The Outrageous Idea of the Missional Professor. Paul M. Gould

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The Outrageous Idea of the Missional Professor - Paul M. Gould


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that they are and do to the glorious riches of the gospel.

      Paul M. Gould

      Fort Worth, Texas

      August 15, 2014

      Acknowledgments

      This book would never have come to be without the example, as a young Christian and college student, of those older in the faith who loved, discipled, challenged, and called me to live for something greater than self. Thanks to Rick Jones, Mark Brown, Mike Erre, Roger Hershey, and Stan Wallace. I thank those students with whom I’ve had the privilege, in turn, to disciple as a campus minister—Andrew Chapin, Baron Luechauer, Greg Thompson, David Clady, and many more. I’m grateful for my years as a campus minister with CRU (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) and specifically, for the ten years serving with Faculty Commons, the faculty ministry of CRU.

      Many thanks to Cultural Encounters for permission to include portions of my essay “The Consequences of (Some) Ideas: A Review Essay of James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World” within chapter 7. Thanks also to Christian Higher Education, for permission to include a modified version of my “An Essay on Academic Disciplines, Faithfulness, and the Christian Scholar” as chapter 8.

      Thanks to Rich McGee, Bill Hager, David Dehuff, Ceil Wilson, Steve Pogue, Corey Miller, and Brad Fulton who all read selected chapters and offered helpful feedback. I give a special thanks to Rick Wade who read and edited the entire manuscript fixing many grammatical and typographical errors. Finally, I thank my loving wife Ethel and our children—Austin, Madeleine, Travis, and Joshua. I write this with the hope that our family will be a missional family and that each of you children will live missional lives in whatever context the Lord calls you to in the future.

      The Outrageous Idea

      The central outrageous idea of this book, encapsulated in the phrase “missional professor,” is that God wants to use Christian professors as professors to reach others (colleagues, administrators, students), play a role in transforming the academy, and meet the needs of the world. I’ll flesh this idea out in more detail in the pages to follow, but first a word on the notion of being a faithful follower of Christ as a professor.

      What does faithfulness to God look like in this day and age for a Christian professor? Is it regular church attendance? Tithing? Consistent Bible reading? All of these activities are good and ought to be part of the faithful Christian life of a professor, but they don’t get to the heart of the matter. This is why the idea of a faithful professor doesn’t sound as outrageous to my ears as does the idea of a missional professor. In my mind, they are the same concept. But in my experience working with university professors, these two concepts are often seen as distinct. Most Christian professors deeply desire to be faithful to Christ in their vocation. The problem isn’t a lack of desire. Rather, the problem is a lack of understanding and vision. Many Christian professors and graduate students working in the secular academy have not discovered how to locate their lives firmly within the context of God’s great story as articulated in the Bible. And those Christian professors and graduate students who are living missional lives within the academy undoubtedly could use encouragement and a fresh challenge to “excel still more” (1 Thess 4:10, NASB).

      The problem isn’t entirely internal to the Christian scholar. Consider Stanley Fish. In his book Save the World on Your Own Time, he argues that the idea of a missional professor is ludicrous and inappropriate:

      In Fish’s view, the only legitimate role for the professor within the secular university is one of teaching and research, devoid of any moral, religious, or political values or ideologies. But the illusion that a professor leaves her everyday life behind when entering the pristine halls of academia is wrong-headed. There is no such thing as “value neutral” scholarship. Everyone, whether they like it or not, approaches the academic enterprise with a host of presuppositions, values, and religious commitments that are applied—some consciously and explicitly, others unconsciously and implicitly—in the process of teaching and research.

      In this book, however, I am not trying to convince the Fishes of the world. Instead, my intended audience is Christian professors (and future professors) working within the secular academy (some who may be inclined to agree with Fish). A secondary audience is those Christian professors working within Christian universities and colleges, all of whom interact with their broader academic discipline and find occasion to interact with their Christian and non-Christian colleagues within the secular university. I shall write with an eye toward my primary audience, but if you find yourself working within a Christian university or college setting, the necessary adjustments to the discussion should be easy enough to make, and I leave it to you, the reader, to do so.

      To be a missional professor in the secular university, great courage is required. Such a professor is courageous in light of the subtle or not so subtle pressure within the academic community toward conformity in terms of norms, practices, foundational assumptions, and lifestyle. The call to be self-consciously “on mission” within the university requires a boldness to be different—to engage in the scholarly enterprise with one eye toward the gospel and the other toward a lost and needy world.

      Moreover, the presence of a missional professor within the secular academy is startling. A missional professor draws people to herself, and through herself to Christ. The subtext of her life is not, “Look how great I am,” or, “Look how impressive my CV is.” Instead it is, “Look how great Christ is.” Such a life lived in the secular academy is truly startling and refreshing. The presence of one missional


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