Re: Towards a Missional Church

DBlevins — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:22:15 -0000

Good comments David and great talking with a concerned Nazarene :0-) Okay, couldn't resist. I do hope you see our exchange as friendly banter.

A little more seriously I think we might have missed something in Methodist history that might help this conversation. David Hempton has written an interesting text titled Empire of the Spirit that traces Methodism, primary as a populist movement on the margins of the larger colonial expansion (be that North American expansion or British expansion). What Hempton notes is that schools often served as connectional centers for Methodist efforts, often before other denominational agencies or structures could catch up. Hempton's observation has been documented elsewhere (often in-house Methodist research texts in higher education that rarely get around beyond scholars working with the field).

Now, I am not saying all schools serve this roll today but if we could return to seeing them as connectional centers rather than gatekeepers it might help reframe the role of higher education. After all, it takes an institutional structure like Fuller to assist and provide the very mechanism for global discourse you describe. Not only with the technical infrastructure but also the identified connectional center for graduate discourse. Again, I would say that we have not always understood this view of education/connection in the Church of the Nazarene... but perhaps we can in the not too distant future. Case in point, when I was at Trevecca Nazarene University we institutied a summer program in conjunction with the region's district training schools where TNU faculty met with district pastors (teaching the course of study) to walk through all of the new modules as they emerged in the current Course of Study education program. The implicit goal was to put local training pastors into a conversation with faculty so that we could learn from each other. Research faculty offered the fruit of their efforts, district pastors offered their insights working with small church and bivocational settings. The results were mixed at first (we had years of distrust to overcome on both sides of the conversation) but overall the we were able to bridge a percieved boundary between district training through the course of study and undergraduate education. The bridge was the acceptance of our mutual vocation as teachers regardless of location. This represents one example and I am not sure how the program continued after I left TNU for NTS. David, thisis not so much a specific critique of your concerns (at times quite valid) but I offer this only to raise the fact that sometimes we just do not "see" how educators in our schools actually serve at multiple levels in far more collaborative ways than we realize. I have friends who choose to write for the sake of local churches in some really unique ways but rarely do we see this work.

I think we recognize that the term missional has not been fleshed out well in the COtN. It is part of our Core Values but the term probably conveys multiple meanings in various congregations. I think we have opportunity to sharpen that understanding in the near future. We just had George Hunsberger from the Gospel in our Culture Network meeting with faculty the last two days. We were gratified to know he thinks our school is a lot farther down the road as a missionally minded community than many other theological schools. However we, as a faculty, recognize we have a long way to go.

Re: Towards a Missional Church

DBlevins — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:54:37 -0000

I think for some of ecumenicity remains important but we do not read ecumenicity as "generic" or even "apostolic" since we live in a particular history and context. Instead we might argue for a ecumenicity of particularity that does not evoke a primitivism of the early church but acknowledges we live in a world of different theological perspectives (some contrasting, some complementary, some competing) so we enter into an ecumenical conversation not by ignoring other traditions or demonizing them but also not ignoring our own tradition either. Guder argues that to be ecumenical is to be modest...with conviction. Unless one knows one's tradition one does not have a place to stand in a conversation. Now, historically this has been expressed polemically ("Why I am a Nazarene and not...") but to jettison tradition completely risks a generic ecumenism that marked the "death" of earlier ecumenical movements (a kind of reductionism as to not to offend people) rather than a catholic ecumenism that acknowledges that we need diverse expressions of Christian faith so we acknowledge both the gifts... and limitations... of our tradition (where the modesty comes in).

Second point: I think we need models of parish-centered education but we need to also acknowledge the limitation of this view as the "right" answer alone. To be frank parish-centered education comes with certain limitations, particularly the limitation of cultural perspective. So you have an ecumencial gathering of Anglican, Reformed, Methodist, and Anabaptist pastors learning togehter in east Ohio. Great, but still get an "east Ohio" perspective. One of the functions of "centers" of education is to provide not a "tower" (hierarchical) perspective of theological education but a "cross-road" (connectional) opportunity to allow students from different geographic/cultural limitations to engage students, within the same tradition, from other cultural perspectives. (POSTSCRIPT: anyone who has met students from any three of our Nazarene undergraduate schools in theological discourse immediately recognize that even the idea of a "Nazarene" theology proves illusive at best). If we cannot engage people of difference within our own tradition how are we equipped to engage people of other traditions? I think it is best to say that educational institutions may need to rethink and adapt (and reflective institutions should acknowldge this) but to raise the issue of total failure might be problematic.

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Re: Towards a Missional Church

Re: Towards a Missional Church