Thanks for your comments. A few thoughts for the conversation:

1. “The Academy” does have a place and a definite contribution to make. I am grateful for what it has given to me. But the problem is when we expect it to do something in a life that it is poorly designed to do.

2. I would regret for anyone to read this last post and think I was anti-scholarship or anti-intellectual. Rather, I want to be realistic about what role such pursuits play in the life of one serious about following Jesus.

3. Just because someone has a seminary degree means very little when it comes to leadership. It means I am smart enough to do the work and rich enough to pay the bill.

4. As an old seminary prof of mine said very publicly, “The only problem with seminaries and institutions of higher learning is who is going and who is teaching.”

5. The western educational model when embraced, as Winter says “uncritically”, has always been conflicted in its relationship to the Christian movement. Does it exist to produce leaders and labor for the movement or does it exist to produce scholars? These are not the same.

6. Where do I find relationships which transform? In my experience, three places:

a. Healthy expressions of the church in its local form
b. Apostolic expressions of the church in its missionary form
c. Divine contacts, ie mentors and individuals God brings into my life for just such a purpose.

7. The kicker sometimes is whether these relationships are healthy. Unfortunately, transformation can be good or bad. And there are far too many group environments, even with good intentions, that are unhealthy and damaging. The relational dysfunctionality out there from enmeshed and spiritually abusive relationships inflicts a lot of pain.

Just to be a little bit wicked

Do you have any suggestion as to how to find these relationships and how one would evaluate whether the relationship is transforming in the positive sense or in a negative sense?

Innes

ps. Thanks for this post and all the rest … still chewing over a quote from your Frost & Hirst post “China has made church simple and discipleship complicated; the west has made church complicated and discipleship simple.” I suspect you are suggesting we move towards a Chinese approach to leadership development (discipleship) and resist the urge for nice and easy (orderly) learning.

I’ve just switched from a classic classroom model of ‘preparation for ministry’, to a more practical based approach. Praise God I did, I’m learning bucketloads more.