In less than two weeks, this is where we will make our home.
I’ve only been to Boston twice. Both trips were this year. Christian planned a still-honeymooning-vacation in Maine for our first anniversary, and the further south we found ourselves on Maine’s sleepy shoreline, we realized Boston was just a quick jaunt away. So we drove an hour, tossed our coins into oddly-placed toll booths, blinked and missed New Hampshire, and foraged the harbor for a vacant hotel. Strangely, only seven months ago we had no idea that our two-night stay might turn into three years.
The second was a short, mid-week trip to poke around campus as prospective students. Questions like where will I grocery shop? had higher rank than any other move in my past. Besides falling in love with the horse farms lining Essex Street, the dreamy fog-covered beaches lining the nearby coast, and the proximity to both the city and the Emersonian forests densely populated with trees, I fell in love with the campus. Well, sort of.
It was a process, absorbing the Gordon-Conwell campus with unedited thoughts. There was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on—an aura that threw me, and not necessarily in a comfortable way. Day two, six hours in wandering hallways and nicely groomed walking paths, I put words to that almost hesitant sensitivity that something here was different. It was, for lack of better word, old. But not exactly in the Cambridge styling. It was slightly shabby around the edges. Well loved. Sagging in places.
That sounds horrible; I hear the tone in which you must be reading. But my second round of impressions were more insightful and lasting. Gordon-Conwell—which, for the record, is really quite beautiful and well-preserved—made me uncomfortable because I am from the South, the home of fried foods and big hair, new construction, and perhaps more notably, mega churches.
Mega churches are an interesting animal in the life of Christianity. They’ve stirred up a bit of controversy as of late, with some people appalled at their grandeur and sheen, and others—many, many others—giving the institutions two thumbs up, arriving each Sunday to watch a pre-recorded sermon delivered by a larger-than-life hologram of a pastor and major record label musicians rocking out behind smokescreens and Hollywood-quality video equipment. Hence the term “mega”—mega people, mega technofied, mega parking lots, mega money.
The thing about mega churches that are so interesting is that they are really attractive. Sweeping structures, high ceilings, huge flat screens reaching freakishly jumbotron sizes, and kids’ areas designed by Nickelodeon Studios. And hey, props to the Stanley family for figuring out a flashy formula for church, but something with such glitz and glam seems a little contradictory to the message of Jesus.
Quit your job. Sell your possessions. Leave your father and mother. Follow me to the point of death. Eat my flesh. Drink my blood. Take up your cross (note that Jesus said this before crosses became popular verbiage. To carry a cross was, David Platt points out, like saying pick up your electric chair).
There are a lot of things about following Jesus that are not attractive. In the grand scheme of things, the church building and the church programming probably shouldn’t carry a lot of weight. If someone is only attending church for the free coffee and to hear for the nine-thousandth time that “Jesus loves you,” a pastor might need to take a closer look at ousting the motives of his flock. Things like being challenged, growing in understanding of scripture through context and exegesis, crying out in desperation for God to meet our needs, to give and receive encouragement in fellowship, and to say, “God you are much, and all Glory is given to you” seem like significantly more important principles to woo us to a church community. And yet we’re often tempted to latch ourselves onto what culture deems as comfortable, as normal, as necessary.
My point is that Gordon-Conwell seems to focus on the latter set of principles. That the message is more important than the medium. That study and quality education are of higher value than flashy flat screens and bushes hedged in the shape of the seminary’s initials. That seeking to connect the intellectual aspects of theology to the state of the heart will produce love-drenched hands.
Please don’t mistake my musings as critique; the theological seminary is not at all unpleasant. It’s reminiscient of camp—simple, natural, pure. It’s stately, a throw back to its days as a Carmelite boys school. Sure, the sign to Goddard Library may be slightly crooked and the carpet in the common area may not have been updated in fifteen years, but it’s not about the building, wow-factor, or shine. Gordon-Conwell is about amplifying and understanding God, learning what it means to follow him at all costs. And that is what Christian and I find extremely attractive.
