dissertation

253
9.3.2.2 Intentional Community
A second aspect of the cultural dimension is as follows. Negatively speaking, a theological
school should not reflect and promote the same values as secular universities that
prize cognition above all else and that lack theological convictions and virtues. 192 Instead,
missional leaders of the future should be schooled in the context of an intentional
missional community, “shaped by ecclesial practices and disciplines of accountability.” 193
Classrooms, Darrell Guder suggests, should become “covenant communities where spiritual
formation and discipleship are practiced.” 194
The theological reasoning behind this proposal is clearly formulated by Leanne van
Dyk of Western Theological Seminary: “If the missional church is called to embody the
reign of God, then that sense of community and accountability is appropriate in the
theological seminary as well.” 195 The seminary tries to give this form in the morning
routine of community worship, followed by a community coffee time during which
there is room for prayer requests.
The proposed model that consistently comes up, according to Tony Jones, is the monastic
model. “Theological education in a monastic setting is more like apprenticeship
than like a traditional university education. A combination of work, reading, silence,
prayer, and teaching makes up the life of a monastic in community.” Jones is confident
that “emergents will surely adapt these historical monastic practices to present situations.”
196 The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology incorporates something of
this, as chimes sound at three-hour intervals inviting students to pray – if possible, in
the chapel, filled with orthodox iconography. Although probably not all EMC participants
would opt for a monastic model, theological educators are challenged as to how
students can be invited into a holistic community that provides a spiritually enriching
and personally supportive culture. 197
According to their websites and brochures, all the educational institutes in the Emerging-Missional
milieu that we researched attempt to give form to this ideal: varying
from creating spaces where students, staff and faculty can eat and relax together, to the
cooperative development of courses. Western Theological Seminary provides a particularly
unexpected form of community: the Friendship House. The website explains that
192
See Tony Jones’ paragraph “Time to Rethink Seminary” in his The New Christians: Dispatches from the
Emerging Frontier (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 209.
193
Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 217.
194
Guder ed., Missional Church, 218. He refers in this connection to the well-known practices of John Wesley
and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
195
Leanne Van Dyk, “The Formation of Vocation – Institutional and Individual,” in L. Gregory Jones and
Stephanie Paulsell, eds., The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2002), 236.
196
Jones, The New Christians, 210.
197
Inagrace T. Dietterich, “Discerning and Participating in God’s Mission: The Relationship between Seminaries
and Congregations,” Theological Education 40, Supplement (2005), S97.