Is there a place for all the theological and pastoral conferences that happen annually? Sure, at some level I think they are healthy insofar as they bring people together for networking and fellowshipping purposes. But when that becomes the reduction of what the Christian life is, particularly for ‘professional’ Christians, there might be something wrong. I think this has become the case with much of what’s going on in evangelical Christianity. We might think of The Gospel Coalition, Together 4 the Gospel, Shepherd’s Conference, and a host of many others (inclusive of all the academic conferences). It is in these places that many find their Christian identity. Some of the ‘elite’ in these settings are elevated to rock-star status, with autographs and book signings as the hallmark. Indeed, some of these folks are on a conference tour almost year-round; to the point that if they are pastors, they pretty much become guest speakers in their home churches.

I just picked up Douglas Campbell’s new tome: Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love. I am just starting to dig in, and in the introduction he speaks to what we were just thinking about. He is starting to detail the way he thinks the Apostle Paul would operate, and how he would think of what characterizes much of Christianity in America today. He writes:

I sometimes wonder what Paul would make of the conferences at which scores of highly learned people sit around and debate for hours tiny semantic nuances preserved in his writings. I expect he might be patient with this exercise for a while, but then at some point I’m pretty sure that he would jump up—possibly wielding a whip—and shout: “For goodness sake! Haven’t you read what my writings actually say? You’re not meant to be sitting around debating them. You are meant to be out there doing what they tell you to do—meeting people and fostering Christian communities in service to our Lord. Get off your backsides and get moving!” Doubtless this challenge would be accompanied by the sounds of tables being overturned and piles of pristine books crashing to the floor.

There is such a thing as a scholar-activist, and I venture to suggest that scholars of Paul should by and large be scholar-activists. If we are not, then we are royally missing the point, and I suspect that our interpretations of Paul will suffer as well. . . .[1]

I remember being a fresh student at Multnomah Bible College, just off the streets of living out the faith in the workplace and elsewhere. By time I had arrived I’d read through the whole Bible four times, and the NT tens of times; having memorized three books of the NT as well. I was in the midst of spiritual warfare, and relying on Scripture not as an academic piece of literature to be debated, but the living Word of God burning as fire in my bones. I remember towards the end of my first semester we had a schoolwide barbeque on a beautiful Spring Pacific Northwest day. I’d learned that there was a group of guys (fellow students ahead of me by a year or two) who were really well versed in Scripture, and even learned. So, that day I thought I would at least go and stand by them, and attempt to participate in their discussion about the biblical text. What I quickly learned, sadly, was that the text, for them (at that point at least) was more about its critical and academic content more than it was the living bread by which a Christian might find daily sustenance and life. This discouraged, saddened, and angered me all at once.

I share this anecdote not to declare myself ‘holier than thou,’ but to illustrate how Holy Scripture can become one thing to this group of people, and something solely different to another. If we extrapolate out from my anecdote, I think we might recognize how my co-students’ attitude back then is indeed what Campbell is taking aim at now. This sort of attitude about Scripture, in general, and Paul’s epistles, in particular, is exactly the attitude that Scripture, and the Lord of Scripture desires to contradict. We do indeed, as Campbell rightly notes, see in certain heady circles that Scripture is only ‘talked about,’ as if the act itself is effectual in itself. Indeed, we do need to have understanding of Scripture, but at some point, it is time to act it out in the faith of Christ. We are called to be ‘living sacrifices’ by the Apostle, ‘smoked out like burnt offerings’ in the way we live before God. Conference Christianity does not foster this sort of ‘drink offering’ faith; instead it cultivates a posture of sitting back and talking in theoretical and abstract terms about what the Bible might be saying here or there. This is neither Pauline nor Dominical Christianity, as such I think Campbell is right about what Paul might have thought about the sort of conference Christianity we see dominating much of the Christian landscape in America. May we not be ‘conference Christians,’ but instead ‘lived-out Christians.’

[1] Douglas A. Campbell, Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 4-5.