Friday Miscellanies

Here are a few notes that might interest you. Consider it suggestions for weekend reading! I wanted to highlight a few articles that touch on important issues in faith and discipleship -

Steve Rankin, the university chaplain at Southern Methodist University, has a great article in the United Methodist Reporter looking at the doctrine of Christian perfection, character formation, and contemporary higher education. As Steve rightly points out, higher education that aims only at increasing the knowledge of students and does not nurture formation in moral virtues is both impoverished and un-Wesleyan.

Two articles on leadership have caught my eye recently. One is this interview with Stanley Hauerwas which is available from Faith & Leadership. Hauerwas comments on whether "leadership" can be understood as a theological category, and he also makes some interesting insights into the role of leadership in institutions and the role of institutions in leadership.

The other article on leadership comes from Covenant Discipleship Connection, where Steve Manskar connects Wesleyan leadership with the deep Wesleyan understanding of faith in Jesus Christ and the ongoing process of sanctification. Steve wants to invite folks into an ongoing conversation about the character of Wesleyan leadership, and he has started a new blog to facilitate that.

Finally, after a writing sabbatical of several months, I'm back in the pages of the United Methodist Reporter. My new column - available at this link - starts a series on the means of grace in Christian practice. This is the subject of my academic research at Duke Divinity School. So I'm excited about presenting some material related to it in my regular column. I believe - as John Wesley did - that our growth in holiness of heart & life is impossible apart from disciplined participation in the means of grace. And I'll be explaining that conviction column by column over the coming weeks.

Christians on Campus

I've been around a lot of college and university campuses over the past 15 years - as an undergraduate student, seminarian, campus minister, and now as a doctoral student.

University life has always been exciting to me. The people there are bright and earnest, pursuing dreams and developing abilities. The exchange of ideas is stimulating. And the monotony of the work-a-day world never really seems to play a role in an environment where people are constantly testing new theories, developing arguments, and advancing scholarship in every area of human knowledge.

That's the academic side of things, anyway.

But what about the place of faith in a modern college or university setting?

This is a complicated issue, which is perhaps best understood by the difference between a "Religious Studies" curriculum and a "Seminary" or "Christian theological studies" curriculum. The former represents an attempt to justify the study of religion within a secular academic environment. The latter seeks to hold on to the traditional place of the theological curriculum within the university without apologizing for the unavoidably confessional aspects of its content.

A place like Duke University has both, of course. One is housed in the Religion Department of Trinity College (the undergraduate College of Arts & Sciences) and the Graduate School. And the other is housed in the Duke Divinity School (which, as you probably know. is a seminary of the United Methodist Church).

The complexity of how Christianity is perceived on university campuses is difficult to describe to people who haven't been around it. And beyond all these faculty and curriculum issues, it extends to the practice of faith.

The very environment of college can be hostile - implicitly or explicitly - to Christian men and women who want to grow in their faith as they grow in other areas of intellectual and social life. That's a shame, and I don't think it has to be that way. In fact, one of the ways I'm trying to help our seminary students at Duke to ground their discipleship as they prepare for ministry is through encouraging participation in Covenant Discipleship groups.

I write about this experience in the new issue of Covenant Discipleship Connection, which is available here. CD groups are small groups encouraging growth in discipleship through the practice of weekly mutual accountability. They've been an important part of my own discipleship for a decade now, and I think they are ideally suited to help college and university students who want to stay grounded as Christians as they explore new academic heights as students.

CD groups are just one avenue, of course. If you have ideas for how to help students focus on faith during their college, seminary, or grad school years, please share!

CD Connection

Steve Manskar has sent out the first edition of the Covenant Discipleship Connection newsletter this week. The Connection replaces the old Covenant Discipleship Quarterly, which was the main publication of the Office of Accountable Discipleship at the General Board of Discipleship. Whereas the CDQ was a print-based quarterly, the Connection will be distributed via e-mail and will be published monthly.

If you have an interest in small group accountability in your own discipleship or (if you are a pastor) in your ministry, I'd encourage you to sign up to receive the Connection. It's free and you can register for it here. You can also continue to access the old issues of the CDQ at the main Covenant Discipleship website.

Covenant Discipleship itself is a contemporary expression of the early Methodist class meeting, and it seeks to nurture faith through mutual witness, support, and accountability. I have written a column on Covenant Discipleship, which you can find here.