entirely up to our theological instructors in the seminary and the div school to connect our theology to our ministerial labors. Ultimately, that is the job of the minister. And context helps make the connection happen.
In this regard, the small church setting was really helpful for me. It forced theology to leap off the pages and out of the libraries into living rooms, kitchens, hospitals, and graveyards.
In light of the previous post, “Will the Job Market Drive PhD Graduates into the Pulpit?“, I just wanted to think aloud with any interested readers on the ideal ecclesial setting for the vocational model of a “pastor-theologian.”
For more on how I am envisioning this model of pastoral ministry, see here and here.
I want to be careful not to promote some elitist brand of “minister” by writing so often about the “pastor-scholar/pastor-theologian.” The current pastoral leaders of the church are differently gifted and a vast range of divinely-guided inclinations are shaping their individual ministries. In using the term “pastor-theologian,” I am loosely referring to someone who engages the work of theology with all the rigor and zeal of academic theologians, but within the specific context of the parish and the pews of local church life.
But what sort of ecclesial setting is more conducive for the pastor-theologian: a small church or a larger one? There is no easy answer here because churches differ in their leadership structures, just as ministers differ from one another in their range of gifts and interests.
Pastoral Theology in the Mega Church Context
In this post, let’s just think for a bit about the potential for doing theology from the pastoral office of a mega church.
Many of our larger churches are led by CEO-styled ministers who are effective at governing and inspiring a sizable institution. This managerial model does not seem that viable for the sort of sustained reflection and quietness that attends what we normally think of as the work of theology.
Some mega church pastors, though, are permitted to devote their ministerial labors primarily to the preaching and teaching office of the church. Many of those we normally think of as high-profile pastor-scholars spend 20+ hours a week on each sermon. Their schedules are carefully preserved for studying and writing, while other manager-type ministers occupy themselves with the business of running the church.
The problem here, however, is that a pastor-scholar who gets this much time safely for reading and writing can be shielded from the daily life of the flock. Such a pastor-theologian, therefore, may not be able to do theology pastorally. Of course, if all that prep work is devoted to a sermon, then there is a powerfully pastoral element at work. Homiletics is essentially pastoral. Those countless hours of reading are usually devoted not to producing an erudite essay but a message for Sunday morning. But it should be acknowledged that being confined to a study and immersed in the works of biblical scholars and great theologians can become as much an “ivory tower” setting as the office of the professional academic theologian on the university quad.
Advantages and disadvantages abound. Any thoughts?
[Next post will be up soon focusing on the Small Church Context for Theology]
While brewing a second cup of coffee to keep alert in my Greek readings this morning, I found Chris Spinks’ post “Avoid a PhD?” His reflections were stimulated by Anthony LeDonne’s most recent attempt to dissuade prospective PhD candidates from pursuing their vocational dreams (LeDonne offers such discouragement on a monthly basis).
The gist of the matter is that those of us in the throes of doctoral work are loading ourselves with ungodly gobs of debt to be qualified for jobs that simply do not exist. Universities are raising tuition and increasing enrollment, but theology and religious studies professors are among the least paid across all disciplines. More and more academic institutions are taking advantage of “adjunct” professors who teach courses for very modest stipends and for whom the institutions provide nothing in terms of healthcare or other benefits.
Spinks (aptly) summarizes the advice of one commenter on LeDonne’s post in this way: “If you are not independently wealthy, or if you don’t have the pedigree to get an advanced degree in the humanities paid for, then please leave these degrees to those who can afford them.” But Spinks is concerned about the fallout, that “advanced degrees in the humanities become attainable only by the privileged.” He goes on to suggest that “if these less fortunate folks avoid all of this [financial/vocational] mess (not an unwise decision, I’ll grant), we will end up with privileged people educating other privileged people. That would be a shame.”
I am certainly among the (partially insane) unprivileged who are taking on hordes of debt to study the Bible at the doctoral level (though, admittedly, just the fact that I qualify for a student loan plan and can even dream about a PhD evidences a hefty degree of privilege). To be honest, I would issue the same advice as LeDonne, while hoping with Spinks that some less-than-privileged folks will end up teaching Scripture and theology in our seminaries and Religion Departments. I could never recommend this vocational path to anyone without massive financial backing—my regrets are rather acute right now; but again, theology should not be the domain only of the financially backed.
Though I see no solution to the debt-problem, here is one silver lining that may well be at play: not finding a job in the academy, some Christians may be redirected from the academic lectern to the ecclesial pulpit. Perhaps the job market and the wider culture’s disinterest in theology will have the effect of proliferating pastor-theologians throughout the church.
Obviously there are drawbacks here. For one, ministry is a calling and the pastoral office is not well-served if filled by a disgruntled academic whose dreams in the academy have been dashed by an economic recession. Secondly, the sort of training one gets as a PhD candidate is not necessarily conducive for promoting the sort of theological and biblical acuity required in ministerial labors.
But “calling” is often a matter of redirection, isn’t it? What some people might retrospectively call “divine calling,” might be understood at first as a “divine cornering or redirecting!” Saul of Tarsus, for instance, never envisioned how God would put his intensive academic training to use. His vocation as an apostle arose out of the ashes of a Christ-exploded vocational dream.
As for the sort of academic training involved in the PhD… well, a lot of it is simply unhelpful in a church context, sadly. But the greatest benefit of doctoral work in theology and Bible may well be the skill of reading hard texts and the discipline of thinking about them with nuance and care. And we could certainly use the fruit of those skills and disciplines in our pulpits today.
Theoretically, Christians working on PhDs are already plying their craft to the glory of God and for the benefit of the church. When the doors of the ivory towers are barred shut during the job hunt, will they turn to pulpits and pews?
That begs another question: will the pews and chapel doors be open to academically trained theologians and Bible scholars?
Christianity Today has published an important essay by Matthew Lee Anderson on a movement of sorts now underway in American evangelicalism. Church leaders like David Platt, Kyle Idleman, Francis Chan, Shane Claiborne, and Stephen Furtick are calling for a radical commitment to the commands of Christ in their writing and preaching.
Their books are bestsellers.
And many of the churches they lead (or have recently led) are of the “mega-” variety.
Radical is marketable.
Now, radical is also quite biblical. My own preaching has comprised serious, hard calls to sacrificial discipleship. I am not interesting in calming down rhetoric emphasizing the totalizing demands of following Jesus.
But I have had some questions… and so has Matthew Lee Anderson.
I have written on the radical rhetoric before here at the blog:
And I also wrote a piece at Relevant Magazine called “We Need Boring Christians” (with an altered version appearing later in their print edition)
These posts and articles were my attempt at trying to think aloud about what made me nervous about the popular trend of “radical” Christianity, as well as what seemed good and true.
Anderson is doing the same thing, and I am impressed with his essay. He does not attack the “movement” of radical Christianity. But he does press some issues, including the awkwardness of the massive, megachurch platforms from which some of the movement’s leaders are promoting the cause. He also wonders about the standard feature of happy-ending narratives resulting from radical sacrifices without the inclusion of raw, sorrowful narratives… which are equally (and sometimes more) valid. And it seems a little suspicious that a faithful blue collar worker who rises every day to face the daily grind gets little attention.
Pastoring Radical
In this post, I would just like to say that calls to radical obedience from megachurch pulpits or from a bestselling paperback require a significant amount of pastoral care and wisdom that those mediums cannot provide.
I spent three years as a college pastor in Birmingham while David Platt was preaching through the material that coalesced into his book Radical. A lot of my pastoral energy was focused on the fallout of those challenging calls: self-righteousness associated with going on mission trips or working with the poor; attempts to implement strategies for engaging serious socio-economic issues in the city without guidance from folks who have been silently working in urban contexts for years; guilt experienced by those whose vocational interests lie in the medical profession, teaching, or accounting—but not overseas mission.
I don’t blame Platt for any of this, of course. And what a blessing to get to work with people whose passion for Christ have been ignited!
I am just wanting to reinforce the point that calls to radical Christianity require extensive pastoral guidance. The prophetic outcries of books rouse souls. Prophetic preaching from megachurch stages stir hearts. But the ignited flames need to be properly fueled and carefully directed, a task left not to authors and popular speakers, but to uncles, parents, Sunday School teachers, close friends, and yes: pastors.
So if there is indeed a radical movement, let’s also start a complementary movement of wise, practical mentoring and pastoring.
Inspired by my fellow contributors’ Advent posts, I’d love to share a few items from my community’s Advent observation.
1) Each of the last several years, I’ve had some part in writing and/or curating a church devotional. Even though these reflections usually take place while there are still leaves on the trees and it’s not yet sweater weather, this rhythm of pre-Advent preparation has been a pastoral boon for me. Unlike some things, even some sermons, I’ve found this exercise to be preparatory rather than exhausting. By the time we’re lighting candles on Sunday morning (in an elementary school gym), I’m more prepared and excited rather than bored or tired. Here is this year’s devotional (available for free download). Clicking here will get you to some of the previous material, also freely given.
2) It has been really special as a pastor immersed in a community (both church and wider) chock-full of creative types to attempt to foster that creativity. To pastor people who consider (and some who don’t) themselves artists has been one of the most joyful, challenging, and favorite parts of my duties and the Lord’s provision. This season, I especially enjoyed the give-and-take that went along with commissioning this piece for our church’s Advent. I got the opportunity to work conceptually with the artist, Nathan Hood, on a work that would adorn our bulletins and the advent devotional.
When putting things together for this Advent imagery there were a few themes in my mind upfront, including the power of God in the helplessness of a human baby and the mystery of God made known in Christ. Reflecting on it now, two things come to mind most readily.
First is the awesomeness, the wonder, the amazing happening of the Uncreated becoming a created being, becoming human. The question always arising from that thought for me is, “If God himself were to walk among us, what would God do, what would God be like if we could see, touch, hear, taste, and smell him?” ”What would he be up to?”
Secondly, comes the thought that Christ is at once God and man, our King and our Servant, the Lion and the Lamb. There are many realities alive in Him at the same moment. There are many alive in us, and so many if we have received the love and the sonship he holds out to us.
What do you see? What are your thoughts during this time?
Ultimately in our expression of these truths words fail us, as does imagery. Forgive me for attempting both, and thank you for letting me be a part of this. May our capacity to receive the love of our Father grow, increase, abound. Peace to you church.
3) Finally, our music ministry at church decided to give some of our Advent music away. In 2010, this short record came together as a companion to our Advent devotion. At the time, we were (and still are) trying to figure out what it means to observe this season of waiting and how Advent tempers our unabated early embrace of Christmas (or at least the sentimental christmas-iness around us). The result is a “night-themed” collection of alternately chilly and warm devotionally-sprung, but missionally-minded tunes.
I’d love to invite you to take advantage of this here:
Hope, peace, joy, and love during this season. May God enable you through his Spirit to be an attentive and expectant wait-er. May we anticipate our Lord’s second coming with the “thrill of hope” that we experience and celebrate his first.
On January 2 I begin working as the Chaplain at St Mary’s College here in Durham. It is a real pleasure to be able to make that announcement. Everyone I have interacted with at the College have been so helpful and enjoyable.
For over a year now I have had the distinct delight of being a “layperson.” For the previous 11 years or so before moving to England, I had been serving as a minister in some official capacity. Since my vocational path has thus far tried to resist forking into Academics or Pastoral Ministry, the role of chaplain at a university college seems quite fitting.
My post will be part-time, with the bulk of my day-job energies still going to the PhD work. But I will now get to ply the crafts of academic biblical studies and pastoral ministry simultaneously. I have been in these waters before (Duke Div School/Mt Hermon Baptist Church), so the territory is not unfamiliar. What will be rather excitingly unfamiliar is that I will get to help lead Anglican-styled worship services every fortnight. This Baptist-ordained theology student has much to learn; but I am keen to soak up the wisdom of the students and staff I will get to work with.
When I took a preaching class in seminary, I never expected it to be such a creative launching pad for me. We listened and watched all kinds of preaching and preachers and focused on different, and sometimes novel, ways of communicating both clearly and compellingly. I went on to take another course, with professor Chuck Campbell, on Preaching, the Powers, and Principalities. It was here that my imagination was further sparked to see and speak to the captivities and spiritual powers at play in our daily lives and in our congregations. One thing I particularly enjoyed was Chuck’s playfulness; in the midst of incredibly serious material he never seemed to take himself too seriously.
When Baylor University Press sent me a copy of Chuck’s (along with co-author Johan Cilliers) newest preaching book, Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly, I took the opportunity to sit down with him to discuss. Throughout the book there is a notable chorus, “The gospel is foolishness. Preaching is folly. Preachers are fools.” This is a fairly unusual, possibly threatening, but certainly scriptural, statement for the average pastor. An odd line in our job descriptions. The book certainly struck a chord in regards to preparing and delivering sermons, but also, because of its surprisingly multimedia nature, it struck a chord in regards to the arts and their ability to embody and communicate this “gospel foolishness.”
In Friday’s post, Chuck spoke about preaching’s ability to unsettle us, put us in a middle ground, and change our perception. At one point he mentioned the book’s very title changing before his eyes: from a noun to a verb, being the fool to being fooled.
This second post explores some of the similarities and engagements the book has with the arts. We wind up talking about everything from the music of Derek Webb to Stephen Colbert to the upcoming American presidential election.
Hopeful Realism: So as preachers, it is an interesting position we’re in. Most people don’t want to hear that settling is a bad thing. In fact, most of the time becoming settled, is “arriving.”
I think there’s a good analogy with pop music. Is there any chance for pop music? To hatch a message that counters the dominant culture and ideology in a form that is so dictated by tastes and wants. We know what we want to hear and we know when we hear it. It’s a closed loop. How do you break in to that loop to speak in a language that is acceptable and interesting but say things that are potentially inflammatory or unsettling.
Chuck Campbell: Unsettling doesn’t necessarily mean inflammatory.
HR: Well, not necessarily inflammatory, but unsafe. Pop music is the safest of genres. It doesn’t change fast or much. It doesn’t cut very hard against what is dominant.How do you feed people the Bread of Life when they love a steady diet of junk food?
CC: Love? Well they’re used to it. We think we know what we want to hear.
That’s a huge question, let me try to throw a few things at it: We try to say fairly clearly in the book that this is not the only image of the preacher. We don’t want to claim that. There are clearly times in people’s lives where a different kind of word may be necessary. Though, I’m even wondering if in a situation of grief or loss, where life is quite liminal, if being unsettled is not a totally negative thing there. But I haven’t sorted that out pastorally.
The other side is, I think we have the tendency to automatically assume this kind of preaching is troubling; whereas I would like to think of it as inviting into a kind of adventure. Something that is much more interesting than simply being secure. I’d like to frame it in a positive, graceful way. Sure, there is going to have to be interruption, but a lot of times that is similar to the kind of interruption to our captivity to the powers; which is killing us! And a lot of people know it’s killing them. I think there are a lot of Christians out there ready for the Christian faith to be something a little more interesting than we make it sometimes. Maybe people might be more open to a vision of the faith that is a little more unsettled, that is moving, that is on the way…
And this is also a way to counteract the sort of Christianity today that lives in a sort of reactionary fear. We talk in the book about “circling the wagons” and “iron theologies.” There’s a lot of that going on in places and not just Fundamentalist places. Liberals can be just as rigid and draw those lines just as hard. It’s where these kind of ideologies happen that it does call for a sort of disturbing interruption. I don’t think those [ideologies] are what we’re about as Christians.
HR: I began to wonder about art as a medium, not just “high art” like Picasso, in the book there are political cartoons…
CC: …Banksy…
Image courtesy of Banksy.
HR: How did he not show up at the Olympics? [CORRECTION: He did!]
CC: Or in the book?! How did that slip by us?
HR: It’s really interesting that you mentioned reading Dostoyevsky as a fuel for this sort of imagination. Rowan Williams, who talks wonderfully about Dostoyevsky, writes about the “gratuity of fiction,” which I think applies to art more generally, in ways like the unsettling effects of foolishness and parody.
“The gratuity of fiction arises from the conviction that no kind of truth can be told if we speak or act if history is over.”[1]
There’s so much in the book about the form of the fool. I think there’s a great analogy for the arts’ ability to incarnate, in some sense, the form of something while injecting surprise and challenge, especially alongside the sermon.
CC: When I was inaugurated into a chair at my former school, one of my very first lectures was on this material. That was ten years ago that I began work on this stuff. I did this thing on naked street preachers and for that occasion Brian Wren, who is a hymn writer, wrote a hymn on the fool for that. It is quite playful and very interesting in that regard.
Some other times we’ve tried to do services with jazz musicians, the perfect art form for this kind of liminality and movement and improvisation. I love to work with musicians that can come up with the kind of art that can unsettle things. For instance, just playing very different music while you’re celebrating Communion can completely change the expectations that we sometimes have at that table.
HR: There’s a Christian musician, Derek Webb, who seems like a particularly apt contemporary example of this. He has this song titled “Freddie, Please.” I’ve heard him describe his process as trying to write what he might say if he had an encounter with Westboro Baptist pastor Fred Phelps. After he realized that that wouldn’t be a very good song, he changed courses and wrote it as an encounter between Jesus and Phelps. What’s most interesting and surprising is that he sets it to a 50’s Doo-wop love song.
CC: The thing I really like about that and the thing that I’m really wrestling with, one of the dangers that can happen with the powers themselves, is that you can become so reactionary to them. Your life can become a kind of resistance that begins to be shaped by them, because you are always only reacting to them. So they’re setting the agenda. Even if you resist, you can inadvertently be caught up in them.
The thing that a song like this does, and what humor more generally does, is it breaks down the binary. It does something so creative and surprising that it opens up a very different kind of space than just “me against you.” And it’s interesting that Jesus is the one who’s singing. Jesus is the one who does that.
One of the books that we refer to over and over in the book, Trickster Makes the World by Lewis Hyde, actually says that contemporary artists, musicians, and visual artists are the tricksters of our time that do this sort of interrupting. It seems to me, that while our book is a book about preaching, it is definitely applicable to people doing liturgy, music, and art.
HR: Speaking of contemporary jesters, I’d love your take on Stephen Colbert.
CC: We mentioned him in a footnote in the book.
What he did with Congress, that’s what fools do…they wind up speaking the truth. They have people off-balance and unsettled in a way that they can be heard. One of the things I like about him on his show is that he’s an amazing example of “bivocal rhetoric.” Everything he says has two meanings. It’s all basically irony in a sense. While he’s saying one thing, he wants you to hear something else. In that way, he’s much more complex than John Stewart. Stewart, in his humor comes at it directly, whereas Colbert has this double-voiced piece going on. This is why the book has a long chapter on carnivals, saying that we need to learn from these characters and how they work. These characters are here. They are around. We need to pay attention.
In terms of Christians, Will Campbell is one of the real interesting people doing this. And actually, I just got this article on P_ssy Riot in the Chronicle for Higher Education as “holy fools.” These women’s closing statements are brilliant and incredibly theological. I was shocked at how theologically engaged they were and how they knew pretty much exactly what they were trying to do. Even though the dance itself is silly, there really is a lot going on. Characters like that are all around.
HR: A last bit of encouragement and advice for us foolish preachers in the thick of a highly contentious American election season?
CC: You talk about an environment where we have two walled-off sides, how do you disrupt that?
As I usually say, the Powers are never just individuals. I think that the best preaching we do on these political things is not endorsing a particular candidate, but rather speaking to the powers that are holding us all captive. That might be deeper than even an issue. It’s going to be difficult, because there are economic powers, there are environmental powers, all related to these really huge issues. Pastors are going to have to be the fools to help congregations perceive things in some wholly new ways, because right now nothing’s happening.
When I took a preaching class in seminary, I never expected it to be such a creative launching pad for me. We listened and watched all kinds of preaching and preachers and focused on different, and sometimes novel, ways of communicating both clearly and compellingly. I went on to take another course, with professor Chuck Campbell, on Preaching, the Powers, and Principalities. It was here that my imagination was further sparked to see and speak to the captivities and spiritual powers at play in our daily lives and in our congregations. One thing I particularly enjoyed was Chuck’s playfulness; in the midst of incredibly serious material he never seemed to take himself too seriously.
When Baylor University Press sent me a copy of Chuck’s (along with co-author Johan Cilliers) newest preaching book, Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly, I took the opportunity to sit down with him to discuss. Throughout the book there is a notable chorus, “The gospel is foolishness. Preaching is folly. Preachers are fools.” This is a fairly unusual, possibly threatening, but certainly scriptural, statement for the average pastor. An odd line in our job descriptions. The book certainly struck a chord in regards to preparing and delivering sermons, but also, because of its surprisingly multimedia nature, it struck a chord in regards to the arts and their ability to embody and communicate this “gospel foolishness.”
In today’s post, Chuck speaks about preaching’s ability to unsettle us, put us in a middle ground, and change our perception. At one point he mentioned the book’s very title changing before his eyes: from a noun to a verb, being the fool to being fooled.
The second post explores some of the similarities and engagements the book has with the arts. We wind up talking about everything from the music of Derek Webb to Stephen Colbert to the upcoming American presidential election.
Hopeful Realism: Some of your interest and expertise lies in what Scripture calls the “principalities and powers.” How have those interests developed in your work over the years?
Chuck Campbell: The work with the powers began when I was doing a lot of ministry with homeless people in Atlanta. I heard them use this language. I was, a full day to a day-and-a-half, overnight sometimes, on the streets with homeless people. I got to know some of the people and they would use this language. This material began to make sense of what I was seeing…nobody wants there to be homelessness, but it just kept getting worse.
Secondly, it started making sense “of me,” in addition to “to me.” It helped me understand my own sinfulness in a different way, in a kind of complicity and captivity rather than just getting up in the morning and saying, “I’m gonna go do something evil.” People in our churches don’t say that. They never leave and say, “Thanks for the sermon, now I’m gonna go do something evil.”
So it pushed me to explore that material as a way of thinking both theologically and ethically about my own understanding of sin, what I was seeing in my work with homeless people, and to a little lesser extent in ministry on Death Row. It was never theoretical to start with. As I kept reading and working it really became a focus in my preaching work. The new book is still dealing with it, but in some different ways.
HR: Where did this new angle, foolishness and folly, come from?
CC: Even in the Word Before the Powers there is a section on lampooning. Someone mentioned that I should look at jesters because that’s really what I was talking about in many ways. Then three things happened. I had a sabbatical and I read Dostoyevsky, who does a whole lot with “holy fools” in his novels. I started reading material on the history of jesters, tricksters, and holy fools. And I came across some material on the famous First Corinthians text on the foolishness of preaching [1 Corinthians 1:18-31]. These things started to come together. So this really did grow out of the powers material, one way of dealing with the powers being a sort of jester-like, lampooning fashion. And also there was a sense that potentially that was what Paul was doing when he was interrupting the work of the powers in First Corinthians.
HR: I was surprised how multimedia and especially how visual this book felt considering it is a preaching book. Right out of the gates, the beautiful cover, Picasso’s Crucifixion featuring Don Quixote, seems to set a sort of vision for the book. Then we’re introduced to a phrase like “bifocal vision.”
CC: I need to give credit to my co-author Johan, who is responsible for much of the visual arts in the book. He is an extraordinary artist himself. He always writes with some sort of visual art. I contributed some of the political cartoons. I’m excited it turned out this way. We wanted it to be a very interdisciplinary book with visual art, literature, cartoons and everything else in it, because that’s what preaching is. That’s what we have to do. We are always drawing on all these different pieces, even when we’re not Shakespeare scholars or experts.
The “bifocal vision” is a term from New Testament scholar J. Louis Martyn. It’s been a very helpful term for me and as you see in the book, it begins to shape the way that we look at the rhetoric of preaching as a kind of “bivocal” rhetoric that is trying to do orally what this bifocal vision does visually. Martyn uses it as an apocalyptic understanding of the gospel, especially in Paul, where the New Age breaks in, interrupts, invades, the old age. And yet of course the Old Age has not died and the New Age has not yet fully come. So the challenge is to be able to see both things at once.
Sometimes people might use the bifocal vision to be like glasses where you see close up and then you look with a longer vision for the fulfillment. As you may or may not have noticed in the book, we don’t take that route. We’re looking at both at once, here and now. In my mind, this is a more apocalyptic way, where the New Creation is already here; you can’t always see it but you can’t ignore it in the Old Age when you are seeing the pieces of it already here.
It is certainly a growing edge in the book: the rhetoric of preaching being “bivocal.” Having to say two things at once, both the Old Age and the New, without letting go of either one in a real sense. As I’ve thought about the sorts of stories and example that have been most powerful to me, they tend to be those kind. Another aspect of the bivocal rhetoric is simply to keep things from being settled. Where things are clear, rigid, and tied down. Some of the forms like metaphor keep things open, which is characteristic of this life between the Ages. This space between the Ages.
HR: Space seems to be another major motif of the book; this middle ground of “liminality.”
I underlined while reading, “there is no separating the folly from the wisdom or the scandal from the gospel. Jesus too keeps us unsettled; he invites us on the Way, he calls us to discipleship at the threshold between the ages and bids us to follow -and preach – one whom we can never master or control, but who ever remains elusive and disruptive.”[1]
CC: This is a huge growing edge for me. And I’m still trying to live into it and figure out what it means for preaching. I preached on Tuesday in chapel and these sermons are still sweating blood trying to figure out how to do it. One of the things that has happened as a result of this book and might be an important word for a lot of us in the church today, is beginning to think of the gospel not as something that gives us a solid security or clarity or ties things down, but really as the gospel itself keeping us unsettled and “on the way.”
We live in a culture and a time where things are quite unsettled. So many cultures, and the church itself, is going through a kind of liminal phase. We’re not sure where things are headed. The danger there is to really want to assert and reassert a kind of reactionary clarity that grows out of fear. So I think one of the subtexts that surfaces is that Christians don’t have to be afraid of these times. We can live into them. It’s really our space, this sort of unsettled space. And we’re following the One who we can trust and we can see even in this tumult, the New Age breaking in.
This may not be new to anyone else. It strikes me that it’s often assumed that Christianity provides the security, clarity, finality, solidity…but I’m beginning to think it may be something different. Which might be some of the best, good news to free us from our fears that we can have as a Church.
HR: Along these lines, fragmentation is another dominant theme in the book. There’s a sense that our view of fragmentation should not just lie in something being broken, but as some sort of artifact of the future. That “faith means not to be in tact.”[2] This is really challenging to me, but also sort of threatening.
CC: It’s unsettling. Another facet to fragmentation is being part of the Church where we’re not ever whole apart from these other fragments. That’s where some of my colleague’s writing in the book on ubuntu keeps that kind of dynamic between the individual and community going in some interesting ways.
[1] Campbell, Charles L., and Johan Cilliers. Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2012. 104.
I visited Rydal Mount a few weeks ago, the home of poet William Wordsworth. My father-in-law was visiting us here in England, so we spent a couple of days in “the Lakes” (besides my father-in-law, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were apparently also sighted in the Lake District that week).
Rydal Mount sits just on a sloped hill affording a view of both Windermere and Rydal Water. With the gardens elegantly manicured, inspired by the tender care the poet gave to every flower bed, stone and patch of green, the place feels like a dreamy sanctuary.
When we were leaving, my father-in-law bought me a collection of Wordsworth’s poetry from the gift shop. I will be reading those sonnets for the rest of my life. I was pleased to come across this one, called “Pastoral Character,” from the Ecclesiastical Sonnets (number 18):
PASTORAL CHARACTER, William Wordsworth
A genial hearth, a hospitable board,
And a refined rusticity, belong
To the neat mansion, where, his flock among,
The learned Pastor dwells, their watchful Lord.
Though meek and patient as a sheathéd sword;
Though pride’s least lurking thought appear a wrong
To human kind; though peace be on his tongue,
Gentleness in his heart – can earth afford
Such genuine state, pre-eminence so free,
As when, arrayed in Christ’s authority,
He from the pulpit lifts his awful hand;
Conjures, implores, and labours all he can
For re-subjecting to divine command
The stubborn spirit of rebellious man?
A few things stand out to me….
For one, Wordsworth’s portrayal is of what I would call a “pastor-theologian” or a “pastor-scholar.” Note the phrase “learned pastor,” and given the way ecclesiastical structures work in England (and noting the setting of the mid-1800s), many pastors/priests would be among society’s intellectuals, though the clergy often worked well beyond the pale of where most elites worked (like in remote country parishes, for instance).
Another observation is the restrained sense of power and authority. There is tension between exerting force and exhibiting meekness. I think good pastors live in this tension. The line, “meek and patient as a sheathéd sword,” is a powerful illustration of ministerial restraint. There is a might, a sharp-steel element of danger in the pastor. Not a danger posed to the flock, but to evil, to twisted thoughts, to deception. The place of conflict is the pulpit; the means of engagement is exhortation (“Conjures, implores, and labours all he can”) and the authority is that of Christ. But again, note that these images of strength are balanced with the weight of statements about meekness and peacefulness of heart.
Another observation, made from the initial lines, is that the pastor’s home (the “mansion” probably refers to a parsonage or vicarage) is a safe, open place wherein the members of the flock feel at ease. The pastor’s home is as critical as the pastor’s pulpit.
So the pastoral character is that of a soul exuding comfort and peace while also engaging evil in the realms of the pulpit and the hearth, the chapel and the home.
It is Sunday morning, and I have no sermon to preach and no Bible Study to prepare. I will attend church, but I will not be expected to serve Communion or set up mid-week pastoral appointments. I have no mailbox to check in the church office. I have nothing to print out, no copies to make.
I am a layperson.
By virtue of moving to England for the PhD, I find myself no longer working in the capacity of a minister. Setting out on this new academic vocation is in no way a departure from ministry, in my view. I have not chosen doctoral work because I wish to be unshackled from churchly annoyances and pastoral messes. I delayed my entry into a PhD program by taking a 3-year pastoral post right at the time I was about to begin the same program in 2008.
But the reality is that I am not pastoring right now, for the first time in 9 years.
I had hoped to find a part-time ministry post here in England, but Durham’s Department of Theology reasonably expects its full-time students to be full-time students. And no such post emerged when we were searching all last summer (though one did for my wife).
I have done quite a bit of preaching in my first year here in Durham, but I no longer bear the enormous pastoral burdens that have characterized my vocational life for most of the previous decade.
I miss it. And yet I am so grateful for the break.
I realized several months into life here in England that I was viewing myself as a minister without a ministry post. For the most part, I still consider myself a pastor. So I have wondered—am I clinging to some occupational identity for the sake of feeling personally significant? Or is “minister” who I am by virtue of divine call? Either way, I cannot answer that awkward question, “What do you do?” with “I pastor or I minister.” In this stage of my life, I study… and I do it full-time.
The weight of pastoral ministry can be absolutely crushing. Another good descriptor is “suffocating.” There are the painful burdens of parishioners one must bear. There are the disillusioning secrets one discovers every week. And uglier than these weights are the pressures one feels to grow the church, to expand the ministry, to increase the numbers. These “ugly pressures” are the sort that we minister-types like to think we are above or immune to. In every ministry post I have held, these “ugly pressures” have haunted every meeting, every sermon, every Bible study preparation. I have hated them and fought tooth and nail to resist them and entrust the growth/size/numbers to God. But they have always been there, whether within or without. These pressures are unfortunate realities.
But not for me. Not right now.
Today, my heaviest burdens are 1) the financial costs of tuition and life in the UK, 2) German, 3) Hebrew, 4) the secondary literature on John’s Gospel, 5) the work of writing a guild-worthy doctoral thesis, 6) the work of writing a theology of media.
Bearing the burden of someone’s disintegrating marriage seems much more noble than bearing the weight of memorizing German vocab or Hebrew verb paradigms. But the struggle of many a theology student and seminarian is the struggle of faithfulness in small, tedious labors that can discipline us for weightier assignments. By entering a doctoral program, I have determined that German vocab and Hebrew paradigms are non-negotiable for my vocational work as a minister. As impractical as they seem to be at first glance, they open up new worlds for the minister of the Gospel—Hebrew more than German, but there are times when it would be nice to get into Barth or Thielicke or Bonhoeffer on their own linguistic grounds.
Will I “return” to ministry after the doctoral program? Will I chose a professorship over a pastorate, a classroom over a chapel?
I have decided at this point to refuse bifurcating church and seminary and ministry from the discipline of theology. The vocational fork up ahead of me between pastoring and teaching has loomed almost ominously, because I cannot envision serving in a church post that removes me from serious theological study, nor can I envision working as a professor in a way that compromises my work as a minister. Assuming someone offers me a job in a couple of years, I will have to choose.
But I am blurring the vocational lines on purpose.
For now, I have an excellent opportunity to learn to be a devoted layperson. I have the unique privilege of serving the church as a minister without an official title. Pastoring has helped me learn so much about lay ministry. Ministers know well how church members can strengthen the church’s ministry through their volunteer devotions. Now, I am going to let lay ministry teach me how to better serve as a pastor. Because sometimes, the folks in the pews are the most erudite professors for that lonely, disgruntled person in the pulpit.
