Why Churches Should Have Websites

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My recent relocation to a new city has driven me to a fundamental belief that a church that does not have a digital footprint is failing the community. In other words, in the American context, a church without a website is in error.

To some a website seems superfluous. What does it matter if we are preaching the Word and doing ordinances correctly? A few years ago I might have argued the same thing. However, from the perspective of someone looking for a church home, the lack of a website is a significant failure on the part of a church.

Three reasons to have a website

The first reason it is important for churches in the digital age to have a website is because without a digital footprint it is nearly impossible to find a church. As a newcomer to town I have no idea where some of these small churches are located. I don’t have a phone book and a phone book is insufficient for getting information out in this day and age anyway.

If churches want to be found by anyone who doesn’t live right next door, they need to communicate their presence. The most efficient way to do that is with a simple website.

The second reason for a church to have a website is to provide helpful information. For example, what time does the church meet? Unless the congregation takes out an ad in the phone book (which will likely cost more than a simple website), then having the only marker of the church’s existence be the name and seven digits of phone number in the yellow pages is not very helpful.

Additionally, a website can simply convey what the church believes. Are you a moderate SBC church that refuses to affirm the Baptist Faith and Message 2000? This is good to know so that people can skip over to a biblically-faithful congregation. Also, how does your pastor preach? A visitor shouldn’t have to spend several hours to visit just to find that the pastor uses a text as a springboard for a ramble through a self-help lecture. That time could be better invested looking for a congregation where Scripture is valued and there is opportunity to serve.

It doesn’t take much time or money these days to create a simple website that presents the basic facts and links in some sermon samples (even if they are the best ones). The result is that people know what to expect, where to be there, and you are more likely to get visitors that are more likely to join the fellowship.

A third reason for a church to have a website is to meet the needs of the community. How will the person in the midst of a divorce find out you have a care group to minister to that situation unless you put it online? Maybe through word of mouth, but most people depend on a web search.

How about the ways that your congregation provides emergency aid to the community? Or, if the church does job training or a clothing closet, it is insufficient to expect work conversations to really communicate the resources to those in need. When technology is so inexpensive and ubiquitous, the failure to use it should lead others to question whether the aid programs are intended to be effective.

Stewardship

Although recently someone attempted to tie the existence of church websites to the decline in SBC missions, that tie is tenuous. Perhaps it applies to churches that spend large amounts of money on top of the line sites. That isn’t the point of this discussion.

A failure to have a website is a marker that you really don’t want to have people visit. Whatever your rhetoric is, you don’t want visitors if you won’t provide information about your congregation. This is not just new move-ins to the community, this applies to those in your community that suddenly have a need that drives them to seek out a church.

When a church fails to provide a digital footprint with basic information, it puts the onus on the visitor to figure everything out. As a believer who is required by my contract to join a church, I am forced to do the legwork to find a church. However, if I did not have that driving force, it would be much easier to stay in bed on a Sunday morning than to make phone calls, visit around, and potentially miss the beginning of your service because the church didn’t publish a schedule.

A church without a website is still a church. This isn’t a question of orthodoxy. However, a church without at least a simple website is not stewarding the available technology and resources well. While this isn’t essential to the gospel, it is a gospel issue because it undermines the effectiveness of a congregation in serving the community.

The Pastor as Public Theologian - A Review

Can there be such a thing as a pastor-theologian? What would that look like in practice? Would attempting to be a practicing, professional theologian take away from ministry to the congregation?

These are some of the questions Kevin Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan attempt to address in their recent book from Baker Academic, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision.

Definitions are important here and the title is somewhat misleading. The phrase “public theologian” conjures the image of a predominately Christian society with the theologically astute sage devising and proclaiming theological concepts to the broader society. There is an element of this in the definition offered by Vanhoozer and Strachan, but not in the idealistic sense that desires a theonomic society.

In contrast, the public theologian in this volume is one that does theology primarily for an audience other than the academy or personal enrichment. Instead, the public theologian does his theology for the church primarily, to build up the body of Christ and present clear theological truths to those who lack formal training in the subject. At times this individual may contribute to academic conversations or to broader societal discussions, but the primary public is the redeemed souls within the walls of the church. By the definition offered, the pastor as public theologian studies in private, but practices and proclaims theology openly through his ministries of Word and deed.

The introduction lays the groundwork for this discussion. Vanhoozer explains his vision of the pastor theologian, arguing that such a vision existed in reality in earlier days before the contemporary management movement. In Chapter One, Strachan provides an overview of leadership patterns throughout Scripture. His conclusion is that although the title and some specifics of the roles have changed, there has been a consistent emphasis on theological leadership among the leaders of God’s people. In Chapter Two, Strachan surveys the historical role of the pastor (or priest) in leading his people theologically. His historical conclusion is that until very recently the local congregational leader has served as a theological shepherd of the church.

The book shifts, then, from an argument for the pastor as public theologian to an explanation of what that looks like. In the third chapter, Vanhoozer unpacks the purpose of the Pastor-Theologian. He argues that a primary role of the pastor is to illuminate the present culture in light of Scripture for the edification of the local church. This is designed to lead people toward the glory of God and result in evangelistic fire. Seminaries, therefore, should be primarily educational institutions rather than practical training centers. Despite the intellectual rigors necessary for the pastor-theologian, Vanhoozer argues in Chapter Four that the pastor maintains the roles of disciple-maker, evangelist, catechist, liturgist, and apologist. This should all be enhanced by his fervent study of Scripture and theology. The conclusion of the volume lists fifty-five theses on the pastor as public-theologian, which are all drawn from the text. If you have only a few minutes to grasp the content of this book, read the final chapter.

Vanhoozer and Strachan have managed to produce a reasonable, well-balanced book. There are testimonies and practical instructions written by pastor-theologians interspersed between the chapters. These men provide guidance and background that compensate for the fact that the authors are both professional theologians. Because of the mixture of theological interpretation and practical guidance, this book is extremely useful and will help shape evangelical theological culture in the future.

This is a text that is targeted toward pastors that have the training and desire to engage in theology already. It is also helpful for congregations attempting to understand the work their pastor-theologian should be engaging it. This text reveals that the Christian tradition demands much more than preaching a felt-needs sermon on Sunday and doing some counseling and hospital visitation during the week. The pastor should be doing theological work to translate that information to his congregation to disciple and form them.

The most significant weakness of this text is that it is not as helpful for the pastor who wants to be a thorough-going pastor-theologian but lacks the training and finds little opportunity to get that theological education. The vision of a pastor-theologian is good, but there is a shortfall in helping men transition into that role. It may be that a second edition can include an appendix or that a second book on the topic might be in order.

The Pastor as Public Theologian is well-written, succinct, and clear. It presents the vision of the pastor-theologian in the present context, but grounds the vision in Scripture and the historical witness of the Church. This is a volume that will have a place in future discussions among pastors and should be examined by seminary professors and administrators as they shape their curricula in hopes of preparing men to better serve the Church.

The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

By Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Owen Strachan

Buy on Amazon

Note: A gratis copy of this volume was provided by the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

What Value in Assessment in Higher Education?

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Higher education is filled with opinions. Some of them are informed. Some of them are well considered. Every issue is debated with rigor, sometimes with adequate research, too. Since there is benefit to novelty among academics, there should be little surprise that there is little consensus on many issues.

Assessment is a popular topic for debate in Higher Ed right now. There is an increasingly analytical bent and demand for evidence by accreditors. This requires additional emphasis on academic assessment. Often increased budgetary expenditures are a natural result of this. As tuitions rise and some universities look for places to cut costs, this leads some to question whether assessment is worth the time and money. One professor has even wondered whether it does more harm than good.

My professional title is Director of Assessment and Institutional Research, so there is little surprise that I am in favor of academic assessment. However, I do assessment because I believe in it; there are other things I could do to make a living.

The Trouble with Academic Assessment

Most of the time when people are frustrated with assessment it is because they are either doing it poorly or over-doing it.

Academic assessment as it is done does not necessarily align with the way many faculty are trained to think. Good academic assessment is a largely pragmatic exercise, which rubs many idealistic, theoretical thinking professors the wrong way. We are trying to look at somewhat subjective qualities in objective terms. How does one measure critical thinking, exactly?

And yet, though assigning a number to a student’s critical thinking (For example: 3 = satisfactory) seems blasphemous to some, this sort of cataloguing is necessary if we are to consider how the curriculum works for the larger body of students. It does not present a perfect method, but it is a useful one if it is not trusted too ultimately or pressed for too great an exactness.

But the main purpose of academic assessment is not to merely get a bunch of numbers so we can declare success or make unnecessary changes. Rather, the purpose is to provide a metric that encourages a feedback loop in the curriculum design process.

THE PLACE OF CURRICULUM DESIGN

To those experienced in curriculum design as a formal process or business planning in the market, an introduction to academic assessment seems altogether too simplistic. Of course you base your curriculum on your desired outcome! However, what is obvious to some people (particularly in the practical disciplines) is much less intuitive for many in more theoretical disciplines.

I will pick on theologians because I am one. It is altogether too easy to sit down when planning a course the first time, particularly as a new professor wet behind the ears, and decide on the order of instruction in a course and the topics covered based on the texts available. (Or, it may simply be because the professor is borrowing his mentor’s notes.) In the case of Systematic Theology, this may be the order in which an author constructed his or her tome, which provides the basic structure for the course. This is a simple way to plan the course, but it assumes that the main purpose of a course is to impart knowledge rather than to change the students’ way of thinking. Often this initial structure is never significantly redesigned from the ground up.

If you ask this theologian what he intends for his students to learn, he will often reply that he hopes they will learn to theologize and think through the data clearly. However, the course is often not structured to impart that skill. This is not due to  ill intention, but due to a lack of planning in the proper manner.

Content is important and should be included. However, when designing a course (and a curriculum), the first question to be asked should be: What are the overarching goals of this unit of instruction? If it merely to learn facts about theology, then following the path laid out in a recent Systematics will be sufficient. If it is to learn to theologize, then different assignments may be necessary and a different approach taken that takes the student through the process of theologizing.

This approach cannot be designed by looking at the list of class dates and dividing the text by week. Rather, the professor must look at those greater goals and build those into the course of instruction along side the content that must be learned.

Some disciplines tend to do this curriculum design process at the course and degree level exceptionally well already. Others fall prey to a “Great Texts” mentality which accomplishes these learning outcomes only incidentally, though sometimes very effectively.

Academic Assessment is a process that helps ensure faculty and departments are asking those big questions and building explicit instruction into their courses for those big ideas they are seeking in students. After all, particularly in a liberal arts context, it is much less important that a student has laid eyes on the right texts and much more vital that they have the skills to handle those texts and the great ideas of life in the future. Academic Assessment can help that.

Dangers of Academic Assessment

One danger is that the formal Academic Assessment process is often run by people like me who are expert in one discipline or none. We can get carried away with the bells and whistles of our processes and begin to look for the right formal steps to be taken and reports to be formatted properly without regard to the true quality of the outcome. Often this is because we (the assessment gurus) don’t know enough about the subject to evaluate the quality of the assessment. (Let’s be brutally honest here.)

This danger can lead to assessment that is time consuming and produces insufficient positive results to justify the professors’ efforts. For sanity, we must have standard formats and processes, but they should be kept simple. The assessment process is a tool. The simpler the tool the more likely it is to catch on and have a positive return on investment.

When an academic gets embroiled into the depths of an assessment process that seems more about form than substance, it provides fertile ground for discontentment and suspicion of the process.

 Once an assessor (i.e., the conscripted professor) is doubtful of the assessment process, he or she is less likely to invest the mental energy to do it well. Assessment becomes something to be gotten through and checked off as quickly as possible. Just say whatever must be said to get the assessment folks off my back!

Doing assessment in this manner leads to mediocre results every time. There is a certain faith in the process of assessment, even with its limitations, that is necessary to make it work. To compare this to physical exercise: if one only half-heartedly does the exercises assigned by a trainer with little attention to vigor or proper form, one is unlikely to gain the desired weight loss or increased strength. However, even imperfect exercises done with a good will tend to lead toward fitness. The same is true of assessment.

Conclusion

My argument, therefore, is that assessment is a valuable tool for sharpening instruction in Higher Education when it is done simply and with good intent.

Assessment certainly will not solve everything that is awry in Higher Ed. It won’t dramatically reduce tuition, increase budgets, or get students to do their work. However, assessment is part of showing good stewardship and demonstrating a good faith effort to shape the curriculum around the desired goals and the needs of the students. It is not a panacea, but a part of the process.

What Does it Mean When the SBC is Cutting Back Missions?

Recently the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention made a huge announcement that should cause a mighty response in the denomination.

David Platt preaching at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fall 2013. Photo from SEBTS archives. See: https://www.flickr.com/photos/southeastern/9606045395/in/album-72157635183464333/

David Platt, current President of the IMB, and author of Radical, had to announce a plan to cut at least 600 employees from one of the largest Christian mission organizations in the world. This must have been an incredibly painful announcement for a man whose life purpose is to see the nations reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As a history lesson, one of the major reasons that the SBC exists is to fund missions. In fact, the Cooperative Program was created in the early 20th Century largely to fund the missions activities of the SBC. Reducing the mission force without some major economic crisis indicates there is something terribly wrong, and that there must have been a loss of focus.

These things should make Southern Baptists begin to question where our priorities lie. 

Some Questions for Consideration

Whenever a crisis like this occurs, it should lead to some introspective questioning. Here are a few that have come to my mind:

• Is the Cooperative Program still viable?
  • I think it is. The Cooperative Program certainly needs to be reshaped somewhat to reduce the amount of money that gets spent for regional organizations that duplicate other parachurch and national denominational organizations. However, the basic method of large association of churches contributing to fund the global missions endeavors is irreplaceable. Having grown up in an Independent Baptist church, the collective sending power of the IMB is a huge improvement to the never-ending circuit of missionaries candidating individually. The CP is a good program and we need to make sure it works in a new era.
• What are the SBC churches funding instead of missions?
  • This is the $100 question. Part of reality is that since the Great Recession, the cost of living has risen while wages for the middle and lower class have largely stagnated. In many ways this economic pressure is due to bad fiscal policies at local, state, and federal levels in the United States. At the same time, I wonder if SBC churches have increased funding for global missions as much as they have funding for local priorities. Or, have they made across the board cuts that have kept more money than absolutely necessary at the local level? Local ministry is important for discipleship and growing healthy churches. However, without funding for international missions, vital ministries that take the gospel where it is currently unavailable will not happen. Local churches need to question their funding priorities.
• Are the funding problems a result of the tragedy of the commons?
  • The tragedy of the commons is the phenomena where things held in group ownership are treated less well than things held for private gain. I believe the current IMB struggles are in part a result of the tragedy of the commons. This is a natural danger of the Cooperative Program; all Southern Baptists don't know missionaries intimately, and our money doesn't fund them directly, so we don't necessarily feel obligated to fund them vigorously (or pray for them diligently). This is a circumstance that local churches as organizations, pastors, and missions-minded individuals in the church will need remedy. They need to raise the alarm, continue to tell the story of missions work, and build the missional momentum to help people engage and feel ownership for international missions conducted at the national level. We need to overcome this is we are to sustain the CP.
• What level of problem is this?
  • If this isn't five alarm fire, it is very close. They aren't shutting down the IMB, but there have been years of underfunding the IMB. If we can't fund international missions--if we can't send the gospel to places it hasn't been heard yet--then we are failing to use the gifts God has given us. We have prioritized our comfort over missional living and sacrificial giving. The man who wrote the book on living a missional lifestyle, cutting back on extras, and getting the gospel to the ends of the earth has announced cuts at a huge missions organizations. This is real and we need to be ready to respond in a big way.

What do we do now?

All is not lost. However, we need to have a gut check at the individual level and as local churches.

What are we spending our money on? What are we living for? Are we aggressive in our funding of gospel ministry? Are we critical in evaluating our personal expenditures? How about our local church expenditures? Are we asking what the gospel purpose in our giving, spending, and living is?

We need to get engaged as a people in giving from the abundance God as provided. We need to keep praying for our missionaries and our denominational leaders. We need to lay foundations of radical living and white-hot gospel focus in our daily lives that spreads the interest to our children and our neighbors.

Individual effort and sacrifice will be necessary if we are to turn the ship. It won't happen in a a few days, but the long term viability of the IMB and the need to spread the gospel demands it. Our faithfulness to God demands it.

An Open Letter from David Platt

David Platt has written an open letter to the SBC to explain the nature and reason for the forthcoming cuts. I have reposted it below:

“Dear SBC Family,

By now many of you may have heard that last week, IMB announced a plan to reduce the total number of our personnel (both here and overseas) by 600-800 people over the next six months. Since the moment this announcement was made, we have sought to communicate the details of this decision as clearly as possible to churches, state conventions, and national entities across the SBC (see this article and this FAQ document, in particular). In the middle of it all, though, I simply want to take a moment to share my heart with you.

This is certainly not an announcement that I, in any way, wanted to make. At the most recent meeting of the SBC in Columbus, I shared with messengers how IMB spent tens of millions more dollars than we received last year. In our budgeting process over the last couple of months, other leaders and I have recognized that we will have a similar shortfall this year, and we are projecting another shortfall of like magnitude next year. In fact, when we stepped back and looked at IMB finances since 2010, we realized that IMB has spent a combined $210 million more than people have given to us. By God’s grace, we have been able to cover these costs through reserves and global property sales. But we don’t have an endless supply of global property to sell, and our cash reserves are no longer at a desirable level for good stewardship going forward.

When staff leadership realized the severity of our financial situation, we knew that we needed to take significant action. We spent hours on our knees praying and at tables discussing potential options for balancing our budget, ranging from sending fewer missionaries to cutting various costs. We poured over financial models and looked at the long-term impact of each of our options. However, with 80% of our budget being devoted to personnel salary, benefits, and support expenses, we inevitably realized that any effort to balance our budget would require major adjustments in the number of our personnel. When we gathered with our trustees at our most recent meeting, the same conclusion was clear. Though board policy did not require an official trustee vote, and though these brothers and sisters agonized over the thought of many missionaries stepping off of the field, there was resolute and resounding recognition across the room that our financial situation required such action.

Some pastors have asked me over this last week, “Why doesn’t the IMB just ask the churches to give more money?” This sounds like a simple solution, but the IMB has been asking churches to give more money for many years. In many ways, we have told the church about our need and called the church to give to meet that need. Here’s just a small sampling of headlines and articles we have published:

· 2008 – “IMB reports cautionary finance news that could have a significant impact on the Board’s work around the world next year.” Later that year, our trustee chair said to churches, “I am sounding the alarm. The IMB budget is under strain to support growth in our missionary force.”
· 2009 – “Economic challenges…IMB anticipating another tough financial year…IMB in budget shortfall crisis [that] could affect 600 positions.”
· 2010 – “IMB lamenting financial declines, trying to balance budget…IMB sending 30 percent fewer long-term personnel than would be sent if there were no financial constraints.”
· 2011 – “IMB having difficulty balancing budget…IMB lowering the missionary force.”
· 2012 – “IMB preparing for another sobering financial report…IMB working through a painfully difficult process of trying to balance the budget.”
· 2013 – “IMB urging for greater support from churches…IMB laments Christian callousness…IMB trustees vote for substantive proposal changes across the SBC.”
· 2014 – Just two months before I stepped into my role, one article read: “IMB must soon come to grips with the demands placed on us by years of declining Cooperative Program receipts and Lottie Moon giving. We will be hard-pressed to continue supporting a mission force of our current number, much less see a greatly needed increase in the number of fully supported career missionaries on the field.”

I share all of this simply to say that we haven’t kept our financial position a secret. By God’s grace, the church has responded in many ways, including various special offerings like “Christmas in August” in 2009 and increased giving to the IMB through both the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering over the last four years. Yet while IMB has been asking churches to give and setting aggressive goals accordingly, the reality remains unchanged: IMB has spent $210 million more than we have been given. Simply put, we cannot keep operating like this.

Do I hope that churches give more to the IMB through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this year? Absolutely, and we are working zealously with churches, state conventions, and national entities toward this end. But I want to be crystal clear: I don’t blame the church for putting IMB in our current position. I love the church, we as IMB want to serve the church, and we believe the best way for us to do that right now is by operating within the means provided to us by the church.

Similarly, no blame should be assigned to previous IMB leadership. Previous leaders knew these financial realities, and they put in place a plan to slowly reduce our mission force (through normal attrition and reduced appointments) while using reserves and global property sales to keep as many missionaries on the field as possible. I praise God for the resources He provided to make that plan possible, and I praise God for leaders who chose not to sit on those resources, but to spend them for the spread of the gospel among the unreached. Ultimately, I praise God for the people who came to Christ over these last years because missionaries stayed on the field, and because we used our resources to keep them there.

Yet when staff and trustee leaders alike looked at the realities before us, we realized that plan is no longer viable, for we cannot continue to overspend as we have. For the sake of short-term financial responsibility and long-term organizational stability, we must put ourselves in a position in which we can operate within our budget, which necessarily means reducing the number of our personnel.

Words really can’t describe how much a sentence like that pains me to write, and pained me to communicate last week. For “600” and “800” are not just figures on a page; they are people around the world. For many of you, they are your family, friends, and fellow church members. They are brothers and sisters whom I love, and brothers and sisters whom I want to serve and support. I not only want as many of them as possible to stay on the field; I want multitudes more to join them on the field. But in order to even have a conversation about how to mobilize more people in the future, IMB must get to a healthy financial place in the present.

I hope that all of this information helps give you a small glimpse into why IMB is taking these steps at this time. You can go to the links I referenced above to learn more about the two-phase process we are walking through over the next six months to reduce the number of our personnel. Our aim is to make this process as voluntary as possible, starting with a Voluntary Retirement Incentive, and then moving to an opportunity for other personnel to say voluntarily, “I believe the Lord may be leading me to a new assignment.” As the Lord leads 600-800 brothers and sisters into new places and positions over these days, we want to honor every single one of them with generous support, realizing that the longer we wait to take this action, the less generous we can be.

The comment I have appreciated most from pastors and church members during these days has been, “How can we help?” One way is obviously to give. To be sure, IMB is committed to operating within our means in the days ahead, yet we are praying that those means might increase so that we can stop pulling missionaries off of the field and start sending multitudes onto the field. Indeed, the field is ripe for harvest, and the time is now to take the gospel to those who have never heard it. Further, in light of all that I have shared, I would also encourage your church to consider how you might care for one of these missionaries who will soon be moving back to the United States. I am trusting that our Southern Baptist family will welcome these brothers and sisters with open arms as they integrate into our churches here, making disciples of the nations God has brought to our own backyard.

Finally, and most importantly, I would ask you to pray for the IMB during these days. Please pray that God will provide grace, wisdom, strength, and unity across the IMB family as we navigate the various challenges that we are walking through together over the next six months. Ultimately, please pray that God will use these days to set the stage for this 170-year-old missions organization to thrive for decades to come or until Jesus returns. In this historic coalition of churches called the Southern Baptist Convention, may we strive together toward that end.

For His Glory,

David Platt”

Here are the article and FAQ document that Platt points to.

Mapping Your Academic Career - A Review

As a PhD student (No, my dissertation is not done. Yes, I should be writing it now.) there is a mysterious land beyond the portals of graduation called “an Academic Career.” I have witnessed that this land exists, because my professors are all experiencing it. However, until recently, I have encountered very little information that can help me understand the challenges that may be ahead. (Of course, as I write this, I am an administrator at Oklahoma Baptist University. My academic career as a professor is likely to remain a secondary concern to my role in the administration.)

Gary Burge pulls back the curtain on a career in academia, using his decades-long experience and some psycho-social categories to frame a discussion of the progression of individuals through the jungles of higher education. Burge is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, so this volume has the flavor of Christian higher education. However, the text applies to all contexts, whether “secular” or “religious.”

Summary

According to Burge, there are three main stages of an academic career. He excludes the Pupal stage, which is an indeterminate but often lengthy period before hooding occurs. These stages are divided into cohorts that are bounded by landmark events rather than age.

Cohort One is the phase where faculty are seeking tenure. This is really a pursuit of security. A quest for the knowledge that one’s academic work has been truly accepted and the brand sponsorship of a university or college has been achieved. Cohort One is characterized by frenetic activity in the scholarly realm: books, conference papers, articles, and book reviews. The young scholar is seeking to be validated and achieve sufficient clout within the academy that his or her peer vote him into the club. This is also the time when teaching skills must be gained, for often they are neglected in the road to earning a terminal degree. The absence of classroom skills has a greater potential to undermine faculty success than publishing opportunities, yet it gets much less attention than it deserves. Burge champions a meaningful mentorship process, where an older faculty invests concern and effort into the young scholar who may be struggling to connect in the classroom or even simply figure out how to put meals on his meal card.

Cohort Two is characterized by chasing success. The faculty (and perhaps the Board of Trustees) have affirmed the scholar’s ability through tenure. Now priorities can shift. Burge notes that there are basically three directions a career can take in this phase. First, individuals can achieve tenure and get distracted or lazy. They may stop publishing, stop keeping up with their field and coast to retirement. Often any success such individuals had in the classroom fades as they lose expertise in their field. Another tendency is to privatize research endeavors and to withdraw from the surrounding community in hopes of publishing a “definitive” work in the field. The third option is the golden mean, which includes publications, professional activities, pursuit of teaching excellence in relatively balanced proportion. At its best, Cohort Two closes with a sense of achieved excellence both in the classroom and in the academic field.

At the tail end of a scholar’s career is Cohort Three. This time in life has a loose beginning point. About the time earlier mentors retire, you wonder who let their kids come to the faculty meeting with voting power, and restaurants begin to give you a senior discount without asking you will have entered Cohort Three. This is the phase of professional development when some administrators consider professors a lost cause and, indeed, some of them are. This cohort usually ends in retirement, but that can be preceded by withdrawal from participation in the community, a sense of despair because no friends remain, or sometimes veneration by peers and younger scholars. At its best Cohort Three entails a shift in emphasis toward lower energy activities, opportunities to mentor younger faculty, and continued personal growth until retirement.

Analysis

Burge’s book is a quick read that would be good for many seminary and university administrators to read. It would also be useful to put into the hands of an institution’s faculty because of the helpful advice about navigating some of the pitfalls of academic life.

Based on my experience (limited as it may be) in academic life, Burge’s cohorts are a reasonable way to describe the progress through the scholarly lifecycle. As he described both the successes and the potential pitfalls, there were individuals that I know that fit those roles.

The weakness in these cohorts is that there are not clear points of delineation between some of them. For example, it is difficult to tell whether one is in Cohort Two or Cohort Three. However, this does not undermine the overall explanatory power.

This would be a useful text for both religious and non-religious audiences. However, it may have been beneficial to discuss some of the spiritual dimensions of some of these cohorts instead of relying on mainly psychological categories. Perhaps another text would be more apt for that purpose, but a deeper discussion of changing spiritual disciplines over an academic career would have been beneficial.

This is well worth the time and money. If you are looking for a text for a professional development discussion group, to work through in a mentorship relationship, or for personal enrichment as an administrator in higher education, this volume would be a good choice.

Mapping Your Academic Career: Charting the Course of a Professor's Life

$10.76

By Gary M. Burge

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Note: A gratis copy of this volume was provided with no expectation of a positive review.