After approximately ten years as president of the Bible Faculty Summit (one or two of them in a “co-regency” with Jeff Straub), I, Mark Ward, have decided to pass the baton.
“President” is an awfully august title for the set of duties and privileges that come with the office. Mostly I sent emails and watched the clock during papers. But I tried to push the institution in a certain direction through all my communications with the group. And as I step down, I want to articulate one last time why I felt the BFS has been and continues to be a valuable institution—and why I must no longer lead it.
Why the BFS is valuable
It’s rather simple, and yet it’s so personal for a lot of us at the Summit that I think it’s hardly come up in conversation in my dozen-plus times in attendance: the version of separatism practiced during my years in the BJU PhD program meant I never attended ETS, and that publication options for me were very restricted. I loved my time in the BJU PhD program, and I wouldn’t trade it for a diploma with any other school logo on it. But there was no culture of publication, because there was no point. It was essentially self-publish or nothing. And I came to feel while in that program that the practically isolationist bushel being placed over our PhD-educated lamps was not right.
I also came of age in an incipient internet era in which walls between truly conservative Christian groups were suddenly impossible to maintain. But I felt uncertain of my place in the world outside BJU. I came to see that the Bible Faculty Summit was a great place for other PhDs in BJU-like institutions to provoke one another to love and good papers. And I needed that. The point of a Christian with a PhD is to bless the church by doing hard, scholarly work for it. And you can only do that if you face the pressure of reading a paper to people who are smarter than you.
I’ll never forget presenting my first BFS paper—at Northland in 2012, just after I walked as the very last graduate in the BJU commencement. I wrote that paper with all my strength, and I restrained none of my vocabularic desires. I wrote with the joy and confidence that everyone present could understand everything I wrote, despite some of the more difficult concepts I was attempting to communicate. I felt at home. I remember the momentary hush after I was done, the encouraging wisecrack Rod Decker made, and the joy of hard questions being posed to me.
But when I came back to Greenville and asked those above me at BJU (I won’t name names; that’s not important) if I could publish that paper in the journal that made the most sense, WTJ, I was told that I couldn’t fraternize with evangelicals.
I’m 0% bitter. Please hear me, brothers. I know the BJU back story, and I’m not here to blame anyone. But I knew in my conscience that that restriction wasn’t biblically right.
I spearheaded a publishing initiative at the Bible Faculty Summit because I wanted the book-reading-non-KJV-only sliver of the-movement-formerly-known-as-fundamentalism (if even the FBFI dropped that last word from their moniker, it’s no longer useful except with those who were there at the time) to share its gifts with the church. I needed some remedial help writing and making connections with people who might actually publish my work. I sensed I probably wasn’t the only one. I saw quickly—as a parachurch employee, not a faculty member—that if I didn’t write an academic paper for the BFS in a given year, I wrote zero academic papers. And I knew that wasn’t good for me. Or you. Or, therefore, the church.
The Bible Faculty Summit is valuable because it’s a place for people like me to learn lessons like I did, to hone their gifts as I tried to do, to become the kinds of educators who promote scholarship in service of the church.
Why I must no longer lead
Now why do I believe it’s time for me to pass the baton? Indeed, I had to conclude just a few weeks ago, after prayer and internal resistance, that I could not even attend this year.
Well. I’m pedal-to-the-metal busy. I’m a self-employed YouTuber cum writer/editor cum seminary adjunct cum tentmaking web designer. Washington, where I believe the Lord has called me, is expensive (as are flights nowadays). I said yes to about 33 too many things this year—because, well, see previous reasons; and that’s what freelancers do. I have no institutional support for attending conferences. I have a book contract and several teaching contracts. I’m on the elder track at my church.
But I’ve always been busy. And I could find the money somehow. And I’ll miss my nerdy BFS friends from here in my sometimes lonely garage office/studio. Why stop now?
I’m not great at admin and details. But I can do it when I really love the institution I’m serving. I think I dropped very few BFS balls in the last decade. Maybe none of significance (?). But this past year I did. I simply did not call an important BFS committee meeting and did not get the call for papers out on time. I surprised myself: I saw this as an unexpected litmus test.
I suddenly saw that my time in leadership had passed. I needed to pass the baton, and the torch too. BFS leadership really doesn’t require a lot of time or energy compared to other things, and if I didn’t have those to give, I couldn’t lead. And this year, at least, I’m just too busy to attend.
There’s one more thing. For my part, speaking now only with the authority of someone who retains the website password (a website I designed!) and not of the president, I sense that the “remedial” role BFS used to play is no longer as important as it once was. My alma mater, which used to keep its distance from ETS, now hosts it. In my judgment, BFS is worth continuing merely as a set of historic friendships on the conservative end of the evangelical academic biblical studies world. But what it becomes as its participants perhaps play greater roles at ETS than they have in the past, I do not precisely know. This is another reason why I no longer wish to lead. I helped encourage the BFS in a direction more in line with the quality level of ETS; the biblical scholars and church historians and others who came to the annual summits willingly participated in this mission and provided a lot of great papers. Some of them got published. Now we’re here at that quality level. Quo vadis?
The road from here
The set of friendships I have enjoyed at the BFS has meant so much to me, and it will continue to do so. The BFS committee is actively discussing what to do next, and plans for this Summit are set; you’re in good hands.
Permit me three final anecdotes and a parting word.
- One year, long ago and at an unspecified time and place, a weaker presenter got up to read a paper at the Summit. I could tell quickly that his understanding of a favorite field of mine was noticeably weak. I prepared a gracious but direct question to try to lead him to see his error. Before I could speak, Jeff Straub got to him. He said pretty much exactly what I thought, though with perhaps a bit less diplomacy than I was planning to use. I am not being critical of my dear friend Jeff; that presenter was in need of a shock. If college professors and PhDs can’t speak frankly to one another at the BFS—“Constructive suggestions appreciated,” the signs in the BJU dorms used to say—where else can we do so?
- A few years later, at an equally unspecified time and place (indeed, I can’t remember), another weak paper managed to make it through the vetting process of the BFS, and I had no co-regent with me to serve as constructively critical attack dog. I prepared an incisive question that, I knew, was going to bite hard. The presenter’s face demonstrated that he knew I was highly critical of his argument. The ever-gracious and highly intelligent Phil Brown later thanked me for doing the hard thing and keeping up quality standards. I was greatly encouraged.
- Yet later, and not many years ago, one presenter did an excellent job on an Old Testament paper. Not only was it fascinating and well-argued, but it was written with sparkle. I still remember the phrase he used: “flannelgraph midrash.” Some of you were there. I took great delight in the success of this (slightly younger) man. The BFS has not primarily been a place of critical feedback but of letting people fan into flame the specifically academic gifts God has given them.
If you want to have quality, you have to say no to some people and build structures to encourage the growth and support the gifts of yet other people. If you want to do scholarship, as Kevin Bauder persuaded me years ago, you have to do the hard work of advancing your discipline and of coming up for judgment before others. And the BFS isn’t only about scholarship; it has the added, all-important mission of serving the church.
So here’s my parting word: I pray that the Lord will make a) scholarship b) in service of the church the continued character of the Bible Faculty Summit.