Sarx

Further to my earlier post on Seminary as a bridge to a high-paying job, and with props to Mike, I find this post on tentmaking in the digital age

Ekklesial leaders are subject to a problem inherent in professional classes similar to “group-think.” Perhaps this is merely a certain cultural conditioning that results when we form real friendships only with those within our class. We are “helpers” to “helpees.” We are “answer-men” and women. We are the visionaries and don’t expect vision to come from other sources. Worse.. we start believing that only professional workers are really adequate as “ministers of the new covenant.” I know something about this mindset, and it only seems possible to avoid it when Christian workers maintain real connection with the “secular” world of work and rub shoulders with “ordinary” people making do in ordinary .. and sometimes amazing.. ways.

As I noted in the earlier conversation, above the living of a Christian life the same as all Christians, the duties of a priest (from the Catechism) are to bless (bread, weddings, etc) and to absolve (to hear confessions). For this “special skill” we send them to three years of costly seminary and drive them into debt when it would, in fact, be smarter and more logical to let them keep their “day job” and get them a mentor that would teach them how to bless and absolve.

Anything beyond that can be left up to the rest of the body of Christ - instead of (poorly and unjustly) paying the clergy to be the Professional Christians so the rest of us can be in the world.

Academic, congregational and denominational life functions along clear lines of rank, status and honour. We preach that the gospel has ended elitism, but we rarely allow the implications to go beyond ideas. Paul, however, actually stepped down in the world. His inversions of status were social realities, not intellectualized reforms.