I have seen a debate spring up recently about whether the notion of a pastor–scholar is possible and, if possible, desirable. By the time I was finished with this book, I had settled the issue in my mind.

Scholars embedded in academic contexts should do original research. Yet, the whole body of Christ should be becoming wise and intelligent, able to articulate not only the substance of the faith but also its application to a variety of contemporary problems. This requires that the pastor and elders should be public intellectuals, their "public" being the congregation and the local community. It is true that one probably cannot adequately pastor a congregation and make original scholarship their primary pursuit. However, the author does not envision a situation in which there is a "senior pastor," but commends a church structure in which a plurality of elders shares the pastoral, preaching, and intellectual formation burdens of the church. In such a situation, it is conceivable that copastor's and a group of elders could each have vocations outside of the church, and that some of them could be leading their fields in original scholarship. That seems to be the case in the author's own biography.

I am still of the persuasion that the primary metaphor and model of churched discipleship should be that of an apprenticeship. On the other hand, while the missing piece of apprenticeship tends to be "imitation," no apprenticeship worth it's salt should be weak in "information."

Unfortunately, I am not sure that today's broad evangelical church culture is going to cure its anti-intellectualism and its anemic spiritual formation processes any time soon. Experimentation on the local level, and in networks of churches that are determined to get both dimensions right and in proportion, is where we ought to be starting.