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{"id":1699,"date":"2012-03-17T13:23:12","date_gmt":"2012-03-17T18:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtfulpastor\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2012-03-17T13:23:12","modified_gmt":"2012-03-17T18:23:12","slug":"academia-metrics-and-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtfulpastor\/2012\/03\/17\/academia-metrics-and-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Academia, Metrics and the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Recently, I posted a response on the Missional Methodist blog<\/a> about what I see happening right now in The United Methodist Church.<\/p>\n

I mentioned that I see huge parallels with what is happening in the academic world and what is happening with the church. Academia is being told: the purpose of education is economic\u2013getting good paying jobs for the graduates. The real purpose of a good liberal education\u2013to teach people to think widely and deeply over multiple disciplines so they might serve as ethical and well-grounded leaders in multiple areas\u2013is being replaced by this purely functional model.<\/p>\n

So, the real purpose of the church: the process of forming and shaping disciples who will live as radical followers of Jesus is also being replaced by a functional model: \u201cVital\u201d churches\u2013i.e., those whose vitality can be measured by metrics which are almost all economic-driven.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about this when I read the local columnists featured in the Saturday Dallas Morning News<\/em>. \u00a0One writer, a junior at Coppell High School, wrote powerfully<\/a> of the way she is being deprived of real learning by being told only to present facts, not how to think their way through them. \u00a0This bright young woman is getting the worst of educational theory and is smart enough to know it.<\/p>\n

Are we in the church smart enough to recognize that we are being taken for a similar ride?<\/p>\n

Real disciple-making cannot be measured by metrics. \u00a0If Jesus had to abide by today\u2019s metrics, the funding for his church plant would have been pulled almost immediately. \u00a0He packed \u2019em in occasionally, but the opposition to his radical message of God\u2019s grace and inclusion of all in that holy-kingdom space was just too much for most. \u00a0And, when he did pack \u2019em in, he didn\u2019t even take an offering to pay back the church-planting\/metric-driven bosses who were deciding whether he had planted a vital group or not. \u00a0Instead, he pretty well gave away what little he had.<\/p>\n

Yes, he would have quickly been labeled ineffective or without fruitfulness or unappointable or whatever the latest term is to describe the problem clergy who are not fitting the success mold.<\/p>\n

But then again, Jesus didn\u2019t have a pension or health insurance or career path or crushing apportionments so his higher-ups could live comfortably and travel all around the world to countless meetings to they could write more policies and create more regulations and definitions to worry about. \u00a0He was just the doorway to grace. \u00a0Cost him everything.<\/p>\n

I am all for the connectional church. \u00a0That is why I chose The United Methodist Church. Having wandered over multiple different Christian theologies, I think the Wesleyan understanding of God and grace is more biblical and life-giving than anything else I\u2019ve ever seen or experienced. \u00a0But I, too, think we are losing our way right now.<\/p>\n

It has become too expensive for many churches to have full-time clergy who are devoted to the art and practice of discipleship and still be free to feed and clothe and visit and envelop their communities in acts of love and grace that open doors to salvation. \u00a0The pressure on the clergy to produce the numbers needed is often crushing, fear-producing and soul-destroying. \u00a0Unworkable and expensive real-estate holdings function like handcuffs with no release key.<\/p>\n

All is not lost. \u00a0It never is, for God will win. \u00a0That\u2019s our promise. \u00a0That\u2019s our hope. \u00a0We just need once more to realign ourselves to the heartbeat of God, a world of mercy and justice. \u00a0That never has been and never will be easy. \u00a0But it can be done.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"