A Community of Scholars for the Church's Teaching Ministry: A Vision for Flourishing at SPCE's 50th Anniversary

Introduction

“Christianity is not instinctive to anyone, nor is it picked up casually without effort. It is a faith that has to be learned, and therefore taught, and so some sort of systematic instruction (catechumenate) is an essential part of a church's life.” ∼J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ (p. xii)

Members, stakeholders, and friends of our beloved Society, I am very pleased to deliver this word to you as I complete my term of office as President. More significantly, it is a distinct honor to properly mark this occasion of seventy years since the conception and annual gathering of our community, and fifty years since our organization was formally chartered. I offer this address to you as your fellow sojourner in the ministry and field of Christian education. ¹

Our Little Society

Throughout his “imaginative supposal,” The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis (1946/2001) compels the honest reader to reckon with a looming question: “What would be your reason for turning down heaven?” Lewis imagines at least one person who turns down heaven with an appeal to a community jarringly akin to ours. The character known as the “Episcopal Ghost” is on the threshold of heaven, and he is being invited in. But against the pleading of his friend and former colleague on earth (who is now a “bright spirit” in Heaven), the Episcopal Ghost suddenly remembers that he has a current research presentation on his schedule that must take precedence. “Happiness … lies in the path of duty. Which reminds me … Bless my soul, I’d nearly forgotten. Of course I can’t come with you. I have to be back next Friday to read a paper. We have a little Theological Society down there. Oh yes! there is plenty of intellectual life” (p. 43).

The Society of Professors in Christian Education has plenty of intellectual life. Preserving the existence and future of our little Society down here, though, is no excuse for bypassing heaven. So, while we are “down here,” we should gather as members of this scholarly guild around a common longing for the time when we gather as members of one race comprised of “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9). After all, it's that longing that brings us together in the first place.

I should delay no longer to say, as has been said before and will be said again, that the greatest encouragement in all the work that the SPCE Board of Directors and staff do for this organization is to share real time and space together with you at our annual conference each autumn. We are truly blessed to stand alongside you as members of this society, and we are honored that you choose to invest your own time, energy, and resources to make this a meaningful and God-glorifying fellowship.

In the early fall term of 2017, I was nominated to serve as President by James R. Estep, Jr., and was elected by the board. Addressing the 2017 annual conference in Dallas in my acceptance remarks, I said,

As a leader, and in community with the SPCE board, members, and stakeholders, I’m committed to three things: to biblical confessionalism, to the irreducibility of teaching as the central means of accomplishing the Great Commission, and to the necessity of positioning our guild to serve and beautify our churches and schools relevantly and redemptively—because we are in the world in the here and now, for the sake of Christ and his eternal kingdom.

Who SPCE Is

The Society of Professors in Christian Education is a society centrally comprised of professors—but also welcoming scholars, graduate students, and practitioners—who are devoted to teaching and leading in the broad-ranging field and ministry of Christian education. But while we are a society of people who gather according to a common vocational identity that we share as colleagues, what is even more basic to our fellowship is the identity we share as brothers and sisters. And this must not be lost on us. Our conference theme for our fiftieth anniversary year, Teaching for Redemptive Flourishing, serves as an emphatic reminder about the missional identity of the Society of Professors in Christian Education—past, present, and future.

Our society is essentially what may be called a conference organization. That is to say, most of the time that one thinks of SPCE is when one is attending (or planning to attend) SPCE. But let us be clear: we do not exist for the sake of a conference, and we do not gather merely because we share a common affinity. We exist for the sake of Christ's bride, and we gather because we share a common vocational motivation to see her built up in love (Eph. 4:16).

By conviction and calling, therefore, we affirm the centrality of teaching (didaskalia) as the church's primary means of pursuing discipleship, according to the Great Commission (see Trentham, 2021). We also affirm that the essential outcome of Christian teaching must be both vertical and horizontal, according to the Great Commandment. As we prepare men and women to serve churches, ministries, and communities wherever they may be “sent into the world” (John 17:18), we are responsible to equip them to teach and lead according to the mission of God, on earth as it is in heaven, “so that the world may know” (John 17:20–23).

The redemptive significance of our society has always been and must always be rooted in the vocational calling, ideal, and labor of Christian education as the church's teaching ministry.

Christian education as a vocational calling is predicated on the truth that God is building his church, against whom the gates of hell will not prevail (Matt. 16:18).

SPCE was founded-as and remains committed to being a confessional-evangelical organization (see Starr, 2005; see *note), by God's grace. We are so unapologetically. We are so convictionally. We are so humbly. To be clear, we are not “voting block” evangelical—we are classically evangelical, which is to say Good News evangelical. Which is to say genuinely, evangelically evangelical.

This is certainly not to say that we are theologically or doctrinally monolithic. This is to say that we are bound together, not first and foremost by the specialties of our professional and academic discipline, but by the convictional belief and hope of our gospel confession. This is to say that as an organization, our whole existence is predicated upon our responsibility, as Christian educators, to uphold and defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3)—as those who are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ (Rom. 1:16). And so, there is significance and power in our gathering together; but it is not a power contrived according to what we bring to the table as professors and practitioners in a particular academic field. It is not a contrived power according to our common affinity as teachers and educators and leaders. It is, rather, most essentially, a power and significance of a fellowship of believers gathered in the name of the Lord, who agree that we are committed to pacing and laboring alongside each other in the here and now, as we press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:13–14).

SPCE's Calling

I recently heard Marilynne Robinson say, in an interview, “In America, we have religion all over the place, but I’m afraid it's not, in many cases, the genuine article … I would make that bold critique on the basis of the fact that it does not reinforce a generous, hopeful, reverent attitude toward other people.” (Robinson, Williams, & Marr, 2020). Lamentably, I think she is right. Ethically, I would say that this very lamentable milieu is precisely why our scholarly community exists, and why it must exist. As an “ecumenical and evangelical” (ref. Jones, 2014, pp. 4–9) fellowship, doctrinal generosity, charity, and collegiality are axiomatic to our existence and calling. Ours is a fellowship without “corners.” SPCE is not a place where we focus on the distinctives that separate us, but the convictions that unite us —in all our diversity—as Great Commission teachers, who long to encourage people in the everlasting way (Psa. 139:24).

Augustine (1999) says, “A person is at his best when in his whole life he strives towards the unchangeable form of life and holds fast to it wholeheartedly” (p. 17). Christian education, i.e., the ministry of Christian teaching, is the intentional facilitation of redemptive learning in gathered church contexts, by the means of Scripture and doctrine, unto discipleship (see Trentham, 2021). As such, its perennial endeavor is to unite the church in holding fast to the unchangeable truth of the gospel together in community, so that all believers may be equipped with discernment and wisdom to be ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20) in every aspect and phase of their lives.

Our pedagogical task, therefore, is not merely to impart a knowledge of God that leads to a deeper awareness of his truth (though it is never less than that!), but a knowledge of God that engenders a deeper motivation to walk in his truth, with “powers of discernment trained by constant practice” (Heb. 5:14). Necessarily then, an intrinsic element of our task is to prepare and equip disciples of Christ to leverage every endeavor—every vocation, every calling—of their lives unto the Kingdom.

Here is an encapsulation of the calling and vision of Christian ministry, by Tom Wright (1997), that applies to us in the Society of Professors of Christian Education in a particularly profound way:

… our calling, therefore, as those who celebrate [Christ's] strange and beautiful coming, is once again to be a voice. The church is here to be the Voice to the world; the Voice that does not claim great things for itself, but simply urges the world to get ready for the God who comes in the power and judgment of love. We are to live, and we are to speak, in such a way as to do for our generation, more or less, what John [the apostle] did for his: to demonstrate and to announce that there is a different way of being human, the way of love, the way of God, and so to bring to the world the news (good news for the weary, bad news for the bullies) that the creator of the world is also the comforter of the world. (p. 49–50)

SPCE's Mission

The vocational mission of Christian teaching is to facilitate learning that appeals to the love of knowing what is truly wise, so the body of Christ may increasingly grow in the motivation and capacity to love doing what is truly wise (see Trentham, 2021). The sacred responsibility of Christian teaching ministry is to serve as an instrument in the Spirit's work of renewing the minds of God's people (Rom. 12:2) so that they flourish in the gospel in every dimension of their lives. By divine design and by biblical mandate, the church's institutional integrity relies upon faithful practitioners who labor faithfully in Christian teaching ministry. Local churches are called to pursue the Great Commission as communities of saints who are (1) united by common adopted sonship, (2) maturing together in biblical vision unto wisdom, and (3) living as Kingdom citizens together, in the world.

It must never be lost on us that the ministry of Christian teaching is the ministry of unifying the body of Christ. I really appreciate how Beth Jones has reminded us that in our professorial roles, “our teaching should serve as mortar that joins our students together” (Jones, 2021). The ministry of Christian teaching should likewise be the mortar that joins together “living stones (who) are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5).

The church's teachers must be those who selflessly invest their calling, character, and competence in the lives of all the redeemed who gather to understand God's truth, with confidence that this investment will yield a people who live as the manifestation of Christ. I’m often reminded of Kevin Lawson's (2001) pithy and profound definition of Christian education: “an effort to encourage people to gain an authentic relationship with God” (p. 17). It is crucial that Lawson ties the word encourage to the task of educational ministry. The vocational-missional mandate of Christian teaching ministry is thus to animate and strengthen the innermost affection of believers to “understand and know” God, so that the body of Christ may practice God's “steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth” (Jer. 9:23–24).

This is why the Society of Professors in Christian Education exists. We exist to encourage the body of Christ, the church. Here I must say, however, that I believe our duty to encourage entails a duty to confront, when necessary.

In our work together, I believe our society must confront the epistemological epidemic of momentary fixation that cripples and distorts the biblical vision of a life well lived, and mocks the biblical vision life everlasting. The highest forces of our late modern culture inundate us constantly with the siren call to fixate our attention on the trivial and orient our affection toward the momentary. We are all conditioned to live our best lives now, and none of us, in the West at least, live outside of this socio-ethical laboratory. In an overtly Pavlovian way, our smart phones (just one lab instrument) reward us for doing so habitually, and train us for being so compulsively. It is such a sad irony that, in our information and technology age, so many people live under the illusion of their own individual authenticity and freedom, while their souls are largely shaped and directed by an appetite for consuming immediately-digestible bits of information that are not selected by them but curated for them—to lure them unsuspectingly, increasingly, into a false pretense of personal meaning and social belonging.

Moreover, our society must confront the epistemological epidemic of anti-reflective, anti-contemplative, anti-empathetic, anti-discerning, anti-affectionate, and anti-devotional forms of thinking and communicating that infects both the church and the larger society; forms of thinking and communicating that capitulate to a robotic rather than a redemptive anthropology; forms of thinking that reinforce our myopic tribalisms and train us to objectify and sneer at our neighbors, often beginning with our closest neighbors, fellow children of Christ.

Of all societies, ours must be the standout exemplar for the collaborative study, research, and development of resources to guide the church in learning together, to be flourishing branches of the Flourishing Vine in the world, thus “proving” to be Christ's disciples (ref. John 15:8). We will do this, by God's grace, by focusing all our energy, creativity, and expertise toward the central redemptive ethic of Christian teaching: (1) Confessing the Lordship of Christ, (2) abiding together in the love of Christ, and (3) bearing fruit for the Kingdom of Christ (see Trentham, 2021).

SPCE's Future

Much of the reason I have been so energized to serve SPCE as a member, trustee, and officer, is because I believe God creates and sustains institutions to be uniquely creative and redemptive. So long as God's sees fit to preserve our institution, I believe SPCE has special redemptive-creative power and potential. Some of our potential has been realized for generations, and we should celebrate, honor, and build upon that. Some of our potential is latent, and we must seek to materialize and manifest it. Some of our potential is currently locked away—and we must unlock it.

To this end, I would like to propose Ten Ideals for a Flourishing Community of Scholars devoted to the Church's Teaching Ministry. Again, these are not abstract and conceptual ideals intended merely to garner reflection and affirmation, but ethical ideals intended to anticipate action and practice. That is to say, I propose and I believe that if SPCE truly intends to serve and beautify our churches and schools relevantly and redemptively for the next fifty years—the active and strategic pursuit of these ideals is incumbent upon on us.

[Confessional ideal] SPCE must gather around a confessional identity and mission that affirms the authority and sufficiency of scripture, historic Christian orthodoxy as contained in the church's creeds, and Protestant-evangelical doctrinal distinctives.

Conclusion

Throughout our history, members of this scholarly community have been steadfastly committed to sharpening one another in our calling and mission as professors of Christian education, namely as those entrusted to teach the art and practice of facilitating learning unto redemptive formation and discipleship. May God keep us faithfully devoted to him, so that our labor is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). And if he so pleases and tarries, may the Society of Professors in Christian Education exist and flourish for another fifty years—to focus our motivations and sharpen our competencies, that we would be ever more faithful and excellent in serving our students, institutions, and congregations.

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. (2 Thess. 2:16–17)