The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

On a TV show I enjoy the participants were charged with taking a broken car and rebuilding it into a functioning motorcycle. It turns out that they could.  Indeed, if you take almost anything and break it down into its constituent parts you discover huge potential creativity and new ways to move forward, particularly when these assets are placed in the context of emerging pedagogies and technologies.  And that is what Christian seminaries need to do if they are to best serve the church in preparing men and women for Christian ministry. It will be hard, however, because it requires that those of us who teach re-consider who we are and what we have to offer, as I note below. Right now too many of the valuable assets of Christian seminaries are locked in buildings, administrative structures, degree programs, certificate programs, academic guilds, and syllabi that are no longer effective tools for preparing men and women for Christian ministry. In this captive state they...

For Christian seminaries to survive they must radically change their  business  model. On a recent visit to the cinema I learned that most major theater groups are now offering subscriptions to a continuous supply of movies rather than tickets on a pay as you go basis. Its easy to see why. They are competing with subscription services like Netflix, Apple, and Amazon as well as one another. Software providers have likewise shifted to a subscription model, and for a similar reason. You can't generate new content and upgrades without a continual revenue stream. If all you do is sell a product  then chasing customers for that product becomes both an obsession and a burden that actually keeps the business from moving forward.  And in the field of education? Subscribing to teaching, content, and even mentoring is rapidly becoming a norm through online providers like YouTube, EdX, Coursera, and others. Christian seminaries seeking only tuition revenue for a single credentia...

The  demand for degrees is declining  precipitously.  But there is an  expanding demand for theological education  among students seeking either specific kinds of theological knowledge or formation of a Christian perspective on their particular secular vocation. These two facts comprise the reality that  will  shape our future as theological educators. I recently sat down with an executive with Austria’s largest TV network, itself part of a larger German network The executive described their challenge in terms that resonate with seminaries. They are in a declining market which makes it almost impossible to increase market share. The market decline comes from the rise of YouTube, which is expanding to eclipse Netflix, Amazon, and Apple as a video content provider.  So rather than compete with YouTube they will find ways to use it to both generate revenue and attract viewers to their more traditional online and broadcast offerings. Essentially they ...

In a recent article about the nature of consciousness the author Jesse Bering asserts that the mind is created by the brain, and that therefore when the brain quits working the mind is gone. Then going further Dr. Bering states that "the dead are inanimate carbon residue." (SA Mind, 19(5) 34-41, Oct/Nov 2008) This is a relatively common view among scientists, and is reflected in numerous articles related to the one above.  But there is a problem with this assertion. Dr. Bering notes that the dead are remembered and thus have at least an objective existence that carries on within the minds of those who knew them. Which reminds us that the "self" is always and only a social self. It exists within a matrix of minds. While it may most strongly identify with and be identified with a particular body this experience itself is mediated by society and shaped by culture. The actual embodiment of the self is much broader than the brain and its associated body .  The social na...

My last day in Europe my eye caught something on the glass of wine in the airport hotel. Here's the takeaway: When culture changes businesses conform with or without legal mandates. Or go out of business. (Aside, offsite airport hotels are pretty universal. In the right mood they are the caravansarai of people off on fantastic adventures. They can also be human warehouses for the disgruntled victims of flight delays. My hotel out under the flight path of the Frankfort airport, with its cold bleak view of tarmac, warehouses, and service roads felt a little more like the latter.) Anyway, on the wine class were small marks indicating .25 liters and .125 liters. In German a viertel and and achtel. respectively. These are ubiquitous in bars and restaurants. Mandated by EU law they insure that you know what you are getting, whether its soft drinks, juice, wine, beer, or hard liquor (smaller measurements on smaller glasses.) Very different from the ambiguous "large" and "...