Christian Higher Ed at a Crossroad? A Response to Mark Galli

I am an educator and am a big fan of the Church’s educational endeavors. I have often quipped that if education is to be rightly done, it is to be done by the Church. I believe that our theology of humanity, our theology of revelation, and our theology of Creation allows us to have the most authentic and humanizing enterprise in teaching and learning.

In the interest of full disclosure, I attended a the best public schools in Louisiana[1], then private Baptist universities for my Bachelor’s[2] and Master’s[3] degrees. I am currently a student completing the Doctor of Ministry degree at Baylor University. Further, my wife also attended stellar public schools in Mississippi[4] and then attended the same two private Baptist universities that I did for her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

Christian educational endeavors are essential, critical, and necessary for the mission of the Church. Our schools, much like our hospitals[5] and orphanages[6], are the intersection of our theological convictions and our missional expressions of faith. When we educate the unenlightened, nurse the sick, or feed the hungry we are testifying to our faith in God’s ultimate desire for the flourishing of human life. The struggle to maintain these ministries should be a primary concern for our congregations – they are in many ways the very hands and feet of the Gospel in the community.

Mark Galli has written a piece[7] for Christianity Today about the relationship between Christian higher education and the local congregation. He sees a growing divide between the local church and the not-so-local Christian university. He describes the situation, saying, “We in the local church tend to think of Christian higher education as a service industry. We look to it only when we have a student ready for college or seminary, or when we have a staff opening and need the schools to give us the names of qualified candidates. Christian higher education is there to grant accredited degrees and vet pastoral candidates.”[8]

This observation is certainly appropriate for the pastoral search process in the local congregation, but it is not reflective of what goes on at our Christian universities. The Christian university is more than a seminary or preacher factory. When we speak of the university (or the seminary, for that matter) we are talking about more than the specific church-related fields. Christian universities are home to mathematicians, biologists, linguists, lawyers, businesspeople, artists, and athletes. These students and their professors are incarnating the Gospel by learning and teaching through the lens of Jesus Christ. The breadth of academic disciplines at most Christian universities and seminaries is testimony to the breadth of our theology: inasmuch as there are things to learn and truth to explore, there is the Gospel.

Yes, a university may be a Christian institution, but that does not imply that the local church’s concern with that institution is only in terms of finding a new Pastor. Instead, the local church should encourage its young people to consider that university as a home for their education. I would not have traded my private Baptist educational experience for anything, especially for the experiences of my friends who attended public institutions. I consistently encourage my students and church friends to at least consider the opportunities available at Christian universities as they consider their future plans.

Much like a recent NCAA commercial[9], even though so many people attend Christian universities and seminaries were people are educated and trained for ministry, “most of us are going pro in something else.”

Galli’s primary concern is not the nature of Christian higher education, but rather the cost of that education. It has been well reported that the costs of higher education are rising much faster than most families can afford, and that private Christian higher education is already prohibitively expensive.

To address these financial concerns, Galli recommends that Christian universities wholly embrace the emerging model of distance education via online courses and web-based seminars. This trend is already changing the educational landscape in America at every level, from primary and secondary education all the way to graduate programs. What is not happening, though, is the decrease in tuition that Galli anticipates with the proliferation of online education. It is not enough to remove room and board from student fees, which is the essential savings in online education. Rather, tuition, books, and student fees would have to be reduced as well to have any meaningful impact on a student’s bottom line.

Galli encourages local congregations to do several things to help bridge the gap both in terms of finances and in terms of the congregation’s relationship to the university. He suggests, “…create budget line items to at least once a year fly in a teacher to give a daylong seminar or even a week of classes…consider using some of their benevolence giving to support Christian higher education…begin asking schools for [free or reduced online courses].”[10]

All three of these things are exactly right. The local congregation should be involved in the teaching and learning involved with visiting scholars, but usually a local church would have no reason to invite a professor of anything other than Theology or Biblical Studies. Further, as Baptists we have supported our denominational and affiliated universities through our offerings for generations. The call to support these institutions with line items in the budget or benevolence fund is appropriate for denominations that have no such structure. May I recommend an alternative? Instead of giving budgeted or benevolence funds to the university’s general fund, let us consider developing scholarships for our own students or the students in our communities that will assist our students with their tuition and housing. Such scholarships helped me immensely in my education, and were personal, direct, and loving gestures of the church to further my education.

Finally, permit me to humbly suggest that we need to reevaluate the nature of higher education in our culture. It is apparent that “college” has lost all of it meaning: programs so unrelated to the historic nature of higher education are multiplying and “colleges” are being formed and grown with little care for the humanizing process of the university setting. What I’m getting at is this: inasmuch as we have emphasized that college is the goal for every student we have deteriorated the experience and formation of higher education. I believe that living on campus, being present with a professor, and experiencing Christian community in an academic setting are to be preferred over online education.

I have taught and learned in online settings, and I have become convinced that personal, face-to-face courses and the community that is formed by living with and among your colleagues is essential to the nature of higher education. Online education has its place, but asking our Christian universities to further erode the formative experience of higher education in the name of creating a market for cheaper (free?) courses is not helping the need for Christian education in our churches and nation. When we reduce education to watching a YouTube video, the schools will “falter, [and] also the local church.”[11]

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[1] www.wfpsb.org

[2] www.mc.edu

[3] www.baylor.edu/truett

[4] www.ossdms.org

[5] www.mbhs.org

[6] www.baptistchildrensvillage.com

[7] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/may/higher-ed-at-crossroad.html

[8] Galli in Christianity Today

[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ltaRIJ0N2o

[10] Galli in Christianity Today

[11] Ibid.

Response to some good old-fashioned Baptist-bashing OR "We don't believe the Earth revolves around the Sun, either."

Matt Fradd, a Roman Catholic blogger now living in Southern California, has posted[1] a most unfortunate essay about Baptists. In short, Mr. Fradd is concerned with Baptist “successionism,” that is, what Baptists call the Landmarkist controversy.

The argument of the essay is spot-on. The thesis of James Carroll’s Trail of Blood (the source of the Landmark controversy) has been refuted by historians and theologians alike. The idea that there was an unbroken succession of Baptist believers going all the way back to the time of Jesus is ludicrous, which Fradd easily demonstrates. Carroll’s own argument in Trail of Blood, that Catholics suppressed the documentation of Baptist groups in the pre-Reformation generations only lends weight to the idea that the entire Landmark movement was too much conspiracy theory and too little fact.

What is so disturbing to me, though, is that Fradd would spend time on this topic in the first place. By his own admission, “Some (few) Baptists have claimed that they too can trace their lineage back to the time of Christ and the apostles.”[2] First it’s “some,” then immediately “few.” Could we not just go ahead and say that the Landmark movement is all but dead? I would certainly contend that such a small percentage of Baptists (those still clinging to Landmarkism) is less than that of Catholics calling for Papal support of abortion or same-sex marriage. This is a non-issue for Baptists, and certainly a non-issue for Catholics!

What, then, is the point of Fradd’s curious interest in this historical curiosity of Baptist history? Certainly it is to discredit Baptist theology, especially Baptist ecclesiology. Fradd concludes his essay, saying, “We should applaud these Baptists for desiring to be part of the Church Christ established, and then, with gentleness and reverence point them away from fallacious history to actual history, and let the evidence speak for itself.”[3] By casting Baptists as believing in the fallacy of Landmarkism, Fradd hopes to make the Catholic version of Christian theological history seem to be the unassailable home for all those who claim to be a part of Christ’s Church.  What the author doesn’t seem to understand is that Baptists don’t believe this “fallacious history,” and yet we have the gall to believe that we are, in fact, a part of Christ’s Church.

What “evidence” does Fradd believe speaks for itself concerning Baptist theology? Does he mean the Baptist theological tradition of salvation through Christ alone? Or perhaps he references the Baptist theological starting point of the Priesthood of the Believer? Yes, these evidences do certainly speak for themselves, for they are rooted in Scripture and not in the history of either the Catholic Church or discredited Baptist authors.

For Catholics, Fradd’s article is nothing more than an exercise in preaching to the choir – he reinforces stereotypes about Baptists and Baptist theology that have no real basis in contemporary reality, and it is therefore another sad, outmoded example of a Catholic who doesn’t get the Reformation. For Baptists, this is a gross misrepresentation of our theology and should motivate ministers and laity alike to restate their commitment to being a part of Christ’s Church through faith in Christ alone, which is a tradition older than anything Roman Catholicism can claim.

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[1] http://www.catholic.com/blog/matt-fradd/one-holy-baptist-and-apostolic-church

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

On the "Preaching Better Sermons" webinar by PreachingRocket.com

I happened upon a webinar on “Preaching Better Sermons” hosted by a website called PreachingRocket.com. I had never heard of the website, and only discovered the webinar because it was trending on Twitter about the time it launched this morning.

The 4-hour webcast was a series of pre-recorded interviews of relatively famous pastor/authors at their locations or via Skype. Between each interview was an advertisement testimonial for the PreachingRocket.com service.

Overall I was very pleased and impressed by the interviews. The final question of each was a shameless plug for the interviewee’s latest book, but that is to be expected in a free webinar with such big names as Mark Driscoll, Andy Stanley, and Dave Ramsey.

Here are some takeaways from the four-hour webcast:

First, the speakers were largely representative of the Emerging Baptist Church[1] movement. The list of speakers was Andy Stanley, Steven Furtick, Crawford Loritts, Nancy Duarte, Darrin Patrick, Louie Giglio, Pete Wilson, Ed Stetzer, Mark Driscoll, Donald Miller, Jon Acuff, Mark Batterson, Dave Ramsey, and Brad Lomenick. I had never heard of several of the speakers, and the ones with whom I was familiar didn’t have the best reputation in my mind as preachers. The one woman interviewed was not included for preaching, but rather as a “communication expert.” I am not implying that the PreachingRocket.com agenda is anti-women-in-ministry, but the inclusion of no females in preaching ministries (and only one non-white male who is) speaks volumes for the intended audience of this webinar. In reality, I probably fall smack-dab in the middle of their target demographic, and that hurts a little.

Secondly, there was a clear dividing line between those interviewees who actually understand preaching and those who understand public speaking. Both perspectives were helpful and informative to the other. Whereas Stanley, Loritts, Patrick, and Giglio used the pastoral nature of preaching as their starting point, Stetzer, Acuff, and Ramsey focused on techniques and styles more germane to non-kerygmatic public address. There are insights to be gleaned from both, yet in a webinar dedicated to preaching better sermons the mixture of the two camps felt as though there was a stuttering, halting theme to the day.

Thirdly, there was a certain “meta” sense about the interviews that I certainly enjoyed. This was not a webinar about homiletics or even the principles of oratory. This was a rubber-meets-the-road series of interviews that always began with “how do you prepare every week?” That was certainly appreciated, and was something I liked hearing and relating to. The ideas presented in the interviews were “big picture,” that is, they were ideas related to preaching as a story, to preaching as an authentic expression of faith, to being inauthentic without the reality of Jesus’ life. These themes can indeed be mixed and interchanged depending on the personality of the person preaching, and to that end I think preachers of every stripe could learn something from the webinar.

Finally, I took away from the webcast that my people (whoever that is) were somehow left out. The interviewees all come from what we used to call “seeker” churches, built on evangelistic preaching and the assumption that non-churched people will be present in every service. Related to this model is the very essence of the preaching style and substance of these men, which is in turn related to the worship style of the churches they represent. I noticed that none of these preachers followed the Lectionary or gave a not to the Church Year, none of them seemed concerned with liturgy (beyond the de-facto liturgy of their ever-morphing worship), and only one (that I noticed) seemed concerned with extra-worship discipleship. Yes, I know, this was a webinar on preaching better sermons, not discipleship; but the tone of the interviews made it sound as though the sermon was the one-and-done weekly attempt to evangelize and disciple the non-believer and believer alike. I know that’s not true at many of the churches represented in the webinar, but it felt that way.

            Where is a place in all of this for a liturgically aware Baptist? Do the points made in the webinar only apply to those preachers in seeker-style churches? I’d hope not. Too much of what I heard today made me proud to be a preacher for that to be true. I only wish something other than the stereotype had been in play, both ecclesiastically and demographically.

If you can get access to the webinar, watch it. It made me want to preach better sermons, and just might have helped me to do so.

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[1] There is probably a better term for this, I just don’t know it. What I mean by it is the trend among larger, multi-site congregations with Baptist (or at least congregational) church polity and evangelical protestant theology. They are characterized by their worship style, as well, as demonstrated by many of the speakers’ having “worship teams” and other support staff that organize and coordinate complex audio/visual experiences to accompany the sermon. 

The Ethics of $19 Shorts

A story[1] on NPR this morning caught my attention because of the ethical dilemma it presents. The story’s momentum comes from the recent collapse[2] of a garment factory in Bangladesh in which at least 85 people were killed. Related to the story is the complicated relationship between foreign governments, major American retailers, and consumers. There are underwriters, safety inspectors, and human rights groups involved, too.

            Of interest in the piece is that researchers at the University of Michigan demonstrated that people would pay slightly more for a product that they know was manufactured at a factory where “workers were treated fairly and safely.” For the stats nerd in all of us, about 33% of subjects in the UM project purchased the “ethical” but higher-priced item when the price was 5% higher than a competitor, and only about 25% of shoppers purchased the higher-priced item when the price rose to 20%-50% more than the competitor.

            While this ethical experiment is interesting in its own right, there’s something else to consider in this tangled ethical web. Let’s say that, for a moment, people began to overwhelmingly choose the more “ethical” product. They therefore are paying more (let’s say 20% more) than the “unethical” product. Let’s further assume that this overwhelming response to the plight of the underpaid, unethically treated workers overseas causes that unethical factory to close and all of those unethically treated workers to be unemployed. What have we accomplished?

            I realize that such an overwhelming response among the American consumerate is implausible, and even if there were such a sea change there is enough elasticity in the market that such a drastic change would likely not occur. However, as we continue to hunger for $19 shorts, such as the ones referenced in the NPR piece, we will continue to encourage retailers to encourage factory managers to encourage workers to be satisfied with their low wages and poor working conditions.

            The ethical dilemma is not whether we should pay more for shorts so that workers overseas can have a chance at economic human dignity. The issue is that we turn a blind eye toward the human effects our economic choices have in the real world. Let us turn these eyes toward ourselves and our own poverty of Spirit that drives us to ignore the lives and deaths of our neighbors so that we can wear $19 shorts.

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[1] http://www.npr.org/2013/05/01/180154279/would-you-pay-a-higher-price-for-ethical-clothing

[2] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/24/178772697/dozens-killed-in-collapse-of-bangladesh-garment-complex