The latest issue of The Christian Century has an interesting article about theological education. Interesting that it was written at all; interesting the minds which we glimpse towering behind it.
Four old institutionalist theologians opened their eyes to see the collegium replaced by a teeming marketplace. "What is this?" they must have asked, based on their answers in the article. The marketplace: embraced by college and seminary marketing departments for not less than 30 years, in existence for not less than the 50 years of my own personal experience, modeled through many steps on the medieval fairs against which the medieval university in part defined itself.
Now these four towers of institutional theologizing look and see that the marketplace of theological education is filled with ordinary folk, Christian disciples, preachers and peoplefishers, assistant shepherds, neighbors in the Samaritan way, and teachers conscious of the stricter judgement. There may even be a few minor prophets there.
These observers turn toward each other and in their arcane academic way say, "Let us return to our offices and assure each other that we will be alright."
What may we next expect to hear from these same figures? Might they assure us that the church will survive a time in which people choose the congregation through which they participate in Christ's mission based on their own personal beliefs? Indeed that the church will be alright even though such a departure violates the principle of cuius regio, eius religio?
In actual reality growth and change does not come always from the marketplace. Yet more often from there than from the office towers where old institutional academics hibernate through centuries.