Aspect #1: The Church of the Brainiacs?
"How do you preach to all of those doctorates?" This is the first thing I hear when people familiar with Grandview discover that I'm the minister. I understand the question because I used to wonder about that very same thing when I was a student at Emmanuel. Grandview is envied by some and scorned by others as a church for people who value (or over value) the intellect. People make all sorts of assumptions about us. Some believe that our Sunday School classes must turn the theology knobs to "11" and that we just wander the hallways contemplating the ontological implications of our ecclessiological disserata (I just threw those words together, they don’t really mean anything in this context).
I have two reactions to this broadly held perception.
Yes. The life of the mind is important to the people of Grandview and you can find big words being spoken in some of the adult Sunday School classes. It’s nothing to fear. You can siphon something from it or sneer at it. It’s up to you. I know some people find it annoying. I understand that. However, there is much to be gleaned from people who have studied a topic to the point of exhausting it.
My other reaction, though, is that we aren't who they think we are. Grandview is not just a bunch of intellectuals. In fact, we have some folks in our church who bristle around anything that strikes them as intellectual priggery (priggery! a priggish word if ever there was one!). If you're a non-Ph.D. type (and, remember, you far outnumber the Ph.D. types at Grandview), then be careful not to assume that our church revolves around the word "Doctor."
Education is a great gift. I'm reminded of how nice it is to serve Grandview when I remember that I never get asked some of the bizarre questions that other ministers get asked ("Do you think the locust in the book of Revelation are really black helicopters?).
I'm insulated from that.
Therein lies the rub. Too often Grandview's level of intelligence (real or perceived) has been a mechanism that has isolated us from the community around us. This, my friends, is a huge weakness. The Old Testament is replete with criticism against those who would receive a gift from God without sharing it with others. God blessed Abraham so that Abraham could bless the world. We sin greatly if we allow our gift of education to isolate ourselves from the uneducated.
The burden for coming together with others is on us, not them. The Great Commission is not, “Let the world wander into your building and become disciples.” The commission has the word “Go” for a reason--because the burden is on the disciples.
The Apostle Paul warns us that knowledge puffs up but love builds up. If we have intellectual resources at Grandview, but we don't have enough love to get out of our building and share with others, then our intellect becomes a burden. Knowledge without love is worse than ignorance.
I invite you to contemplate how Grandview can use this gift to bless others. I tried to facilitate that process a couple of years ago by proposing that we become actively involved as tutors in the Johnson City Adult Education program. Many of you were willing to do that, but the administration of that program was more involved than I anticipated. I found out why big churches have staff members dedicated to the planning and administrating these kinds of programs.
If you choose to contemplate how we can do this, remember that you don’t need church structures to volunteer at Mountainview Elementary School (where they need volunteers and where our own Jason Bembry volunteers on a weekly basis--yes, Harvard educated, Ph.D. in Old Testament, Jason Bembry). You don’t have to have a church invitation to volunteer with the Johnson City Adult Education tutoring program. You can just do it (I would love for you to volunteer to tutor with somebody else from the church... but doing it alone is better than not doing it all). If you want to know how, then I’ll be happy to direct you. I know that not everybody is called to tutor other people. But I want you to know that everybody is called to serve.
If we, as a church, spread out into the community and serve, then the question I get from outsiders will change from “How do you preach to those doctorates?” to “Isn’t that the church where they love people so much?”
Tomorrow's Post: Aspect #2:
The Church that Scrutinizes Worship
The Church that Scrutinizes Worship
5 comments:
Thanks for your great post.
God calls us to serve...simple as that. He doesn't restrict the ways we can do it either; any restrictions come from us.
Surely loving people and loving learning don't have to be mutually exclusive. People of like minds are often drawn together. May we be like minded in loving and serving as we continue to grow in thinking and learning. Lisa Hall
How long do you think it will take before we are headed into the direction you continually try to steer us? Hope you are not having to say these same things after you have been here 11 more years. Some of us are very thick-headed. Please don't give up challenging us to become more Christ-like.
Thanks for these observations Aaron. Not surprisingly, the level of intelligence at Grandview is one of my favorite things about the church. I actually learn things in Sunday School! Though, without proper attitudes, this can be isolating, as you note, I would hate to see such a gifted church cave to the anti-intellectualism that typifies most of 'evangelical' Christianity in America. The level of education at the church is a negative only on the occasions when it leads to snobbery. My experience has been quite the opposite however. The folks at Grandview, with or without graduate education, are great people.
I miss Grandview more and more with each post from you, Aaron. You all are irreplaceable. I'm so thankful that we can stay connected to what is going on there in the off chance we may end up back in that area some day.
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