Outtray.Full.Of.Stories
Assumption: I think its safe to assume that if you believe in Jesus Christ that you would agree with me when I say that he was the best teacher to have ever lived and his model of teaching is an example in which we should all follow.
Observation: We’ve settled for something less and what’s even worse is we are convinced that our way is far more effective.
The West has adopted the Academy system where students spend the first thirteen years of their lives consuming concepts, ideas and theories. If they choose to pursue higher education the work becomes more difficult but the system doesn’t change much at all. In the West the church has decided to use this same system to produce leaders, pastors and teachers.
For the most part, the would be leader is withdrawn from the context of ordinary life and ministry in order to study in a somewhat cloistered environment, for up to seven years in some cases. During that period they are subjected to an immense amount of complex information relating to the biblical disciplines, theology, ethics, church history, pastoral theology, ect. And while the vast majority of this information is useful and correct, what is dangerous to discipleship in that setting is the actual socialization processes that the student undergoes along the way. In effect, he or she is socialized out of ordinary life and develops a kind of language and thinking that is seldom understood and expressed outside of the seminary. It’s as if in order to learn about ministry and theology, we leave our places of habitation and take flight into a wonderfully abstracted world of abstraction, we fly around there for a long period of time, and then wonder why we have a hard time landing once again.
This model couldn’t be further away from the way that Jesus taught us how to develop disciples. And it is not that Jesus lacked an appropriate model of the Academy. The Greeks had developed it hundreds of years before Christ, and it was well entrenched in the Greco-Roman world by the time Jesus started making disciples. The Hebrew worldview was a life oriented one and was not primarily concerned with concepts and ideas in themselves. I mentioned it before but it’s worth repeating that the Academy is almost solely organized around the transfer of concepts, ideas, and theories. And so the seminaries, or institutions built on a similar academic model, are largely unable to produce leaders, pastors, and teachers. It’s not that they don’t try or don’t want to. The problem inherent in the seminary is that the in-tray of information is piled high while the out-tray of action and obedience is just about empty. The academy demands passivity in the student, whereas discipleship, the model Jesus gives us, requires activity. If discipleship has to do primarily with becoming like Jesus, then it cannot be achieved by the mere transfer of information outside of the context of ordinary lived life. We cannot continue to try and think our way into a new way of acting, but rather, we need to act our way into a new way of thinking.
Yet even at a quick glance it’s not hard to see that we build churches around these “teachers.” We consume their books, their sermons, their words, concepts, ideas and theories, yet we find ourselves Monday morning in one of two predicaments. Either we are convinced that this consumption of information actually is what it means to be a Christian and the be all end all of our discipleship is nothing more than showing up Sunday after Sunday trying to consume as much as we can. Or, we find ourselves digesting these concepts, ideas, and theories. We find ourselves thinking in a new paradigm while our actions are largely unaffected which leaves us stumped at how to apply this newfound knowledge. We become frustrated as we experience this dissonance in our own lives and find ourselves once again returning to the “teachers” to tell us how to fix this problem. We return to church, run back to the books, or download just another podcast to consume more information thinking and hoping that one day it will just click. That one day all of this consuming will produce an answer. That one day this new way of thinking will produce a new way of acting. And it simply won’t.
Jesus never wrote a book, his sermons were confusing, shocking and he never broke things down or explained the meaning of his stories, the more popular he became the more elusive he was, and he spent three years investing in twelve goofballs the DNA of his entire message. His methods and strategies would be largely rejected if he were to try and plant a church today by his own followers. While He would be investing in the lives of the local prostitutes, his disciples would be writing their next book explaining what church growth looks like for 2011.
Back to my assumption. I am convinced that Jesus knew what he was doing. And I am convinced that his model of teaching is far superior than anything we could ever dream up. The Academy and pursuit of knowledge is something that we need to move forward and stay relevant but it can no longer be the only answer to creating leaders, pastors, and teachers. I have so much hope for the church as we enter into this new decade. It is my prayer that our imaginations would no longer be hijacked by the Greco-Roman world. It is my hope that we can reclaim and reactivate the model Jesus has given us. May we become the generation that is marked by an Outtray.Full.Of.Stories
-Billy
