What We're About at SE
It's more than SEO.
As of last Friday, our students are taking a well-deserved break. Our professors are not. The semester has officially ended and the grading of final projects and papers has begun. But here at SE, it is steady going. We'll be pumping out new articles every Monday and revisiting old content until the parousia.
As a reminder, for anyone who has recently signed up to receive these updates, we are about three things at Sola Ecclesia:
We serve out of our gifting. Our professors and guest writers are gifted subject matter experts in pastoral theology. Our audience is our students, alumni, supporters, and their congregations. We want to use the gifts of our faculty to serve our reading audience beyond the classroom.
We demonstrate our calling. As a theological journal and seminary, we are all about in-context theological training. We are churchmen and we want our labors to help churches grow, thrive, and reproduce through church planting. We are writing from and for the church.
We participate in online dialog where we think it would be helpful. When it comes to online discussion, there are dumpster fires and then there are dumpster fires. Ok, it isn't that stark and dystopian, but it's close. Hot-take writing draws an audience, much like protesting water pollution by not taking a shower—we get your point but wish you'd go about making your point another way. When there are moments where men with our subject matter expertise could speak into a current conversation with our particular emphasis (the church), we're looking to helpfully add to the larger conversation.
With that said, I hope you'll make SE a regular part of your reading diet this summer. Most immediately, in the next three weeks, we'll continue our discussion of theological education in the church, the dangers of racism, and how social justice activism ran amuck.
In case you missed it, our most recent essay is part of a multi-part series from Dr. Mark Becton, our professor of spiritual formation, on what to ask of a text as you prepare to preach it. Our assumption is that ninety percent or more of those who read this are either preparing to preach or hear a sermon this coming Sunday. So, don't miss Dr. Becton's post.