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Conferences again
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| 3/31/2006 |
Posted by CRT
In light of my earlier comment on conferences, maybe I should expand the critique a little. While it is no doubt true that conferences are good for fellowship etc, as Rick suggests, it seems to me that we have conference overload which is a bad thing for several reasons:
1. While attending maybe one conference a year is a good thing, the danger with the bloated conference circuit we do have is that it takes people away from their local churches too frequently. How discouraging is to pastors to see their people absent at conferences on many a Sunday?
2. It also takes pastors away from their people too frequently. How discouraging is it for the people to see that the man they called to minister to them is off elsewhere yet again? Thus, the net result of 1 and 2 has to be a weakening of ecclesiology.
3. It creates a celebrity speaker circuit. Access to good PR, a photogenic face, and a winsome personality make a good conference speaker. But they are not essential qualities of a church leader. What about the guy pastoring 30 folk in South Dakota? We should not allow even a hint of any system which discounts that man's labours. I think also of a colleague at WTS, possibly the finest example of a churchman theologian I know, who has never been a star of the celebrity conference circuit, despite his obvious ability; rather he has spent his life serving on denominational committees, working on a session, and quietly helping his local congregation, all the while bringing no attention to himself. The danger is that the celebrity circuit implicitly downgrades such people and creates criteria of success which are irrelevant to biblical standards, whether that is the intention or not.
4. The celebrity circuit further subverts accountability. Who holds the guru to account? He's away a lot (with all the potential for shenanigans that creates) and he's also just too `big' for Elder Sixpack to call to account when he gets back home anyway. I had the privilege of learning much about theology while a student under the ministry of a man who later left his wife to live in a homosexual relationship; he'd become an international speaker and guru; and no-one had dared to call him to account until it was too late.
5. It promotes narcissism: speakers play to their self-selecting audience's predilections; the audience laps it up; everybody feels good about themselves. And has the kingdom been advanced? Hmmmm......
So why don't speakers and attendees limit themselves to one conference a year, as an oasis of refreshment and fellowship, and spend the rest of the time humbly getting on with the work they have been ordained or called to do in the local church and in their chosen denomination? Maybe we at ACE should take the initiative and have a moratorium on conferences for a year, or two, or three..... That way we show the way and help to create a culture where we have no practically unaccountable gurus and where church is not just talked about as central but where she is practically shown to be central. Confessionalism is not just contending for true ecclesiastical doctrine (especially when that `contending' id done in front of large, friendly crowds who agree with us anyway); it's demonstrating true ecclesiastical practice as well.
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