I just submitted a paper proposal for the 2012 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. In the course of doing so, and after seeing a Tweet from a friend indicating a stronger desire to preach than give a paper, I thought I would say something brief about this.
In short, academic papers matter. Too often in evangelical circles we act as if the real action is in pastoring. I actually do believe that the church is at the center of God’s kingdom work, and the role of the pastor is therefore incredibly important. But does theology matter? Does scholarship count? Do academic papers do anything meaningful?
Yes. Yes, they do. If you are personally tempted to think that preaching matters a great deal and Christian scholarship doesn’t, I’d ask a counter-question: the last time you preached, what did you use? Did you crack open a commentary? Did you consult a biblical theology that impinged on your topic? Did you perhaps pick up a monograph from an academic series that touched on your topic and skim it for some context? If you did, then I think you might have acted better than you speak.
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