Consensus and Conflict

Practical Theology for Congregations in the Work of Richard R. Osmer

Kenda Creasy Dean, Blair D. Bertrand

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532653681
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Most students of practical theology recognize Richard R. Osmer as the originator of the "consensus model" of practical theology, one of the most accessible and widely used models of practical theological reflection in the world. Yet Osmer's influence extends beyond practical theological method. Over his long career, his writing and teaching spanned Christian education, youth ministry, spirituality, and evangelism as well, giving each of these congregational practices new theological substance. A pastor as well as a scholar at heart, Osmer writes with the American congregation in mind, insisting on making theology central to every Christian practice. Consensus and Conflict traces Osmer's multi-faceted intellectual career from his days as seminarian through his professoriate at Princeton Theological Seminary and his role in the founding of the International Academy of Practical Theology. These themes unfold against the backdrop of ecclesial change that Osmer barely anticipated as a young pastor in New England and western North Carolina. The contributors to this volume bear witness to Osmer's indebtedness to social sciences, theologians like Moltmann and Barth, his wide range of interests ranging from confirmation to redemptive agriculture to church planting, and his deep hope that the theological disciplines will play a more vital role in practical theology's future. Contributors: Bo Karen LeeRichard R. OsmerShin-Guen JangKyoo Min LeeThomas HastingsAngela ReedJessicah DuckworthTheresa LatiniNathan StuckynathanDrew Dyson:Gordon MikoskDarrell Guder

1

An Introduction

The Four Moments of Richard R. Osmer:

The Making of a Practical Theologian Amidst Consensus and Conflict

Blair D. Bertrand, Kenda Creasy Dean, and Amanda Hontz Drury

This introduction functions as a kind of map for the book you are about to read. Like all maps, introductions must balance adequate detail with appropriate scale. Too much detail overwhelms the reader, rendering the map useless. Scale relates specific places to the bigger picture. Go too big and the map becomes useless. Get too granular and you miss many relationships between salient details. None of us goes on a road trip with either a globe or the architectural renderings of our house.1

What guides us is the story we hope to become part of. Stories and maps are time-honored partners. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island was inspired by a map painted by his twelve-year-old stepson. Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood was A. A. Milne’s take on part of Ashford Forest in East Sussex. J. R. R. Tolkien (who mapped enemy trenches during World War I) doodled Middle Earth on one of his Oxford examination papers—and then spent years revising its coordinates, gluing new versions on top of old ones. As he explained: “If you’re going to tell a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you’ll never make a map of it afterward.”2

Richard R. Osmer’s influence on the field of practical theology is just that: a complicated story, layered and mildly unpredictable, and this introduction serves as a kind of map to help you navigate the pages ahead. Osmer’s influence on North American practical theology is seismic; his writing and teaching helped re-establish the field as a contemporary theological discipline with immediate relevance for Christian life, especially for congregations. Osmer was central to forming the International Academy of Practical Theology in 1991 and is perhaps best known for conceiving the “consensus model” of practical theology—arguably the most accessible and widely used practical theological model in the world, thanks to the popularity of his book Practical Theology: An Introduction and to a generation of Osmerian protegees now teaching practical theology around the globe. Osmer not only helped reinvigorate an entire field of study that languished in Western theology after Schleiermacher, but his signature insistence that congregational practices like Christian education, youth ministry, spirituality, and evangelism are, in fact, deeply theological enterprises gave these fields new substance as well. By merging practical theology with the contemporary “practices” of Christian life discussion, Osmer’s approach to practical theology holds widespread appeal for scholars and reflective practitioners alike.

Yet when it comes to the study of practical theology, Osmer complicates things. He is more explorer than conqueror, more apt to follow bread crumbs than blueprints. His mark on the field of practical theology is the fruit of curiosity’s winding path to wisdom rather than a systematic effort to prove or disprove hypotheses. Along the way, he posts trail signs for those who follow, indicating paths more than prescribing them. He is famous among his students for becoming captivated by a new intellectual conversation partner (or rediscovering an old one) every two or three years, sometimes from the sciences, sometimes from the arts, sometimes from the theological disciplines (globalization, rhetorical theory, empirical research, children’s fantasy literature, critical realism, spiritual direction, Lesslie Newbigin, and Karl Barth have all had their turns). He takes a childlike delight in introducing this “friend” to his students as he explores every inch of what that conversation partner offers the practical theologian. Osmer’s capacity for intellectual friendship is so vast that he never discards a dialogue partner; he merely adds another seat at the table for the next “friend” to practical theology that he takes under wing.

Like all cartographers, Osmer has dedicated his life to interpreting the terrain of practical theology rather than adjudicating it, poking air vents in disciplinary conversations rather than sealing up their leaky seams. This habit gives his approach to practical theology—like his approach to teaching, scholarship, and Christian life generally—an agility that allows him to tack back and forth between intellectual spheres. Most of the adulation and criticism Osmer received throughout his career stemmed from his refusal to park his theories in the political or intellectual parking spots others imagined for him.3 Some of his books, especially those written for pastors, educators, or students, are direct, penetrating, clarifying. Others invite too many guests to the party: there is too much going on, too many pages, too many layers, too many characters, giving readers a glimpse of Osmer’s own busy imagination as they join him for a joyful, lurching magic carpet ride that lands (it does inevitably land) on a new contribution to practical theology or congregational practice in the final pages. In fact, each of Osmer’s books have gained a loyal following precisely because they reveal signposts to the faithful life that had become overgrown: the marks of the teaching ministry, the practices of congregations, the contours of spiritual direction or evangelism, the architecture of confirmation, and—most notably—the four moments of practical theological reflection.

This introduction, therefore, is intended to orient the reader to this volume and to the life of Richard R. Osmer. These two are related. The chapters ahead cover a number of important aspects of Osmer’s career: 1) his early career, focused on Christian education, 2) the deepening of his mid-career interest in Christian spirituality, 3) his late-career shift towards mission and evangelism, and 4) his persistent interest in practical theology as a field and discipline. These four moments resonate with the four moments of practical theology that Osmer identified and illuminated. But we advise you to approach this “map” to Osmer’s life and career in the same way he approaches his own claims: provisionally, as a take, a “best account” rather than as a final one.4 Maps, after all, tell stories better than they report facts: “Here be dragons,” or “This way to treasure,” or “At this point the water goes deeper.” Osmer views practical theology not simply as a field of inquiry but as a story about the way God and humanity reach for one another—an account of the intersection between divine and human action. The through-line in all of Osmer’s work is his insistence on making discourse about God central to every Christian practice, to the work of churches, and to the task of practical theological interpretation itself. Each author in this volume speculates on Osmer’s influence in this regard, especially as his work comes to bear on the practices of congregations.

Origin Stories

Osmer recalls that while his parents did not “wear their faith on their sleeves,” there was no doubt in his mind as a child that they understood their lives in terms of faith.5 Faith meant living a moral life not in a legalistic sense, but by discerning “the right thing” from evidence and deliberation and then choosing it. Moral choice required knowing who and whose you were. Three years old when his younger brother Kenny passed away from leukemia, Osmer recalls seeing his parents navigate this devastating time while maintaining deep faith. Osmer remembers this tragically transformative experience as instilling confidence in faith’s capacity to sustain people through the most difficult of circumstances. “I didn’t understand faith,” Osmer says, “but I could see it.”6

It has been said that all research is autobiography, and Osmer’s scholarship is no exception. A generation of “Harry Potter” fans in his classrooms led him to develop a course on “Moral Formation Through Children’s Fantasy Literature”—the most popular course he ever taught—awakening in him a former passion. As a pre-teen needing to escape the pressures that he put on himself, Osmer had turned to science fiction and fantasy literature as pressure valves. This literature challenged limits, declared new realities possible, and explored the moral composition of characters required to enter into a given “what if” scenario. Even dystopian science fiction inspired hope, imagining futures that shed new light on the present moment.

While an undergraduate at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Rick began to imagine his own future in a new way when he met his roommate’s twin sister, Sally. While traveling independently in Europe for separate summer educational opportunities, Rick and Sally agreed to meet in Italy. As Rick observes, it’s quite difficult not to fall in love in Venice. A month after graduating from college, they were married.

Rick’s post-graduation plan was to study world religions at Harvard. While in Boston, the Osmers supplemented their income by serving a small church together for two years. This proved to be pivotal period in Osmer’s vocational discernment. Prior to his experience as a pastor, Osmer valued his church and his education, but failed to see how they overlapped. None of the maps he had previously considered for his life combined both his faith and his intellectual interests. As a young pastor, he realized that the study of world religions bore little resemblance to the lived experience of faith—nor would it prepare him to become a faith leader. Harvard had introduced Osmer to James Fowler and his “faith development” research, but he decided to transfer to Yale Divinity School to study Karl Barth under Hans Frei, David Kelsey, and George Lindbeck. Even so, Osmer would ultimately remember his seminary education as unhelpful when it came to practical theology or religious education. Harvard had no tenured faculty in practical theology during Osmer’s time there; apart from being a student in James Fowler’s first class on faith development, he received no encouragement in practical theology there. Yale’s faculty included Randolph Crump Miller—a titan in the Religious Education Movement—but Osmer deemed him “a terrible teacher; nobody took his cours...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: An Introduction
• Section One: The Educator: Forming the Faithful
• Section Two: The Spiritual Director: Testing the Spirit
• Section Three: The Evangelist: Sharing God’s Good News
• Section Four: The Practical Theologian: Legacy and Promise
• Conclusion
• Consensus and Conflict in Practical Theology: Reflections