Stewards of the Mysteries: How the New Clergy Will Lead Us Forward

A New Kind of Clergy for a New Kind of Christianity, Part 2

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Think of us in this way: as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.
—1 Cor 4:1–2 (NRSVUE)

One of my favorite movies from the '90s is The Prophecy. It's ultimately the story of how a priest who loses his faith saves the world from Gabriel, who has fallen from Grace.

At one point in the movie, Gabriel (Christopher Walken) argues with another angel and says, “No one hears the Word anymore. No one!... There's only the argument.”

That's what I think about when I think of fundamentalist “Christian apologetics" today. Fundamentalist Christian apologists simply do not care about listening for the Divine Word. Their use of the Bible has nothing to do with spiritual discernment. All they care about is proving that their theology is right. To do so, they twist the Bible into a pretzel to make it fit their theology as they discard, dismiss, or explain away all the parts they do not like. (And I say this as someone who used to be a literalist.)

So, when people hear the term “Christian apologetics”, how can they help but think of anything but this form of anti-intellectualism?

Here's a secret…

Deep down, I'm actually an apologist myself. No, not that kind of apologist. When I think of apologetics, I go back to its origins in the second century.

Basically, the task of the apologist was to help make sense of the Christian religion for those on the outside. In order to do this, they had to speak the cultural language of their target audience. That meant leaning into philosophy.

This didn't fly for many within those earliest Christian communities. You see, the more conservative element rejected the use of philosophy as a way to talk about their religious truth. They didn’t think it appropriate to reduce matters of faith to reason.

Regardless of what those earliest Christian conservatives thought, apologists engaged anyway.

And it worked.

But why?

I think it really comes down to this: The audience could relate to the presentation of the Gospel that used their language and concepts. It aligned with how they saw the world, and it made sense to them. Because the presentation was relevant to their worldview, it became meaningful to them.

It would be easy to think that those second-century apologists were simply translating what they received through tradition into philosophical language. But, that implies that nothing changed in the translation. It’s safe to say this was not the case.

And this brings us to a rather difficult truth for many to swallow…

Whether those second-century apologists intended to or not, they did more than just translate the Gospel message. They replaced older religious concepts with newer, more philosophical ones. These new concepts changed how people understood the faith. And through this process, they created a new theology that resonated with people on the outside.

Ultimately, what they succeeded in doing is this…

They reinvented their religion for a new audience.

As a result, Christianity began to grow like gangbusters.

This is why I believe the project of the earliest apologist and mine are ultimately one and the same. I, too, seek to articulate what I hear as the Gospel in a way that can become meaningful for postmoderns. And, this means crafting a new kind of Christianity that can speak through and to this emerging age.

And, to get to the point, this is why I bring all this up now…

Becoming a “postmodern apologist” who is intentionally reinventing Christianity is the primary theological function of the new Digital Ecclesiastic.

In order to fulfill this function, they need to have two very specific areas of expertise.

1. The Digital Ecclesiastic as a steward of the Christian tradition

Let’s start with the easiest one, the one we already (somewhat) expect of typical clergy.

Despite my frustrations with the seminary curriculum, here's where I have to give it credit. Teaching people to value the Christian tradition is something that seminaries seem to do pretty well. They do a great job of empowering seminarians with an understanding of church history in general and the particular tradition a seminarian will represent.

But sometimes I wonder whether the significance of the history and tradition are brought front and center enough. I'm not saying that instructors don't mention such things in class. I'm saying I wonder how much memorizing content to pass exams takes precedence over being able to roll up one’s sleeves and really work with the history and tradition (ever hear of the equation “C = M.Div.”?).

How much time is spent having seminarians analyze their tradition? Can they see how traditions developed specifically in order to address the concerns of a context? Can they identify the problems the tradition was attempting to solve with its theology and how it met that challenge? Can they evaluate how successful that theology was at achieving its goal?

Learning how to ask those types of questions are vital to a deep understanding of a religious tradition. In fact, when we start to look at church history in this way, I believe we start to see a certain dynamic of engagement continuously taking place. When established theologies fail to address cultural crises, new theologies emerge from the culture to complete the task. This is the dynamic of “Tradition”. This dynamic is what makes a tradition Tradition.