Doug Strong and Jess Bielman, Workshop of the Holy Spirit: An Invitation to Theological Education (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022), 152 pages, ISBN 9781532689093. Doug Strong and Jess Bielman offer this short volume intent on reimagining and reoffering an ancient medieval metaphor (the “workshop”) for contemporary practices of theological education that are integrative of the life […]
Doug Strong and Jess Bielman offer this short volume intent on reimagining and reoffering an ancient medieval metaphor (the “workshop”) for contemporary practices of theological education that are integrative of the life of the academy and the church together. The volume proposes to take readers on a journey of recovery. Chapter 1 introduces the ancient construct of “apprenticeship” as a means of education in theology and ministry that is intentionally hands-on and oriented around a relationship of discipleship rather than simply courses taken independently with hopes that the student will gain integrative mastery on their own. Foundationally this is a call to mentorship that is facilitated via Spirit-empowered transformational experiences in community, discipline, and vocational holiness and wholeness.
Could the ancient construct of apprenticeship—hands-on and relational—be a model for education in theology and ministry?
In chapter 2 “Craftsmanship”, Strong and Bielman propose that the “craft of the kerygma” (the proclamation of the good news of Jesus) is the product of their proposed model of the workshop of the Holy Spirit. Students are apprenticed into this proclamation work through means of smaller groups taking time toward genuinely sharing life together. Chapter 3 addresses the ways in which guilds were formed of co-laborers within a particular craft that provided support and nurture toward mastery. This is also proposed for ministerial training in seminaries that emphasis life in the Spirit (in community) “is the place from which ministry flows; life in ministry is not the axis on which your life in the Spirit spins” (75). Chapter 4 carries the reader forward into the image of the journey-man/woman as a means of rethinking the interplay of praxis and ministry. This chapter takes up the spiritual disciplines as “tools for the work” of transforming the journey-man/woman (Scripture, prayer, community, worship, Eucharist, fasting) toward creating a “rule of life” (114-116). Chapter 5 concludes the volume with a proposed move toward mastery as one also trains up others and serves the Church well. This mastery is always under the mastery of the Spirit as “ongoing companion,” “creative inspirer,” and “signpost to the future reign of God” (132, original emphasis).
A change of vision for theological education is needed.
While Strong and Bielman make much good use of this medieval metaphor it seems it may be more a repristination of an ancient practice that was itself faltering and not simply replaced by falsely driven ideas and practices. The ancient guilds organized around workshops only pertained to specific fields of study (production of goods as a trade, for example) and never pertained to all fields of study or development (the ancient professions of medicine, law, and divinity; p. 29). Furthermore, the “masters” were practitioners themselves as they took on students. This meant that specialization was always limited and becomes highly restrictive toward developments beyond that which is expressed in localized practices. Perhaps this image works best for those very specifically within theological education seeking only to give themselves to particular forms of vocational ministry but does not open the way for those who may pursue more advanced research levels of education. While the language of Philipp Jakob Spener drives the metaphor as the workshop of the Holy Spirit shaping the ministers, this imagery belongs to an era of disciplines that fit the times as they were shifting and may miss potential for modern models that themselves may speak into the very foci of Strong and Bielman. Granted that any metaphor is not meant to be carried too far beyond its intent, yet this metaphor may at some level undermine the very purposes of the project however praiseworthy and necessary for the day. A change of vision for theological education is needed to address the issues but also to work toward total transformation into the image of Christ Jesus by the Spirit of God.
For the student and those they serve, theological education is supposed to bring about personal transformation into the image of Christ Jesus by the Spirit of God. However, most theological education tends to function as a business and a cognitive intellectualist project.
Several weaknesses bear mentioning. Despite being in the title of the volume, the idea of the “Spirit” as integrative and foundational seems to lack in development throughout this volume (where other works take up such a task, see Amos Yong and Dale Coulter, The Holy Spirit in Higher Education: Renewing the Christian University [Baylor University Press, 2023; Editor’s note: see review by Rick Wadholm Jr]). To be fair, the Spirit is mentioned often, but in many ways, this stands only for some unnamable contribution or role rather than explicated within any sort of explicated pneumatological bases. The Spirit functions almost more as a feature of chaos to the structures of institutions (eg, 132; which may be the case, but is not always the case). Another weakness is ways in which this volume may not weigh its sources as well as it should, but simply takes up sources that wrote spiritually and pietistically without due accounting for the foundations behind their writings and at times misrepresenting them. This is exemplified in claiming Henri Nouwen was an “Anglican priest” (76) rather than a Catholic priest. This lack is technically part of their aim to speak from and into a broad spectrum of the Church, but it makes for an unequal hodge-podge approach more than an intentional integrative approach. Finally, the turn to “workshop” takes up the language of commodification rather than what seemed the aim of the volume in humanizing by the Spirit to transformation and conformity to the Son of Man. This is exemplified not only in the language of “workshop” but the language of “tools” used to shape us and then naming the spiritual disciplines. The disciplines are formative but calling them “tools” (87-89) turns this from transformative personal engagement with the Spirit, into manufacturing metaphor that dehumanizes. While this does not seem the intent, it becomes the implication.
Despite the noted issues with this volume, it still offers a refreshing rethinking of the moves within theological education that have tended to turn it into business and a cognitive intellectualist project rather than the personalizing and transforming Spirit empowering encounter it is meant to be for the sake of the individual, the Church, and the world. This book might function well for a group of professors, administrators, pastors, and students to read together over several weeks of discussions centered around the journey into the “workshop” re-storying proposed. As such it might just offer the “academy opportunity to make it a place of spiritual and intellectual flourishing for the sake of the church’s health” (144). May it be so.
Doug Strong and Jess Bielman, Workshop of the Holy Spirit: An Invitation to Theological Education (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022), 152 pages, ISBN 9781532689093.
