I often hear seminary being compared with the “real world.” Usually it is contrasted with one or another “worlds” – of parish ministry, of the dire fortunes of the mainline denomination, with the world of business, of leadership education, of secular media culture. The underlying assumption is that the theological school is insulated from reality, out of touch, even deluded. What is required is for the institution to figure out what the real world needs and supply it. Often, the church as a whole receives this same criticism.
My experience belies this contrast. What I see is that most everything we grapple with in community in the theological school: interpreting scripture, planning worship, communicating financial policies, dealing with dogs swimming in the pool, cooperatively working with board, administration, and faculty, has something to teach us and our students about Christian leadership in the world. How do we negotiate among different interests and prioritize different goods? How do our values inform our decisions and our process of making them?
As Christians we believe that both the seminary and the church are the real world. It’s a world we are shown in scripture and tradition; we choose it; with the help of the Spirit, we build and maintain it. We don’t make it up out of nothing, but we keep making it. We fail and begin again.
The real world that is the church is intentional and meaningful, not accidental or meaningless. Leaders for this real world are faithful: they trust God and are worthy of trust. They are imaginative: they can take, make, and remake tradition. They are skilled at vision, at communication, at negotiation, and at building community.
Those of us who stake our lives in seminary and in church believe, however crazy it sounds, that the thoughtless, unintentional world longs for the real world of the church. We owe it to the world to be the church.
How is your Christian community the real world?
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge (@cbkittredge) is the Dean & President of Seminary of the Southwest. She believes that historical and literary study of scripture in its ancient context can inform and nourish the imagination for faithful preaching and teaching. Professor Kittredge, a contributor to The New Oxford Annotated Bible and the Women’s Bible Commentary, is the author of Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John and Community and Authority: The Rhetoric of Obedience in the Pauline Tradition. She co-edited The Bible in the Public Square: Reading the Signs of the Times and Walk in the Ways of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza.
