29 March, 2024

A Delicate, Durable Relationship

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by | 1 April, 2007 | 0 comments

By Paul E. Boatman

Feeling Strains, Baptist Colleges Cut Church Ties.” The July 22, 2006, New York Times headline drew me into a report noting “a half-dozen colleges and universities whose ties with state Baptist conventions have been severed in the last four years” and “more than a dozen Southern Baptist universities . . . have ended affiliations over the last two decades.” These partings are described as sometimes “amicable,” but often “tense, even bitter.” With no sense of smugness, I observed this just does not happen among the schools affiliated with the Christian churches. I wondered why.

It would be foolish to claim there is never tension between Christian colleges and their supporting constituency. In a lifetime of involvement with higher education among the Christian churches, I have observed academicians in a variety of disagreements with other church leaders. The lengthy list of topics for dissension includes the perception of orthodoxy, leadership style, preaching style, worship style, spiritual gifts, educational philosophy, cultural patterns such as hair and dress codes, as well as the occasional encounter over “control.”

Although few such disputes draw attention amid the larger church landscape, they have occasionally at least approached rancor. Yet never has a school that has been founded with a primary and widespread constituency among the independent Christian churches chosen to sever ties with those churches. I suggest three reasons for this lack of division:

Ecclesiology

Christian churches have started a host of parachurch organizations, including colleges, universities, and seminaries, but we see all relationships as voluntary covenants under the lordship of Christ. This churchmanship does not lend itself to the kind of political power conflicts that are more common among more tightly connectional or hierarchical denominations. Christian churches” approach to relationship sees the church as Christ”s body in both local and global manifestation, but parachurch organizations are simply servants of the church.

It appears to this writer the conferences, synods, state conventions, etc., that make the decisions of so many faith groups are really just parachurch organizations that have assumed they are the empowered church. Therefore, the battles to which the Times article refers are really fraternal battles between parachurch organizations.

If a Christian college presumes to speak for all of the Christian churches, it soon finds out if it is truly representative or simply out of touch. The freely associating churches seem to be able to speak clearly. If a local leader or parachurch organization presumes the right to dictate to a school on a major issue, the lightly organized, but highly verbal constituency of both entities is ready to note when boundaries have been violated. No person or hierarchical organization is empowered to tell a school, “You cannot be part of “˜us” any more.”

Hermeneutics

Christian churches have a variety of modes of interpreting Scripture, but a basic unity in approach to the Bible persists: The Bible is perceived to be the Word of God! Nuances and theological debates have great import, but the wider consensus will not allow the poles of the debates to become the norm.

Hence, a position of disrespect and antagonism toward Scripture in the manner common in many academic communities is never long tolerated in Christian church schools. The school, as a servant of the church, deals with the problem internally. A position of pharisaic-style presumption that “I know the only way” to interpret Scripture receives a similar rebuff.

Thus, the strident debates over such themes as neoorthodoxy or inerrancy may have split denominations and fractured or isolated institutions, but among the Christian churches and their schools, the themes have been cause for discussion only.

Philosophy of Education

Christian church schools are diverse in many ways, but show consistency in educational philosophy. Every school sees equipping people for ministry as a primary reason for being.

Divergent callings develop as schools respond to needs and opportunities before them, but the concern for ministry is a tether uniting the most diverse liberal arts college with the most focused Bible institute or preacher-training academy.

Further, the above-mentioned hermeneutic demands that biblical standards of relationship take precedence over even such hallowed themes as academic freedom and tenure.

Some Caveats

There is no joy in watching pain and alienation among other fellowships and their schools. Nor is there any place for arrogance, just because our own group has averted such disasters. Vulnerabilities in our context could produce comparable critical events.

Provincialism often undercut strategic educational development during the past century. Bible colleges called into being as “centers of evangelism” frequently fostered new church development and prepared leadership ministry for those churches. The pattern helped make Christian churches a “force to be reckoned with” in areas where such churches previously were dying or nonexistent.

However, church and parachurch growth may reach the stage where the college no longer serves its initial strategic purpose. If the school has not expanded beyond its initial narrow focus, provincial pride may be its rallying cry. Such provincialism occasionally sees “our school” as the only really faithful school and disparages the success of those schools that continue to grow, exhibiting greater diversity in programming.

In an era of accessible transportation and electronic communication, some questions must be raised: Is the existence of two or three similarly purposed schools in close proximity based on strategic stewardship or provincialism? When a school is in a perpetual cycle of financial crises, small enrollment, and accreditation challenges, the church may be tacitly calling for the school”s closure. Among our people, it requires greater courage to close a school than to open one.

A related danger may spring from Christian church ecclesiology: Indepen-dence sometimes fosters a failure to look at the big picture, to see through “kingdom eyes.” If demographics were considered in establishing schools, the placement and distribution of Christian church-related schools would almost certainly be different from the present reality.

God”s providence seems to have blessed the placement of many schools, but institutions intended to serve regions where Christian churches are not numerous are typically underfunded and often ill-equipped for their task. Unless the fellowship chooses to affirm the ministry of such schools as a part of “big picture” thinking, such schools will continue to struggle.

A third danger occasionally manifests itself when particular individuals, parachurch groups, or associations exploit the loose connectional system of Christian churches and become like self-appointed bishops. Such persons may use unscriptural means such as threats, indirect verbal assaults, and unfair critiques to influence or even undermine schools they see as vulnerable. Healthy skepticism within and outside of academia is an asset to the educational and equipping process, but self-righteousness fosters a cynicism that destroys the healthy community of inquiry essential to a lively educational environment.

In summary, God has blessed the offerings Christian churches have given to him in the form of Christian colleges and seminaries. There are sound reasons for the freedom from the kind of antagonism that has infected church/school relationships in other faith groups. If the academic arm of the Stone-Campbell Movement is to contribute in coming generations, the schools must posture themselves as servants to the healthiest dimensions of the church, and the fellowship needs to be kingdom-oriented in support of the schools.


 

 

Paul Boatman is dean of Lincoln (Illinois) Christian Seminary.

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