Fall 2015 Insights

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education

Insights The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

Fall 2015

Hooker • Wiginton • Baker • Blevins • Odom Goff • Béghin • Lincoln

Insights

The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary Fall 2015

Volume 131

Number 1

Editor: David F. White Editorial Board: Gregory Cuéllar, Blair Monie, and Randal Whittington The Faculty of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Margaret Aymer Whitney S. Bodman Gregory L. Cuéllar Lewis R. Donelson William Greenway David H. Jensen David W. Johnson Carolyn Browning Helsel Paul K. Hooker Timothy D. Lincoln

Jennifer L. Lord Blair Monie Suzie Park Cynthia L. Rigby Asante U. Todd Theodore J. Wardlaw David F. White Melissa Wiginton Philip Wingeier-Rayo

Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

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COVER: “The Monarchs,” by Wendy H. Wilkins; ©2014; 16" x 20," alcohol ink on paper. Used with permission of the artist; Web page: whwstudios.com

Contents

2 Introduction

Theodore J. Wardlaw

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education 3

Theological Education as Wonder and Witness

9

Letting Go and Letting Come

by Paul Hooker

by Melissa Wiginton

15

Creating a Space for Wonder in Theological Education

An Interview with Melissa Wiginton and Paul Hooker

21

Reflections

Moseses, Miriams, and Monarch Migrations by Dori Grinenko Baker

Our Craft, Our Call by Dean Blevins

32

Pastors’ Panel

Andy Odom, Michele Goff, Emily BĂŠghin

35 Required Reading

Belief without Borders, written by Linda A. Mercadante, reviewed by Timothy Lincoln

Introduction

Y

ears ago now, in about this season of the year, my family and I were still living in Atlanta. On a particular Saturday, I had spent a good portion of the day raking the leaves from a host of tall trees in our backyard into a huge pile.

My envisioned next step was to have stuffed all those leaves into many plastic leaf bags to be placed on the curb out front, but the sun had hastened to the horizon and then set. I had to stop.

About this time in the darkening evening, my younger daughter came outside and wanted to jump with me into the blanket of leaves. We hurled ourselves at that blanket for maybe a half hour until we were both exhausted. Then we lay on it, looking up at the night sky. She suggested a game. We would not say a word until she called “time,” and then we would report to one another what we saw and heard during that time of silence. Over multiple turns, we reported our discoveries to one another—a shooting star, a plane in a landing pattern, a dog barking over the wall in a neighbor’s back yard, a twig snapping, a horn blowing, an owl somewhere asking the plaintive question, “Who?”

I think back, from time to time, to this occasion when Claire and I were listening hard and looking up so intently; and how richly we were rewarded by it. We were fellow detectives of divinity, noticing—in an all-too-rare moment—the presence of wonder.

This issue of Insights focuses, too, on the presence of wonder all around us, whether in cathedrals, physics labs, or an inviting pile of fall leaves in the backyard. In what Melissa Wiginton names as a hinge time in theological education, we make educated guesses as to what we should let go and what we should let come. In what Paul Hooker describes as a not-holy world, he makes what I think is a hopeful and encouraging statement: “…we are yearning for wonder.” Both Paul and Melissa provide rich evidence of how such wonder can reinvigorate us until we become witnesses to it—witnesses of it—but you will need to set aside, perhaps, what your assumptions are about it in order to capture its new sights and its new sounds.

Other contributions enrich this theme of wonder in theological education, offered by Dori Grinenko Baker, a research fellow for The Forum for Theological Exploration, and Dean Blevins, a professor of Christian formation and discipleship at Nazarene Theological Seminary. We also hear from alums Andy Odom, Michele Goff, and Emily Béghin regarding theological education, the pastoral life, and the evidence of wonder in their various contexts. Tim Lincoln rounds out this issue with a scintillating review of Linda Mercadante’s book Belief without Borders.

So. With this issue firmly in one hand, find the nearest pile of leaves, jump into it with gusto, stretch out, open this Insights, and begin your own search for the wonder spoken of in these pages.

Theodore J. Wardlaw President and Professor of Homiletics

Theological Education as Wonder and Witness Paul Hooker

W

e are in a season in which the value of theological education is no longer self-evident, and more than a few challenge both the need for and the faithfulness of learning the classical theological disciplines of the church. We live in the age of the “spiritual but not religious,” who yearn for connection with something larger than themselves, but are suspicious of seeking that connection in seminary classrooms, who disparage doctrine as a means of approach to the divine.

In response to those yearnings and suspicions, I want to suggest that theological education, at its best, offers precisely what they who search for a larger sense of their place in creation seek. I want to suggest that a theological education teaches—or can teach—wonder and witness.

The Cathedral and the Physics Lab Long before anyone was self-identifying as “spiritual but not religious,” there were keen-eyed observers of modern culture pointing to religion’s inability to capture the spiritual imagination of the age. In an essay that never fails both to move and to provoke me, “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” Annie Dillard points to the phenomenon: God used to rage at the Israelites for frequenting sacred groves. I wish I could find one. Martin Buber says, “The crises of all primitive mankind comes with

Paul Hooker

is associate dean for ministerial formation and advanced studies at Austin Seminary. An ordained Presbyterian teaching elder, he is the author of 1 and 2 Chronicles (Westminster Bible Companion Series) and has extensive experience in writing and interpreting the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He earned the DMin from Union Theological Seminary and the PhD in Old Testament from Emory University.

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Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education the discovery of that which is fundamentally not-holy, the a-sacramental, which withstands the methods, and which has no ‘hour,’ a province which steadily enlarges itself.” Now we are no longer primitive; now the whole world seems not-holy. We have drained the light from the boughs in the sacred grove and snuffed it out in the high places and along the banks of sacred streams. We as a people have moved from pantheism to pan-atheism.

Silence is not our heritage but our destiny; we live where we want to live. …

It’s difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a sacred grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. …

What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn’t us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we’re blue.1

Dillard wrote those words fifteen years before J K Rowling published the first novel in the Harry Potter series, once intended for pre-teens but now the subject of complex literary and theological commentary. The appeal of the denizens of Hogwarts across age and social barriers suggests that Rowling has tapped into a deep cultural need. I find myself curious whether Rowling’s world of wizards is the answer we’ve ginned up to the crisis of Dillard’s not-holy world. I think we are yearning for wonder.

Since the eleventh-century scholar Anselm of Canterbury penned his famous motto, fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding,” the assumption has been that the purpose of theology is to give structure to faith’s formlessness.

Faith seeks the organization and certitude that supposedly comes from systematic thought, and theology’s task is to provide that doctrinal system. Theology is “faith seeking understanding.” Karl Barth gave this view new life in his own work, and it has gained some traction since.2

But what if the aim of theology is not so much doctrinal clarity as the recovery of wonder and mystery? What if one of its great purposes is not so much to provide answers as to revel in questions vibrating with the presence of God? What if an end result of a theological education is less an explanation of how God works than a reenchantment of the universe as the arena of God’s creative activity?

In November 2014, the unmanned spacecraft Rosetta landed on a comet in our solar system with the eloquent name, 67P, the first such landing of its kind. As it approached the comet, the magnetometer aboard Rosetta picked up a long series of almost musical pops and beeps that seemed to emanate from the comet; the popular press labeled the sounds the comet’s “song.”3 The likely—though still uncertain—explanation for the recorded sounds is the reaction of ionized particles released from the comet into its magnetic field. As a non-scientist, however, such an explanation is less revealing to me than the reminder that the universe around us vibrates with vitality, and has for millennia longer than humans have been around 4

Hooker to hear it. Rosetta’s recording moves me to wonder and awe, and gives me a tiny glimpse of my place in the universe.4

But is also prompts me to think theologically about the relationship between scientific discoveries and the language and imagery of creation hymns like Psalm 19: “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork; Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; Yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

What does the psalmist know about “the heavens” that tell of the glory of God, and how does the psalm frame the way we think about the scientific discovery of Comet 67P’s “song”? What “knowledge” does Comet 67P declare to the endless night of interplanetary space? Can wondering at the world, as the psalmist and the scientist do, expose (at least metaphoric) connections between the psalm and the comet that fuel our spiritual imaginations? Can a wonder-informed reading of the psalm recapture some of the lost sense of the mysterious sacredness of creation?

William P. Brown’s 2010 book, The Seven Pillars of Creation, is a tour-de-force in the sort of wonder-informed engagement with scripture and faith I am advocating.

Brown is an Old Testament scholar whose parents were both scientists and who has retained his sense of wonder at the complexities of the universe. His book is a sideby-side study of the intersections of cutting-edge science and the biblical wisdom tradition. In his introduction, Brown observes: For me, mystery inspires awe and inquiry. Examples of mystery are the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics,” the remarkable intelligibility of nature, something instead of nothing, the emergence of life, and God’s love for the world. … Mystery recognizes the provisional nature of our explanations and the inexhaustibility of our investigations. The world will always be more than what we know. Mystery is being grasped by something larger than ourselves, ever compelling us to stretch, rather than limit, the horizons of our awareness. Under the rubric of wonder, mystery has its place alongside understanding.5 Note that, for Brown, “science” and “theology” are equally examples of mystery, and both inspire “awe and inquiry.” Note, too, that mystery is a no-less valid result of that inquiry than is understanding. Brown’s readings of scripture and science are mutually informed by wonder, each bringing to the other a depth that alone neither possesses. I think he models for us a different pathway for theological education, one that stands in awe before both the world and the text and inquires into the congruence and contradictions between them. He and Dillard would find common ground here.

One of my fondest hopes for the education we offer students at Austin Seminary is that they will be marked by the mysteries of the faith experience. I hope they will engage theology as a lively conversation with both what has already been said and what is only now being thought. I hope that the experience of learning to conduct worship will not be merely memorizing liturgical choreography but a participation in the perichoretic community of the divine. I hope students will not 5

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education only read the biblical text with historical and linguistic eyes, but peer through them into the realm of metaphor and poetry. I hope they will learn to preach with a sense of literary grace that lifts the imaginations of their hearers. I hope they will understand the polity of their traditions not as canon law or manuals of ecclesiastical structure, but as expressions of our best aspirations for the church. I hope that in our students, we offer the church not only ministers, but artists of ministry.

The Witness of the Palo Santo Trees I also have another hope. I hope that theological education will make our students witnesses. And I hope that witness will not be merely a passive watching of the ways of the creation, but a testimony to the possibilities of the new creation.

The Doctor of Ministry program at Austin Seminary takes students in the midst of congregational and ecclesiastical life and asks them to reflect critically on the church they observe in light of the best insights of theology and the social sciences. In their final projects, students are expected to assess the existing situations of their ministry contexts and to analyze the issues that keep the participants in those contexts from realizing their calling as individuals and as faith communities.

A key part of the work of any project is the imagination of a new future—a projection of the possibilities for becoming more nearly the new creation God intends for that congregation or context to be. At least ideally, every student who completes a final project in the DMin program at Austin learns not merely to witness what the church is but also to imagine what God is creating it to be.

Joshua Stewart (DMin’15), devoted his final project to the development of a “Theologame”—a video game that enables high school students to engage in developing a theology of vocation and to use that theology to understand their own lives and call. In his evaluative comments on his work, he borrows a connection first made by Eugene Peterson between the habits of a dog growling and gnawing on a bone and the Hebrew verb hagah, which can mean both “growl” (as in Isaiah 31:4, “the young lion growls over his prey”) and “meditate” (as in Ps.1:2, where the righteous “meditate day and night” on the law of the Lord). Stewart uses this metaphor as a way of talking about the theological enterprise: [T]his concept of hagah is meaningful because it is a reminder that the discipline of theology offers an invitation to passionately approach one’s reflections on God in a similar manner to the dog passionately playing with a bone. Theology done well is a discipline that plays, growls, meditates, and worries over the great questions of God and God’s ongoing activity in this world. Theology is a discipline that haunts its participants and drives them, at times, to bury their findings followed by digging them up again, begging for a fresh new start on the same old bone. … I maintain my thesis: theology is a game. It is a game we must play because it is part of our vocational responsibility as Christians, God’s poiema, who are called to follow Jesus Christ and to witness to creation with (among all else in this abundant life) beautiful play.6

Stewart’s engagement with a theology that “haunts” and “drives them at times 6

Hooker to bury their findings” only to dig them up for a “fresh new start on the same old bone” strikes me as an apt description of what a theological education can do.

Note, however, that “our vocational responsibility as Christians” is “witness”— we are called “to witness to creation with … beautiful play.” I find that statement compelling. Theology results not only in the aggregation of knowledge about creation but the engagement of witness in joyful expression of the created self before God and to creation. As we live out who we are created to be, Stewart suggests, we bear witness to creation’s possibilities.

I don’t think Stewart means—and I certainly do not mean—that theological education ought to eventuate in a celebration of the status quo, especially when that status is unjust or oppressive, when it justifies abuse or perpetuates evil. But neither do I think that God’s creation was intended to be unjust, oppressive, abusive, or evil. The verb hagah also carries the meaning, “to moan for” in sorrow and mourning (see, for instance, Is. 16:7). An honest theological engagement with the world must “moan for” the loss of Eden, the fouling of God’s creative intent for creation and human life. To engage honestly in theological education is to acknowledge that we are not what we were created to be and that we have despoiled the beautiful reality given to us with greed and self-interest, with privilege and the abuses it makes possible. The acknowledgement of creation’s brokenness, however, is neither the first nor the last step in theological study. The first step, I have tried to suggest, is wonder and awe. The last, I would suggest, is a hopeful commitment to the new creation God is even now creating. In between is witness. Witness sees and points to both wonder and hope, even in the midst of brokenness, but it never quietly accepts the brokenness as a substitute for wonder. Witness keeps its eyes open to all there is to see, for good and for ill, but it constantly points beyond what there is to see, toward what there is yet to be seen.

Toward the end of Dillard’s essay, she talks about her trips to the Galapagos Islands. She is struck by a species of small, scraggly, nearly leafless trees called palo santo, whose lichen-covered trunks stand in “blasted orchards” all over the hillsides of the island. The trees watch what happens there, says Dillard, and What happens there is this, and precious little it is: clouds come and go, and the round of similar seasons; a pig eats a tortoise or doesn’t eat a tortoise; Pacific waves fall up and slide back; a lichen expands; night follows day; an albatross dies and dries on a cliff; a cool current upwells from the ocean floor; fishes multiply, flies swarm, stars rise and fall, and diving birds dive. The news, in other words, breaks on the beaches. And taking it all in are the trees.

And she decides that perhaps, were she to come back in another life to the Galapagos, she might prefer to be a palo santo, “… on the weather side of an island, so that I could be, myself, a perfect witness, and look, mute, and wave my arms.”7 A theological education calls us to stand as “perfect witness” to the hand of God engaged with the mute materials of creation, both human and non-human, and to recognize that those materials, if mute to our ears, may nonetheless have a song that is beyond the range of our hearing. But it also calls us to witness to the 7

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education possibility that our range of hearing may need expanding, that there is more to hear and see than we have yet heard or seen. That sort of witness, it seems to me, is endlessly attentive, endlessly hopeful. It bears witness to what is, for weal or woe, but it never abandons its yearning for what might be. A theological education, in any of its forms, whether masters or doctoral level, whether in classroom or in practicum, can—or at least should—teach us to bear that witness and if we cannot speak, at least to wave our arms. v Notes

1. Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” Teaching a Stone to Talk, New York: Harper Colophon, 1982, 69-71.

2. Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quarens Intellectum (London, SCM Press, 1960).

3. An audio recording of the “song” is available at soundcloud.com/esaops/a-singing-comet

4. I wrote this poem after hearing the Rosetta recording: Cometsong November, 2014.

The sounds of Comet 67P, Recorded by the Rosetta spacecraft.

Is this how it sounds when God sings in the moisture of time’s first morning, in the interstices of molecules and galaxies, melody etched in ice and dust rhythm pulsing among the planets, echoing in eternity, as though the universe was a cavernous old concert hall, and you and I the only audience slumped low in velvet cushioned seats that smell of hairspray and old cologne in the back row of the second balcony in the shadow-dark, hunkered down so as not to be found and ushered out for having snuck in through the stage door left unlocked by mistake, while we watch the spotlight far below and listen to the dress rehearsal of Creation?

5. Wm. P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 5.

6. Joshua Stewart, A Theological Playbook for Youth: Towards a Play-Full Approach to Christian Discipleship through a Theology of Vocation. Final doctoral project at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 2015. Emphasis added.

7. Dillard, op.cit., 73-76.

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Letting Go & Letting Come Theological Education in the Hinge Times Melissa Wiginton

T

heological education, like every other surviving twentieth-century institution, sits in the rapids of change. Dr. Sharon Parks, director of Leadership for the New Commons (newcommons.org), describes the situation this way, “Our generations are among those that are asked to live in one of those great hinge times in history, when cultures are being profoundly reordered, when our institutions, most cherished beliefs, and familiar patterns, roles, and practices are all under review.”1 Mainline theological education is under review, to use Parks’s term, because the systems of organized religion are under stress. Each year, fewer Americans identify as religious at all. Fewer attend worship services or financially support congregations. Younger adults are not replacing older members who die; those present tend to have fewer resources and different patterns of giving. More congregations struggle to pay a full-time Master of Divinity-educated ordained pastor. Small congregations close in increasing numbers; large congregations leave denominations altogether as social issues and the underlying theological questions polarize institutions and individuals.

Hinge time? Sounds like closing time.

Those of us who live, work, and worship within mainline denominations cannot deny this litany of diminution; yet neither can we abandon the charisms and commitments of our traditions. Parks’s notion of hinge time suggests a possible stability in the midst of these two undeniable realities: a hinge joins together two separate objects, creating an axis around which the two objects can rotate. Theological education might envision its work as an axis connecting the church looking back and the church looking forward. This axis consists of critical scholarship—the-

Melissa Wiginton

is vice president for Education Beyond the Walls and research professor in Methodist studies at Austin Seminary. She holds a law degree from the University of Texas and the MDiv from Candler School of Theology. Co-editor of Awakened to a Calling: Reflections on the Vocation of Ministry, she served for a number of years as the vice president for ministry programs and planning at the Fund for Theological Education.

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Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education ology, biblical studies, ethics, history, arts of ministry, and methods—and appreciative attention to the church and its valued practices of past and present. On one side, it holds firm to traditional disciplines and understandings and on the other it connects with an uncertain and emerging future.

Sharon Parks goes on to say that in this hinge time in history, “every conversation might appropriately begin with the question, ‘How are you living with the tensions?’” Her question suggests that the institution’s task at this time is not simply to adopt a new set of values and practices to replace the old. Rather, the institution’s work is to acknowledge and remain present to the tension. The work is to remain steady and to facilitate movement, to be supple, not to choke on too much change or to starve of too little. In this essay, I will situate Austin Seminary’s movement in theological education as it lives into the unclear future, holding fast to its commitment to its degree programs and swinging open to innovative possibilities in light of current realities and the emergent future.

Austin Seminary’s department of continuing education, Education Beyond the Walls (EBW), leans into these questions. EBW aims to provide innovative and expansive theological education for learners not in enrolled in the Seminary’s accredited degree programs. Imagine widening the lens through which we see who is served to bring into view: just-beginning and long-time practitioners of ministry, pastors with diverse kinds of preparation, church leaders on the margins because of age, race, ethnicity, or other difference, multiple denominations, and, in the shadows, people and communities reaching toward the future. This array of learners comes into view as the boundaries to institutional learning are under review.

Familiar patterns, roles, and practices

Old patterns and inherited ways are good guides for moving into the future—when the future is predicted to be like the past. For us, the present is already not like the past, the future likely less so. The first move in the face of change leads us to make visible the old patterns and inherited ways of seminary education for learners not enrolled in degree programs. Then we can identify which practices serve us well and simply need improvements and which are inhibiting creative response to the newness of the day.2 Seminaries have long provided opportunities for continued learning in the form of endowed lectures or multi-day lecture series. Scholars or practitioners who are thought leaders sometimes use these opportunities to present work-in-progress to interested, educated clergy and sophisticated lay people. Institutions often position lectures to draw alumni close; pastors often welcome the fellowship and worship with a familiar community along with intellectual stimulation.

In the 1960s, continuing education for all professionals began to be regularized. The National Council of Churches established the Society for the Advancement of Continuing Education of the Ministry (SACEM) in 1967. SACEM advocated for continuing education for both clergy and lay people. Denominations, freestanding institutions, para-church organizations, and seminaries all provided opportunities for continuing education. In the past two decades, providers of online and distance 10

Wiginton learning education added to the menu of options for clergy continuing education.

Seminaries hold a particular place in the panoply of options: the capacity to convene and steward intellectual resources. The ethos of Reformed and other historical mainline seminaries does not lean toward techniques, technical skills, or try-thisat-home teaching that scratch the itch of the urgent which drives many pastors to seek new learning.3

On a granular level, a view of the past also reveals a certain kind of drive-by pattern for delivery of continuing education: short events held on campus and led by seminary professors. This pattern supports technical training and inspirational insight, both valuable enterprises. Sparse attendance, however, suggests that pastors find this format of limited use, if not ultimately unsatisfying. For formation and transformation, leaders need something more.

This pattern also reveals a fundamental assumption of theological education: seminary professors are the experts from whom learning flows. Teachers who have subject matter expertise and sophisticated knowledge are essential. However, the “banking� model of education alone does not serve transformational learning.

Moreover, the structural positioning of the seminary as the sole purveyor of quality theological education restricts possibilities for learning from potential partners and stunts growth as theological education reaches to serve new communities of learners and leaders.

What of the old, inherited ways should be let go? What would it mean to let go of the posture of expertise and exclusivity? What might we learn from communities other than our own? To whom should we listen to hear about what is emerging?

To whom should we attend to see our way into the unclear future? Do we improve or innovate or some of each? EBW seeks to respond to these questions through three moves: releasing, receiving, and reaching.

Releasing: Experiments in Letting Go The difficult tension of the hinge time tempts us to discard everything of the past and try what is new and different. We resist this temptation by exercising a hermeneutic of retrieval, letting go of non-functional elements of the past while holding onto valuable old patterns.

For example, the Latino Pastors of the Synod of the Sun had a pattern of annual gatherings held at the Seminary for education and fellowship. In 2011, leaders canceled the scheduled meeting and planned no other. The group could not survive the transitions within the PC(USA) relative to the ordination of gay and lesbian people. Still, Latino pastors were concerned about the lack of connection among this group of churches and leaders who had many needs. Supported by a grant from Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, Houston, the Seminary gathered key leaders to describe the current situation, to imagine a robust future, and to consider how to bridge the gap. The conversation led to more conversation and eventually to the formation of the Hispanic Ministries Network (HMN) at Austin Seminary. HMN brings a new model: partnership among the Seminary, presbyteries, the Pan American School, pastors, and lay leaders of Hispanic churches in the Synod committed 11

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education to fellowship, learning, and action to build up congregations and their leaders.

HMN leaders identified education for lay leaders as one of several critical needs.

The old pattern of calling in resources from the denomination did not suffice. They could find no structures in place for the education of Spanish-speaking or Hispanic lay leaders in the basics of church leadership, theology, arts of ministry, or polity.

Out of necessity, they created a team to find a way to meet the need. A Certified Ruling Elder who was a professional educator led the team. The members asked her, “As an educator, where would you start?” In response, she led a process to design a group learning experience for five PC(USA) congregations in Central Texas. In four sessions, they establish a learning community in which to share what each is doing in worship, music, education, pastoral care, and governance. A Seminary professor or other teacher helps them frame and understand their work theologically. They are creating a new pattern of education to be adopted and adapted by other local communities of churches.

Receiving: Experiment in Letting Come At the edge of leaning into the future, the temptation to act, to instigate, to move, to change for the sake of change becomes a strong current. Staying in the tension, then, demands restraint to wait for the new ways to come into view. Think Serena Williams on the balls of her feet. The following examples demonstrate the value of waiting in a responsive posture.

When the Seminary established EBW, new ideas came calling. One of the first came from a group of lay Presbyterians concerned about pastors and money; specifically, whether and how pastors were prepared to raise and spend money as a central task of ministry. Our EBW staff helped them to articulate their concerns and together we began to imagine what kind of educational intervention might work.

We wanted to offer something more than “how to run a stewardship campaign.”

But what? What was the unique role of an institution of theological education in the matter of ministry and money? We sat with this; we mulled and pondered. We investigated what was already available in the marketplace. We sought input from a cadre of trusted colleagues. We tweaked. We gathered a group of pastors of diverse setting, experience, denomination, age, and gender, and spent a day talking about the issues and reviewing possible plans. We made more changes. Eighteen months after the initial conversation, EBW launched “Revaluing Money,” a one-year cohort journey for pastors.

The Seminary’s work on money garnered attention from a major funding source and we were invited to be one of the initial institutions to participate in Lilly Endowment’s grants for “Addressing Economic Challenges Facing Future Pastors.”

The matter of money and ministry reached inside the institution. “Ministers Facing Money” (MFM) has begun to influence individual students, curriculum, supervised practice of ministry contexts, alumni, and institutional policy and practice. Since the establishment of MFM, another funding source has approached the Seminary to encourage attention to the pastoral aspects of ministers dealing with money.

This invitation pulls together the efforts of MFM and Revaluing Money and sets the 12

Wiginton Seminary in a position to offer theological education about money and ministry for students and practicing clergy in a unified whole.

Meanwhile, EBW also held space in our imagination for a topic nearly as taboo as money: religion and public life. Within Seminary practice, faculty members regularly resource congregations on public issues, and students involve themselves as activists. We were interested, however, in whether practicing pastors could grow in confidence, competence, and vision for public life and leadership. After a few initial fits and starts, the Seminary was invited to participate in an initiative for early career clergy development to address pastors and public issues. In response, we designed Fellowships for Pastoral Leadership in Public Life, a year-long clergy cohort program. Through this initiative we have expanded the scope of who we serve in theological education, building connections with pastors in San Antonio, Waco, San Marcos, and Eagle Pass; with Lutherans, Episcopalians, and three Baptist denominations. Moreover, the Seminary has developed relationships with public leaders who did not know us before; they have been honored to spend time with pastors and sometimes surprised to discover that pastors are smart, reflective, curious, concerned, funny—and potential allies. Most importantly, a cadre of practicing clergy have been educated and empowered to engage public life in new ways. The 2014 Fellows, in fact, are planning to write together about what they have learned, not only to consolidate their own growth but also to share their knowledge with other pastors. This is an example of what can happen when we let new possibilities come to theological education at the edges.

Reaching: Experiments in Innovation Beyond retrieving the value of inherited ways and taking a posture to receive opportunities that present themselves, we recognize that creating fresh possibilities in an established system requires new structures. Here, we look at fundamental change not simply improvement. Innovation requires taking risks and learning from the results.

“Cruzando la Frontera/Crossing the Border” represents one effort to let go of both the professor as the only expert and the seminary as exclusive source of valuable knowledge—a fundamental change that requires going beyond our comfortable structures. Cruzando la Frontera creates a space in which scholars, practitioners, and lay people do theology together as Hispanic persons living in the social, political, and economic borderlands of Texas. Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, the Seminary of the Southwest, and the Lutheran Seminary Program in the Southwest collaborate on this event twice each year. The location shifts among the two seminaries and congregations in other parts of the state. The structure includes formal lectures by professors or graduate students, presentations by seasoned practitioners, and lively interactions. The community gathered for the day shares three meals and they worship together. The door opens to Hispanic and Spanish-speaking Christians from any background and without requirements or assumptions relative to level of formal education.

As another example of structural flexibility, EBW partnered with two denomi13

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education national associations of bi-vocational or tentmaking pastors. This opportunity came unbidden, and in the posture of receiving, we responded. Bi-vocational ministry appears to be one possible way that people are responding to God’s call upon their lives in the midst of diminishing denominational possibilities. For three years, the groups held annual gatherings on the Seminary campus. EBW functioned variously, sometimes as host and sometimes as program designer and implementer. An issue of Communitas: The Journal of Education Beyond the Walls dedicated itself to bi-vocational ministry. Yet the movement did not grow or gain momentum among practicing clergy, denominational bodies, students, or faculty. Their work will not be continued next year. We have learned to release that which is finally the work of the church; we serve the church but we cannot replace it. As expected, not every effort of EBW brings the hoped-for results. We have learned that some of the future that we think we see is not yet in reach or may not be what we perceived. We have learned to release parts of the work for now, until we may be ready or until it becomes clear that it is not our work to do.

Conclusion As EBW moves through the process described here—releasing, receiving, reaching—in the initiatives described above, we also experiment on a smaller scale. For example, traditional Advent and Lenten lectionary presentations take the form of a dialogical study group led by a rabbi and a systematic theologian. We partner with the University of Texas School of Social Work for joint continuing education for pastors and social workers and join a coalition of local organizations to present a city-wide day of learning about mental illness and faith communities. We create continuing education for underserved practitioners, such as lay caregivers or alternatively certified pastors.

We do not know what the future holds for seminaries, but we do know that it will not look like the past. Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, like most seminaries these days, continues to think—and act—creatively about how we offer theological education in service to the church. At Austin Seminary, we are in a season of putting resources—money, staff, faculty, thought, time—into the challenge before us to understanding God’s call, to see what God is already doing, and to participating in God’s work of healing, redeeming, and reconciling all creation. v NOTES

1. Parks, Sharon Daloz. “Big Enough Questions? The Search for a Worthy Narrative—From Coffee to Cosmos.” Keynote Address, Enriching the Theological Exploration of Vocation, The Council of Independent Colleges & The Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education, Indianapolis, IN, March 14-16, 2013.

2. In shaping the analysis and approach, I draw from the work of Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers in their book, Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (New York: Currency Books, 2005) and from the further development of the ideas in Theory U. For an

Continued on page 36

14

Interview Melissa Wiginton & Paul Hooker

Creating a Space for Wonder in Theological Education Much of what we do here at Austin Seminary involves organizing educational activities in order to exert our own Christian theological formation over and against the culture and its distinctive formation or malformation. So I wonder if you have any thoughts about specifically what aspects of cultural formation or malformation you see your programs confronting?

Melissa Wiginton: I liked the point that Paul made in his essay helped by Annie Dillard. One of the biggest things that we confront is that our imaginations have been colonized by consumer capitalism and the now almost moral value of being insanely busy. And so there’s just not room in people’s lives or their imaginations to pursue something that is as intangible as faith or the reign of God. People of faith fight against a strong current when they try to give themselves over to learning something about God that doesn’t immediately translate into a measurable product.

Say a little bit about how you see your program Education Beyond the Walls meeting those challenges?

Melissa Wiginton: Given what I’ve just said, it does seem important to try to give people opportunities for an immediate return on their investment. We want people to “try this at home.” Take home this new skill you’ve learned and it will help you be a better Stephen minister or Christian educator or disciple.

But I think that the intervention that leads to deeper change invites people into spaces that feed them over time. So, for example, in the Fellowships in Pastoral Leadership for Public Life we invited a cohort of twelve people, who did not know each other, to come together every six weeks for a year—for intellectual stimulation and theological reflection and with enough time to try some things at home.

Meanwhile, the fundamental questions about theology were working on them.

One of the amazing unplanned outcomes arrived at the end when they said, “We want to write about what we’ve learned to share it with other pastors.” And so we found a little money for them and they’re going to spend the next year writing and talking and learning more about what the Fellowship opened up for them.

Then we’ll publish their writings in Communitas: The Journal of Education Beyond the Walls. This integration of learning in community, taking action, reflecting on what happened, then sharing new knowledge is a great example of what I would love to 15

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education

Around here, we claim to have something to say about life, but words and rhetoric have become depleted, impotent, and so distrusted that we really have a hard job as people of the Book. If we can’t figure out how to help people of faith connect their own experience of the mystery of God with other people, then we’re not living our mission.

—Melissa Wiginton

see happen more and more with learners beyond the degree programs. It builds on the Seminary’s core values and uses our resources to extend them.

Paul Hooker: The Doctor of Ministry program is like that here. We ask students to put one foot in the realm of the academic while never taking the other foot out of the very practical, very real universe of ministry. We ask them to put equal weight on both. We ask our students to think creatively, philosophically, theologically, pedagogically about their ministry contexts and to draw some new creative solutions, find some new pathway of wonder, come up with some new witness that allows them to approach the dilemmas of ministry from a different angle of vision.

Similarly, the Supervised Practice of Ministry asks theological students who have spent their previous two years engaged in classroom study to step out of the classroom for awhile but not to leave it behind. They engage in real time ministry, while continuing to explore how what I learned in class bears on my conversation with old Aunt Ida? How do those two things go together?

Both of you seem to think that wonder or enchantment is an important feature of the kind of education we do here. Why is that so important to you?

Paul Hooker: I think learning starts in wonder. Let me give you an example. I was 16

Interview looking the other day at a passage I’ve looked at before, Mark 6:45-50, which is the passage after the feeding of the 5,000 where Jesus goes up to the mountain to pray and the disciples get in a boat and start rowing across the Sea of Galilee toward Bethsaida. And Jesus comes walking across the water. This much both Matthew and John also say. But Mark inserts at the end of v. 48, “… intending to pass them by.” And the question that leaps to mind—at least to my mind—is: If he’s not going to rescue the disciples, where is he going?

In Mark, Jesus is always and in every occasion going to the cross. Jesus intends to pass them by because they—and by extension, we as the church—are not Jesus’s true destination. But if you don’t see that, if you don’t ask the question, Where is he going? you don’t wonder. You never begin to understand the fundamental truth that Jesus’s mission is not to create the church but to transform the world.

In another Markan narrative, Jesus takes the bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to the disciples to distribute among the people—an obvious reference to the church’s eucharistic liturgy. Afterward, the disciples collected twelve baskets full of broken pieces. The disciples each get their own basketful of the brokenness of the body of Christ. And that’s what they don’t understand as Jesus comes walking across the water. They don’t get that there’s some relationship between being a disciple and being broken as Christ was broken.

And, frankly, neither do we unless we open ourselves to being surprised by the moment. Learning starts in wonder, in that moment of surprise. Learning starts in asking, What the heck is going on here?

Spirituality is a word I have avoided most of my life. I am after all both a Calvinist and a product of postEnlightenment rationalism. So I greet it as the profoundest of ironies that as I approach the sunset of my life I am suddenly more aware of things that nourish the spirit. I am in love with jazz guitar. I read poetry every day. I think these are the closest things to a spiritual practice I have.

—Paul Hooker 17

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education What is the advantage of a hermeneutic of mystery?

Paul Hooker: At least one advantage is that you never run out of questions. The answers you provide will change from time to time, but the questions continue ringing on down through the eras like a bell in the night. They become the great mysteries around which we carry on conversations not only in our own era, but with those who have gone before us and those who will come after us. We gather around the questions. And if we gather around them with respectful wonder, then no answer is out of bounds, no contribution is wrong. We have an infinite source of learning.

Melissa Wiginton: I want to weigh in on the question about wonder and enchantment. I look at the world that surrounds us, literally, in this place where we sit with our students and UT students walking in our midst each day. I sometimes focus on one person and try to imagine his or her life. Where is she finding life?

What keeps her alive? How does he deal with the inevitable moments of emptiness?

Around here, we claim to have something to say about that, but words and rhetoric have become depleted, impotent, and so distrusted that we really have a hard job as people of the Book. If we can’t figure out how to help people of faith connect their own experience of the mystery of God with other people, then we’re not living our mission.

That’s why I think that the notion of enchantment and mystery is so critical. It impinges on theological education in a way that invites us into a posture of humility.

Paul Hooker: Maybe humility and wonder are two ways of speaking of the same thing. Either invites you to step outside yourself and be aware of your place within a scheme far grander than anything you might imagine. They teach you that you are but a corner of things. You’re not the center of things. I think that’s a truth worth knowing for effective ministry.

In your piece, Melissa, you evoked Sharon Parks and her book, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, and the notion that we live in this hinged time, this historical space where systems are being reordered. And you borrow the metaphor “hinge” to talk about the role of the seminary.

Melissa Wiginton: We are a strongly resourced seminary in terms of faculty, financial resources, physical plant, donor base, and all measures. Yet, we know the future will not be like the past. That is when these questions about theological education get real. We have to decide what we mean by serving the church as it is and as it is becoming. Where are the limits? How are we going prioritize all the possibilities?

In my piece I’m asking, How does the seminary function as a hinge in the hinge point of history? I was trying to think about how we hold together what has been and where we might be going. The idea of wonder sort of frees you up from a particular relationship with the past so that there’s not the constriction of holding onto the past but an ease in knowing that we don’t really know the past fully. And, of course, as Christians, we have a fundamental sense of trust in the mystery and 18

Interview the enchantment as the future unfolds. We already know the end of the story.

I am influenced by Otto Scharmer’s notion of the U-shaped movement of change. In his approach you have to let go of equating how we heard God in the past with God’s reality. You have to be willing to be in a time of unknowing and releasing of what’s not working anymore. And then you have to let the new come—In what inflection do we now hear God’s voice? I think this kind of move is driven by enchantment in the sense that there is more going on here than what we can see, feel, measure, or understand.

You sort of skipped over, without much comment, the role of living with the tensions, which seems to me like a really important insight.

Melissa Wiginton: To me, part of the practice of living in this time is to not prematurely foreclose the past or prematurely rush into the new as if that’s the ultimate value. Part of finding our way forward calls for something that we don’t do very well, which is create space to attend to the tensions in community. There is no time in our rhythm of life together to really go deeply into hearing each other and God— even as we identify what we’re letting go and the resulting emptiness and what is coming.

Paul, I want to back up a little bit. In your piece, you write about Josh Stewart’s thesis. I think what Melissa is saying is that time and space are important. And I think maybe Josh’s thesis illustrates that.

Paul Hooker: For final projects, we seek to create time and space in which students analyze their ministry context. In effect, we press them to ask, What the heck is going on here—what are the tensions? To me, that’s the first step of wonder: to reach beyond the superficial and ask more fundamental questions. Josh observed his young people trying to answer the question, What do I want to be when I grow up? and for the most part were not answering that question in ways that accounted for their faith. He wanted to get beyond that, to provide something that would force them to think about questions of vocation and Christian identity.

Josh experimented with various pedagogies of play, to help youth discover what it means to be called not only to a profession but also to the ministry of witness to grace that rests upon all of us as we rise dripping from the font. The core of Josh’s project was a series of games that created a universe where students could try on different identities, to ask themselves questions about vocational fit and calling.

You named well the practical dimensions of Josh’s project, but what I really loved was that his imagination was originally sparked by a theological idea he encountered in Moltmann’s Theology of Play. And he started wondering, If play is in fact characteristic of God, what does that mean for youth ministry?

Melissa Wiginton: This is a great example of how I think we can imagine and practice theological education in a very holistic way because of where we are and the connections that we have. We can draw on the wisdom of people who are leaders in congregations, seed it with the resources of the tradition, and help them think and 19

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education write for other practitioners.

Paul Hooker: Another student Susan Schnell did her project on the relationship between menopause and women’s spirituality and, in particular, baptismal calling.

Like Josh, she confronted a situation in life and asked an open-ended question: What the heck is going on here theologically? The question opened for her all sorts of metaphors about water and the flow of water and the flow of vital fluids and ultimately the flow of life itself. Her project enabled women in her congregation to expand their own ways of thinking and see their menopause as a sign of something more than loss and decline. She opened a new way of thinking that helps not only women facing menopause, but also the people who love them.

So what would you say has been the biggest surprise for you in this work?

Melissa Wiginton: I am surprised every time people show up for something that we offer. It just amazes me the way that the Spirit actually moves within the resources we have, the resources that become available, and then the people who come and are affected by what we offer. And so whenever I can stop and see that I’m surprised.

Paul Hooker: This gets to the question you haven’t asked yet about what gives us hope. The answer to that question is that it’s not about me. It doesn’t belong to me.

The church belongs to Jesus Christ. I am absolutely convinced that as long as Jesus Christ is using his church in the world, there will be a Spirit that constantly points the way toward wonder and calls the church to follow in acts of witness. It will continue being there until the final consummation of time and history, whatever that may look like. And, in the meantime, our job is to trust the Spirit, continue to be open to the possibility that something new is coming, and bear witness to it as we see it arise.

We’re calling this issue of Insights “Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education,” framing teaching and learning as a spiritual practice. I wonder if you have any thoughts about this notion?

Paul Hooker: Spirituality is a word I have avoided most of my life. I am after all both a Calvinist and a product of post-Enlightenment rationalism. So I greet it as the profoundest of ironies that as I approach the sunset of my life I am suddenly more aware of things that nourish the spirit. I am in love with jazz guitar. I read poetry every day. I think these are the closest things to a spiritual practice I have.

Sharing with students that I have such passions and practices and encouraging them to find their own ways of exploring their spirit is a part of the spirituality of teaching for me. In other words, I would love for more of my teaching to help students get beyond the acquisition of information to the place where information and experience and emotion and logic become synthesized as art. That’s a spiritual thing for me. v

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Reflections

Moseses, Miriams, and Monarch Migrations Dori Grinenko Baker

I

believe there is a future wanting to emerge through religious leaders who desire the healing of the earth and its people. Those religious leaders are young and old, clergy and lay, scattered in all professions, all faiths, and all walks of life. How institutions lean toward them, hear them, and retool to serve them may be of utmost urgency.

In this essay, I will share what I am learning from the young leaders I meet in my contexts, Christian and interfaith. What do these leaders need to survive and thrive? Along the way, I invite the Monarch butterfly—that glorious species of epic migrators currently experiencing monumental decline—as muse and metaphor. I conclude with two concepts and two conversation partners which feed hope.

Ten Days in A Life First, join me on a brief excursion into the contexts that place me in close proximity with diverse 18-25 year olds daily.1 During a ten-day period in between the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur last year, I accompanied young adults in the following ways:

• In a conservative Southern town, I wrote a letter commending the courage of a high school cast who performed Rent, the musical celebrating the artist-community’s dignity during the 1990s HIV-AIDs crisis in New York.

• I copied the youth minister of one of those cast members. That youth minThis essay is adapted from a chapter in the book Educating for Redemptive Community: Essays in Honor of Jack Seymour and Margaret Ann Crain, edited by Denise Jansen, (Wipf and Stock, forthcoming, November 2015). It is used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. www. wipfandstock.

Dori Baker serves as a research fellow for The Forum for Theological Exploration, curating events for young adults and those who support them in their vocational exploration. The author of The Barefoot Way: A Faith Guide for Youth, Young Adults and the People who Walk with Them (WJK, 2012), Baker is an ordained United Methodist elder who holds an MDiv from GarrettEvangelical Theological Seminary and a PhD from Northwestern University.

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Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education ister had been in my classroom ten years ago, when a panel of transgender college students told their stories, as seminary students from Ghana, South Korea, and Richmond, Virginia, became visibly uncomfortable—but stayed for the complicated theological conversation that followed.

• I also copied that cast member’s mom, who happened to confide, while traveling with me on a short-term mission trip to the Dominican Republic last summer, that her youth minister had been particularly helpful to her when her gay son came out.

• I checked in on a Facebook conversation I had begun about whether churches in North America should still do short-term mission trips abroad, because even the most careful sometimes inflict long-term harm.2

• I attended Friday prayers at the local Islamic center with two young women— one of them a Suni from Senegal and the other a Shiite from Afghanistan—and arranged for another student to get to the synagogue.

• I had a poster reading “Don’t let anyone tell you that you are less than sacred” made for National Anti-Bullying Day from a piece of art created by a recent graduate, who is a practitioner of the afro-Brazilian religion Candomble.

• I hosted a bagel bash where students made a prayer wall for a missing young woman, whose suspected murderer had gone uninvestigated two years earlier when accused of a sexual assault at a local Christian university.

• I completed a 32-hour domestic violence prevention course with my teenaged daughter, where I learned that conservative Christian universities have a reputation for under-reporting sexual abuse cases.

• I arranged for nineteen interfaith chaplain’s interns to receive a 1-hour training session on suicide prevention.

• I supervised those interns whose groups range from Wiccan-based meditation, to a Christian Bible study, to a Creating Beloved Community action group, to conversation around the Buddha and the Christ, and to one called Girlfriend Theology (Baker, 2005).

• I read a seminary intern’s reflection about the theological challenge of serving communion at The Wild Goose Fest, where there are “more different kinds of Christians than there are craft breweries in North Carolina.”

• I enjoyed a meal cooked over an open fire by a historian of the eating habits of enslaved people of 1820s Virginia.

• I followed the meal by walking with a small group of students and faculty to the burial site of 61 slaves who worked the 3,200-acre plantation that is now our college and then led a procession of seniors to the graves of those slave owners who founded the college.

• I highlighted a quote from a doctoral student of color that read: this gathering has shown me that “I am not alone in my wild ideas for re-framing theology, but I have found other wild thinkers and doers to curate my wildness, my holy wildness.”

• I listened to a friend talk about being both a pastor and a police chief while raising three black sons in the era of Michael Brown.

• I sat on my porch looking at job postings with Evan, an unemployed 21-year22

Baker old friend whose journey to college got derailed because of lack of parental experience navigating educational institutions.

My colleagues and I in campus ministry, seminary teaching, and church leadership dip in and out of such pastoral challenges, intellectual excursions, theological conversations, and leadership dilemmas as we navigate global complexities that get tangled up with the multiple micro-communities of prayer and action over which we watch. Potential is high for helping others discover deep meaning and purpose; potential is also high for moving too fast, making a mistake that requires doubling back for a second look, a thoughtful pause, an apology, or deeper listening.

As I reflect on this vocational mix, I imagine hundreds of such micro-communities, setting in motion or spurring along acts of justice, mercy, and courage that create pathways for connecting faith and living. Imagine this list multiplied and morphed. Feel the accompanying assurance that—despite alarming reports of increasing racism, ethno-centrism, corporate greed, armed conflict, and personal isolation that dominate our media—forces of good that seek to connect, communicate, and create community across diversity are (though fallible) at work in the church and the world.

Listening to the Voices of the Young In my campus ministry context, I’ve observed the work of a colleague, Dr. Lincoln Brewer, a renowned scholar on species decline of the Monarch butterfly. From here I draw a metaphor for the work of nurturing young leaders.

Dr. Brewer attends to the migratory practices of Monarchs to help chart correctives for farming practices in Iowa, meeting energy needs in Mexico, and helping backyard gardeners create patches of milkweed along a 3,000-mile migration path.

As we pay attention to this fragile species in our midst, we glimpse ways to cooperate with renewal, perhaps reversing dire consequences.

As we tend to the young Moseses and Miriams in our midst, might we, in like manner, discern correctives and actions that support, nurture, and give birth to a similarly fragile sub-species—that young leader of faith? Young leaders—like Monarch butterflies—are susceptible to subtle changes that over time accumulate to change their behavior within a multiple cause/multiple effect ecosystem.3

Some of these young people I see daily as they navigate college crises, but most of them spend a few intense days with us at an FTE retreat and then encounter us again through grants, fellowships, and mentoring experiences. These young leaders are nominated by their pastors, their volunteer service-year coordinators, or their seminaries to attend an event constructed to help them create ongoing learning communities (kind of like migratory swarms) that—we hope—will help sustain their call over time.4

Some are pre-seminary, some are in seminary, and some are new pastors—trying to craft answers to their deep call. A smaller percentage of these people are doctoral students of color who are called to be seminary professors and theological educators. Many of them face enormous obstacles as they navigate an academy constructed of Euro-centric norms, while trying to also stay true to their communities.

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Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education

I call these young leaders Miriams and Moseses because they see and feel and hear the pain of “their people” down in the valley. These are Millenials with hopes and dreams and a profound sense of confidence that they can, indeed, improve the world for “their people”—and they define that community broadly. Some of the realities they are living into include:

• They are suffering from a culture of anxiety bred by economic collapse, ecological endgames, and a tangible fear of a zombie apocalypse.

• They are struggling within a culture of glorified busy-ness that separates them from the resources of soul care and life-skills for building intimacy and community.

• They are just plain tired of a churchly set of institutional ways that hold captive and sometimes distort the life-affirming message that has recruited their gaze toward a burning bush.

In turn, these young Christian leaders I encounter cry out for the following:

• Places to be vulnerable. Young leaders repeatedly ask for safe-enough spaces to participate in truth-telling and sharing of stories of failure and disappointment that help them sit with the pain until a new narrative emerges.

• Practices of prayer, meditation, Sabbath, and self-care to sustain them as they try to change the world. (They are not very picky about where these practices come from, but they care a lot that the practices lead to an encounter with mystery.)

• Holding communities of elder and peer mentors who will serve not just as priestly presences as their vocations unfold, but also as prophetic thinking partners and advocates as they learn the hard stuff—like how to navigate power, combat inertia, and dismantle bureaucracy.

A Framework for Imaging the Future In light of these needs and challenges, I seek a way to imagine the future among two conversation partners (Otto Scharmer and Meg Wheatley) and two concepts (“emergence” and “principaled pluralism”). This is a possible way forward for religious leaders and institutions who want to nurture young leaders.

C. Otto Scharmer, senior lecturer at MIT and co-founder of the Presenting Institute, looks at how mindfulness can transform business, society, and self to create a better global future. He calls for leaders across sectors to tap into a deeper level of humanity. Indeed, he says, “accessing our deepest sources of inner wisdom and the traditions that feed them might be the most important leadership capacity today” (Scharmer, 2009, 464).

Scharmer believes that we cannot transform behavior or systems unless we transform the quality of attention that people apply to their actions within those systems, both individually and collectively. Scharmer writes that “pioneering the principles and personal practices that help us perform a shift in awareness from a focus on individual ego systems to a focus on eco-systems—may be one of the most important undertakings of our times” (Scharmer, 2013, 72). Practices of mindfulness and attention that connect us to the deepest longings and hopes of humanity 24

Baker are powerful fuel for action.

Margaret Wheatley, who writes about organizational development, leadership, and change theory, has been influential in a growing community of learners known as “the Art of Hosting.” Her concept of “trans-local learning” describes what happens when “separate, local efforts connect with each other, then grow and transform as people exchange ideas that together give rise to new systems with greater impact and influence” (Wheatley 2013, 28).

Wheatley argues against creating practices/solutions for the purpose of replication; she argues instead for sharing of ideas in networks of support where ever-evolving practices and solutions get generated for particular contexts—all in a spirit of innovation and design more fitting of a natural system than a mechanized world. She writes: “Many of us harbor the hope that if we do a good job and have evidence of our results, our work will spread and create change beyond our initial project or place … such hope places you in the category of saving the world” (Wheatley, 2012, 9).

But what if we look around and—despite all of our good intentions—we don’t see change occurring? Instead we see increased violence, larger gaps between rich and poor, and exacerbating effects of climate change. How, then, are we to feel, think, and go on acting?

Wheatley proposes a subtle shift away from saving the world that, at the same time, moves us more deeply into the contextual pockets in which we find ourselves.

Trans-local learning means increasing attentiveness to the micro while simultaneously bringing new attentiveness to the macro—the systems in which we operate and the dispositions we bring to them.

The culturally embedded practices Wheatley relates in her book Walk Out, Walk On (2011) are practices of play, imagination, and creativity. Wheatley’s work has helped us at FTE ask the question: What if the church is like a old-growth forest, like a complex living system with multiple causes and multiple effects, all taking place simultaneously? This theory holds that the greater access a living system has to itself and its resources, the greater its capacity to heal, to adapt, to adjust.5

The two concepts of emergence and principaled pluralism show how this living systems theory of change points to effective ways for us to lead and teach for sustainable, life-giving, local community in an interconnected and global world.

In his work with multinational leaders from across sectors, Scharmer illuminates the concept of “emergence,” developed in communities experiencing the complex problems resulting from globalization. Scharmer asks, “How do humans respond to the current waves of disruptive change from a deep place that connects us to the emerging future, rather than by reacting against the patterns of the past, which usually means perpetuating them” (Scharmer, 2013).

Scharmer and Wheatley are both informed by religious principles: indeed they echo each other in calling out for tools most faith traditions hold. Emergence draws on those deepest of resources at the heart of our humanity. Can that happen collaboratively, across faith traditions?

“Principled pluralism” is a term coined by a twenty-five-member panel of the 25

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education Aspen Institute’s Inclusive America Project that included religious and thought leaders from across all faith traditions in the United States. Principled pluralism articulates the importance of diverse religious traditions self-defining and disagreeing on matters of theology, while also affirming a deep commitment to pursue the common good together. Without blurring or mitigating religious differences, principled pluralism echoes the scholarship of Harvard’s Robert Putnam that religious diversity can actually be a source of social cohesion (Hill, 2014).

Living systems theory, emergence, and principled pluralism bring into focus the collective challenge of equipping and empowering Moseses and Miriams. Despite their burdens of anxiety and their culture of over-busyness, today’s Moseses and Miriams might connect their life’s passion with a deep spiritual source and become agents of change (as engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, parents, soccer coaches, and Christian ministers) along the way. These perspectives lead me to wonder: What if the young people we know who are sampling from various religious traditions are not doing it merely because they’ve learned to be good consumers at a smorgasbord, but because they’ve had to be wilderness survivors, looking for the sustenance necessary to get them through when spiritual resources seem scarce or inaccessible?

What if a person’s deep investment in a particular religious tradition alongside either a playful exploration or a deeply studious investigation of another tradition is exactly what’s needed if humanity is to find the resources it needs to solve the incredibly complex problems our planet faces?

What if the innovative approaches necessary for healing the world are indeed only possible if diverse populations of different kinds of people fed by varieties of deep sources and ancient traditions share what they learn from within their own micro-communities in the wider marketplace of ideologies, life-ways, and cultural realities?

This reminds me of the many, multiple worlds I navigated between Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur last year. Perhaps it is in those very places—places of messy, complex intertanglings of multiple communities of prayer and action—that humanity is likely to find what it needs for its next evolutionary leap. I believe Christian leaders—the church and its institutions—can help birth processes of discovery in ways that eschew hierarchy, top-down planning, and paternalistic practices in favor of reciprocity, mutuality, and a preferential option for surprise. What if this can be work of delight-filled expectancy, the kind that gets you out of bed in the morning curious for what the day might bring, rather than work filled with dread and focused on decline?

Conclusion: Holding onto Hope This is the perspective from which I view Austin Seminary’s Education Beyond Walls and similar outward-looking faces of education occurring at other theological institutions, church networks, and grassroots collaboratives. Efforts and methods—deeply contextual and particular—create solutions perfectly suited for one 26

Baker context. They enter a vast, digital, virtual sea, where they encounter other contexts and alternative creativities. These mash-ups and re-mixes may result in multiple home-grown solutions, created by and for end-users who draw on one another’s work as ingredients in a wild, holy, creative imagining.

Does nurturing leaders for the Christian church lie at the center of your calling? Imagine for a moment the many vocational rivers you have watched bubble up —from trickling stream to flowing surge—among the students, parishioners, and neighbors whose vocations you have witnessed awakening.

Imagine your list—your version of ten days in the life of campus ministry, seminary teaching, or church leadership. And now imagine it—not just multiplied—but morphed and mutated by those who’ve migrated, carrying with them what they learned from you: how to teach others who teach others to make their own meanings and create their own innovative versions of ancient Christian practices to meet contemporary needs.

In such a light, the church and its institutions might become curators of knowledge, wisdom, and practices that have no beginning and no end. Indeed, they exist for the healing of the world and its people. v NOTES

1. I currently serve as researcher for The Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE), a leadership incubator for the church and theological academy, (www.fteleaders.org). At the time of this reflection, I also served as half-time chaplain at Sweet Briar College, a small, private, all-women’s liberal arts college in Virginia, now closed.

2. Toxic Charity Lupton, R. D. (2011). Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (and How to Reverse It). New York: HarperOne.

3. A simple example of this is the fact that confidence in religious leadership has declined faster than confidence in the leaders of other institutions (Mark Chavez, American Religion: Contemporary Trends, 2011, 78). This, coupled with Pew Research data showing Millenials to be largely driving the growth of the non-religiously affiliated, may contribute to fewer and fewer young adults choosing church-related vocations.

4. Volunteers Exploring Vocation (VEV) is a network of more than eighteen faith-based service organizations where young adults explore the relationship between faith and work during a year of service. fteleaders.org/networks/faith-based-volunteer-organizations

5. With the help of Canadian facilitator Chris Corrigan we at FTE have begun to lead people through an exercise of imagining the different forms of leadership needed in the midst of stages of this living and dying cycle. www.chriscorrigan.org

References

Baker, D. G., 2005. Doing Girlfriend Theology: God-talk with Young Women. Pilgrim Press.

Baker, D. G., 2010. Greenhouses of Hope: Congregations Growing Young Leaders who will Change the World.

Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Borg, M., 2012. Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power -- and How They Can be Restored. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Corrigan, C. Exercises in Seeing the Church as a Living System. www.chriscorrigan.org The Forum for Theological Exploration. www.fteleaders.org

Continued on page 36

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Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education

Our Craft, Our Call The Spiritual Practice of Teaching and Learning

Dean G. Blevins

H

ow do ministers and laity move in their lives from the weariness of Deogratias to the passion of Augustine? Perhaps the beginning to that answer lies in accepting the spiritual discipline and craft involved in both teaching and learning.

This work contemplates the wealth of possibilities in the formation, discernment, and transformation of student and teacher alike.

The Three-Fold Nature of the Craft of Teaching and Learning Three larger domains help to summarize the craft of teaching and learning. These domains interact and intersect during the “dance” of teaching.1 Yet each domain provides enough integrity to help teacher and student alike discover the fullness of the craft set before them.

Formed through our Teaching and Learning Theorists associate formation with the broader life of the participation in the body of Christ.2 Many times, worship serves as the primary backdrop within this formative framework.3 Yet ministers often forget that liturgically formative processes remain embedded within teaching and learning. In Augustine’s day, these practices, often associated with preparation for baptism, generated an explicit form of teaching and learning rich with ritual meaning.4 Today many forms of teaching possess their own “liturgies” within the rhythms of gathering, engaging subjects in regular patterns, and calling each other (teacher and student alike) to mutual accountability. While couched in modern languages of curriculum and methodology, the gathering of students and teacher follow formative patterns that can prove either debilitating or liberating.

Dean Blevins is professor of Christian formation and discipleship at

Nazarene Theological Seminary. The co-author of Discovering Discipleship: The Dynamics of Christian Education, he has contributed to several books and published more than sixty church-related or scholarly articles. He currently serves as an editor of the Horizons in Religious Education book series and is senior editor of Didache: Faithful Teaching, an online academic journal.

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Blevins The “dance” or rhythm between teacher and student flows out of a sense of deference, expectation, engagement, and reflective encounter, all around the demands of what Parker Palmer coins “subject centered” education.5 Inasmuch as this liturgical movement anticipates and honors God within the teaching/learning encounter, one can discern the direction of the Holy Spirit through these practices.

In addition, the learning content, context, and community often liturgically shape the teaching/learning environment. A learning community, following the movements of the Holy Spirit, creates moments of celebration in light of the insights received, whether from the teacher, content, or classmates. Yet the same learning community often finds itself conforming to the demands of the subject it studied, submitting to the wisdom of God found through the measured claims that surface from their engagement and interaction. Whether in praise or obedience, teachers and learners follow the rhythms within the subjects taught. They encounter each other in open, caring environments of engagement, the depth of learning shapes and forms their lives beyond simple content mastery.

Discerning God and God’s Creation through Teaching and Learning While the craft of teaching provides a formative process, the mutual engagement of teacher and learner together also invites a journey into discernment. Often couched in the language of critical inquiry, the process of teaching and learning entails a critical but also creative engagement with the subject at hand. Enlightenment models often place the knower at the center of this journey, adjudicating the worth of material studied based on human capability and a-priori assumptions of truth as certainty. However, when guided by the Holy Spirit, the process of discernment involves a different, more tenuous, search for truth, one found in the wisdom of God. Surveying the history of spiritual discernment, Mark McIntosh notes five basic movements that begins in faith, then moral judgment, practical living, pursing God in all things, and then contemplative awareness that God facilitates knowledge of every kind of truth.6 McIntosh’s description of the search for God moves from a personal encounter to a larger horizon of discovering God in and through the whole of creation and the funded experience, the wisdom, of those others along the same journey.

The movement of discernment does entail critical judgment in that the teaching process must be able to name evil as well as good, excess as well as moderation, unhealthy desires as well as the desire for God. Within spiritual traditions, teacher and learner alike may well embrace apophatic (image denying) perspectives, acknowledging that no one source of knowledge fully discloses the fullness of God nor God’s intent in and through creation.7 However, those same teaching and learning moments may creatively seek those kataphatic (image filling) revelations that expose teacher and learner alike to the possibilities of God shining through the occasions of insight and wonder.8 As teachers and learners gather under the direction of the Holy Spirit, they may find that their journey through many subjects still leads back to the revealed Word of God, to Jesus Christ, as the source of knowledge and truth in and through creation (Col. 1).

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Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education Transforming Ourselves … and Others … with Teaching and Learning Often educators speak of transformation as a process of converting experience, or the previous insights of others published in texts, into personal knowledge. In theological education practitioners often focus on a particular transformation of persons. Educators with this understanding often embrace Bernard of Clairvaux’s depiction of the goal of learning for personal good. Rather than learning for the sake of idle curiosity, vain recognition, or personal profit, Clairvaux argues that learning should be for service and moral wisdom since those two goals enable learners to do good for others.9

One might go so far as to say the teaching/learner encounter transforms both teacher and student. Yet, transformation means so much more when knowledge leads to a different end, involving systems and places within God’s creation. Knowledge occurs when teacher and learner engage, together, in transformative acts in and through their world. These acts often prove liberative for persons held in myriad forms of bondage, empowering for those on the margins of society, redemptive in the midst of broken lives and systems. Transformative teaching and learning occurs in and through compassionate expressions of peace and justice, often freeing teachers and learners of their own bonds of power and deference, for the sake of others and God’s good creation.10 Educational programs may reduce such acts to ministry courses or service-learning projects. However, teachers and learners need to see these practices more as servant-living than service-learning. Knowledge never exists strictly for personal gain. Instead, knowledge, even transformative knowledge, leads to a stewardship of learning. The learner finds himself or herself obliged to embrace the role of teacher. The teacher finds himself or herself indebted to the gifts of others, including the students they encounter.

Transformative learning calls one particularly to embrace of the cruciform nature of Christ, discovering that personal insight always exists for the sake of compassionate sharing. In this dance of teaching and learning, often in places of need or bondage, participants discover a sacramental awareness that God may be found in the broken and hidden aspects of life.11 That compassion reveals the “other” as the very face of God. Such moments often occur when teacher and learner alike participate in acts of ministry, compassionate projects and prophetic stances for the sake of justice. While often difficult to replicate within formal environments of education, compassionate acts that transform others remind teacher and learner alike that the craft of teaching always pushes participants beyond any consumeroriented culture and beyond personal endeavor, to a place where knowledge remains a gift of grace, one given to be shared.

Our Call: Toward Love To this point the writing merely suggests the range of possibilities that influence the craft of teaching and learning. However, what calls people to this craft? One might remain uncertain of the goal, or “end” of this spiritual discipline to which God calls us. Many practitioners in the field have sought to answer this question.

For some, the end implies a deepening of “faith” as the primary task of teaching 30

Blevins and learning.12 Other writers stress the deepening of knowledge of the “other” and “ourselves” through a mutual deepening of the communal relationship and our personal awareness. Other educators posit the awakening of meaning and creative possibilities that engender new actions and activities. Finally, theorists also suggest that the goal of teaching and learning proves primarily emancipatory, freeing the oppressed and repairing our world.

I suspect all of these goals remain true inasmuch as they begin in God’s grace, remain disciplined through the cruciformed character of Christ, and continue, guided by the Holy Spirit. All such goals seem resident within the domains described and practices named. All such goals remain worthy, true, even beautiful in their invitation. So none of these goals should be seen as insufficient since they often rest within the Christian story, and engender lives worthy of the gospel (Ephesians 4: 1-3). Perhaps, out of my own tradition, the Anglican/Methodist pastor John Wesley might say “holiness.”13 Returning to our Bishop, Augustine, I am fairly sure he would say the goal of the craft of teaching must be “love.” Love of God, love of neighbor, love of creation, and love of new creation in Christ. In and through our teaching and learning, together, by the power of the Holy Spirit, may it be so. v NOTES

1. Maria Harris, Women and Teaching (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 13-16.

2. C. Ellis Nelson, ed. Congregations: Their Power to Form and Transform (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988).

3. Debra Dean Murphy, Teaching That Transforms: Worship as the Heart of Christian Education (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004), 97-219; James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009).

4. William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 79-299.

5. Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 2nd Edition (San Francisco: Jossey Bass), 104-109.

6. Mark McIntosh, Discernment and Truth: The Spirituality and Theology of Knowledge (New York: Herder and Herder, Crossroads Publishing 2004), 5.

7. Urban T. Holmes, A History of Christian Spirituality: An Analytic Introduction (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 3-11.

8. Stratford Caldecott, Beauty for Truth’s Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 1999).

9. Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermon 36” in On the Song of Songs II, trans. Kilian Walsh (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1976), 176.

10. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, revised (New York: Continuum, 2003)

11. Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore, Teaching as a Sacramental Act (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2004), 91-119.

12. Richard Osmer, Teaching For Faith: A Guide to Teachers of Adult Classes (Louisville, WJKP 1992).

13. Karen Marie Yust and E. Byron Anderson, Taught by God: Teaching and Spiritual Formation (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2006), 105-109.

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Pastors’ Panel

We asked religious leaders about their experience with theological teaching and learning. Here is what they told us.

Experts say the church is undergoing a major shift, involving significant tensions. What do you see in your congregation as barriers to theological teaching and learning?

Andy Odom, pastor, Canyon Creek Presbyterian Church, Richardson, Texas Anti-intellectualism: One barrier is people either clinging to what they already know or have learned theologically and, in the midst of a changing world, resisting being challenged to rethink a known faith. Time: I see young families, my own included, stretched and scattered so much that they can barely get through the day. Good theological learning takes time, and we don’t know where to find that time.

Michele Goff, designated pastor, Aztec Presbyterian Church, Aztec, New Mexico The biggest barrier I have witnessed is communication. At some point we forgot how to use words carefully and clearly and how to listen when another is speaking.

I believe our strength comes when we can share personal stories and learn from another’s experience. When we remember that we can be different and still love and be loved by God, than the doors to theological learning are wide open.

Each new historical era involves the recession of the past and the emergence of the future. What new ways are you observing your congregation getting knowledge for growth in faith?

Emily Béghin, resident minister, First Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor has been very proactive in equally including all stages of faith formation in worship and committee decisions. Upon confirmation, our youth are asked to join several committees including our deacons and elders groups. There is much to be learned and gained by being in community with those of all generations.

Andy Odom One thing we are now doing quite often is to connect sermon series with small group curriculum. We plan out the series and write curriculum for small groups and/or Sunday morning classes to go along with it, allowing the whole congregation to be part of the conversation in multiple places in the church. My staff also mentioned that, even in a typical Bible study, we have found crossover between 32

Pastors’ Panel modern and postmodern thinkers within the same group to be very engaging. Most have their foot in both worlds and don’t know it.

Where do you and your congregation find wonder?

Andy Odom We continue to find wonder in music and in surprising moments in worship, particularly through our thriving youth choir, a rarity. Part of why that is, I think, has to do with the diversity of music they offer, from truly haunting sound to upbeat and raucous. I would also say that, for us, we find wonder in the community of our small group ministry, which is fairly large, and has become a substitute for the typical Sunday morning class. Again and again, I hear from people in the church that it is in their small group that they discuss the most important parts of their lives.

Michele Goff I have just begun my call with Aztec Presbyterian. We are finding wonder in each other! Aztec has been a congregation for more than 125 years, and they have some traditions that go all the way back to the beginning. As a new graduate, I bring ideas that I have experienced and learned from my years in worship and community. We are in discussion and wonder together investigating why we do the things we do and what ideas we might implement together to help renew our wonder for all the seasons of the church calendar.

Emily BĂŠghin One of the ways First Presbyterian has invited our youth to realize the depths of their own faith is through multi-generational mission trips. It is on these missions that we most deeply discover what it is to be in Christ with one another. Adults and youth alike learn from each other as equals and grow together in their experiences on these trips. The connection between the generations is founded upon faith and the shared experiences in Christ.

What social issues would you want your congregation to know more about?

What theological issues?

Andy Odom I think the greatest theological issue we face as a society today is money. Not just generosity, but money. It permeates everything we do, and it continues to be a tough subject to talk about with any freedom. We place a huge percentage of our identity in it.

Michele Goff One of our dreams is that we might come to more greatly resemble the community that we inhabit. In the extreme northwest corner of New Mexico, we are surrounded by a land that is rich in culture and by people who have a wide range of 33

Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education experiences and talents. We are searching for ways that our gathering at the Lord’s Table will include a greater diversity of our neighbors and be more inviting and welcoming to those who may have felt excluded in the past. Theologically we know that they come from east and west, north and south to be at table with the Lord, but practically, we are seeking ways to experience this reality.

How would you like to see the seminary address the needs of your congregation?

Emily Béghin This church in particular is located in the most educated city in the nation. The congregation consists of enthusiastic learners in all stages of life. We appreciate seminars, experiences, and conversations that serve to enrich our understandings of God and the world we live in. Austin Seminary is filled with students and faculty who strive to always remain current and active in their education and understanding of society and how the church exists within it; First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor also shares this enthusiasm. The seminary could make a significant impact by taking a proactive approach to connect to our congregation through visitation, skype, email, and publications.

What role has the seminary played in your own and your congregation’s formal or informal theological education?

Emily Béghin Since 2001, First Presbyterian has been a host to several classes of Lily Residents.

Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary has had many graduates continue on to grow, learn, and share their talents and skills with this church. Each resident minister has a hand in planning and carrying out lessons and classes in our many Faith Formation programs including youth, young adults, mature ministries, children’s ministries, and more. I can confidently say that Austin Seminary has truly had a significant impact on the way that I perceive and do ministry.

Michele Goff The seminary is the cornerstone of my theological education. Not only was seminary the most challenging years of schooling I have ever faced, but I now have a masters degree in divinity. I’ve studied two biblical languages. I have studied for many long hours what it means to be Reformed. Over the summer, I have experienced how my natural inclination to be a calming influence has blossomed under the guidance of seminary education so that I now feel like more of a peacemaker. I still have much to learn, but I am equipped with colleagues and mentors who will continue to guide me as we work together for the good of God’s people. My members at Aztec trust that the seminary has prepared me well and provided me with resources so I can continue to grow. v

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Required Reading Books recommended by the Austin Seminary faculty Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious, Linda A. Mercadante, New York:

not believe what they perceived to be the essential doctrines of Christianity, Judaism, or another religion. The SBNR discomfort or rejection of dogma cut across generational lines, from the silent generation to millenials.

Mercadante heard several common themes from her research participants. SBNRs rejected the notion that the claims of one religion were superior to the claims made by another religion. (This sort of non-exclusivism is reminiscent of the thought of John Hick.) Most of her study participants asserted that, at root, all religions were the same. Most of her interviewees had moved away from the concept of a personal God who is involved in the world as affirmed in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. God was understood as a vital energy or impersonal force (The Universe), not a God who is intimate with human beings.

SBNRs regularly experimented with Eastern practices like yoga, reiki, and meditation. Interviewees felt completely free to take a practice and remove it from its cultural-religious underpinnings. Thus, interviewees thought it was acceptable to practice sitting meditation without buying in to Buddhist notions of the self or the human condition, a procedure that scholars call de-traditioning. Almost all took the position that human nature is essentially good. They also asserted that what is true for me may not be true for you.

Mercadante found that her interviewees were suspicious of being part of a spiritual or religious community, because community engagement implied giving up one’s freedom in order to conform to a group’s ongoing expectations, including worrying about someone other than one’s self. Regarding the afterlife, many participants affirmed some version of multiple lives or reincarnation. For participants, another life meant another opportunity for self-development. At several points, Mercadante notes the

Oxford University Press, 2014, 323 pages, $29.95 (also available in Kindle and Nook editions). Reviewed by Timothy D. Lincoln, Director of the Stitt Library, Austin Seminary.

T

here is a stunning range of opinion among scholars about the definition of religion. For Emile Durkheim, religion was par excellence an expression of group feeling. For William James, religion was what a person believed in the inner sanctuary of her heart. Many Americans now consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious” or SBNR. Linda Mercadante, a Presbyterian theologian teaching in Ohio, has written a splendid book based on interviews with more than ninety people who identify as SBNR. The SBNR crowd clearly agrees with James against Durkheim. This book fascinated me for three reasons. First, it honors the diversity of views expressed by SBNRs by listening carefully to their spiritual journeys and their accounts of what they believe and do not believe. Second, Mercadante helpfully summarizes results and interprets them in conversation with traditional Christian categories (such as sin) and recent social science literature on religious experience. Thirdly, she draws suitably modest conclusions for scholars of religion and for the churches.

Mercadante found that almost none of her study participants were directly abused by anyone representing organized religion, unless hearing a spirited sermon about heaven and hell counts as abuse.

Rather, interviewees’ choices to not identify with any religion (or to blend aspects of several religions into a unique set of personal spiritual practices and ideas) were based on the conclusion that they did

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Outposts of Wonder in Theological Education human nature.) While Mercadante notes that many SBNR views seem to be reactions against the worst versions of religion available or broad-brush condemnations of religion in general, she demonstrates that SBNRs do have a working theology, albeit a distinctively American, antiauthoritarian and therapeutic one.

Readers wanting to move beyond simple headlines about increasing numbers of “nones” and SBNRs will be well-served by carefully reading Mercadante’s work.

Persons of faith may also wince, as I did, when reading many participants talk about how liberal Protestant ministers affirmed their doubts or disagreements with received Christian beliefs but did not encourage doubters to think more deeply about the church’s theological heritage. Perhaps the only believing that is robust enough to satisfy the hungry heart turns out to be belief with borders. v

contradictions and inconsistencies in the hybrid belief systems espoused by many of her interviewees. Most of her study participants were untroubled by such inconsistency because they affirmed (perhaps above all else) their willingness to be open to the next new practice or idea that would move them forward in their restless quest to actualize the divinity within themselves.

In a concluding chapter, Mercadante suggests implications from her research for the study of religion and for the churches.

She notes that Protestantism, which frequently encourages critical thinking and the honoring of doubt, needs to do a better job of articulating that Christianity is about far more than celebrating individual growth or social betterment. (Most of her interviewees did not think that social activism made much sense, despite their affirmation of the essential goodness of

Letting Go Continued from page 14 overview, visit www.presencing.com/theoryu.

3. Many seminaries and other institutions have designed elegant and effective programs to meet the needs of practicing clergy and lay people who seek deeper learning or particular development or training. The Association of Leaders in Lifelong Learning in Ministry, the heir of SACEM, serves to resource the field.

Moseses Continued from page 27 Hill, A., 2014. Principled Pluralism: The Challenge of Religious Diversity in 21st-Century America. The Huffington Post (Oct. 21, 2014). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eboo-patel/principled-pluralismreli_b_3530332.html Reed-Danahay, D., 1997. Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. New York: Bloomsberry Academic Scharmer, C.O., 2009. Theory U: Leading From the Future as it Emerges. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Pub Scharmer, C.O. & K. Kaufer, 2013. Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-system to Eco-system Economics. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Pub. Wheatley, M., 2012. So Far From Home: Lost and Found in Our Brave New World. San Francisco: BerrettKoehler Pub. Wheatley, M. 2011. Walk Out, Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Pub.

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AUSTIN PRESBYTERIAN

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Theodore J. Wardlaw, President

Board of Trustees Thomas L. Are Jr., Chair James C. Allison Karen C. Anderson Whitney Bodman Janice Bryant (MDiv’01, DMin’11) Claudia D. Carroll Elizabeth Christian Joseph J. Clifford James B. Crawley Katherine Cummings (MDiv’05) Consuelo Donahue (MDiv’96) Jackson Farrow Jr. G. Archer Frierson Richard D. Gillham Walter Harris Jr. John S. Hartman Ann E. Herlin (MDiv’01)

Rhashell Hunter Roy M. Kim James H. Lee (MDiv’00) Lyndon L. Olson Jr. B. W. Payne David Peeples Jeffrey Kyle Richard Lana Russell Lita Simpson Anne Vickery Stevenson Karl Brian Travis John L. Van Osdall Sallie Sampsell Watson (MDiv’87) Carlton Wilde Jr. Elizabeth Currie Williams Hugh H. Williamson III

Trustees Emeriti Stephen A. Matthews, Max Sherman, Louis H. Zbinden Jr.

Fall 2015

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THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

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PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGI C AL

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