I wrote two pieces recently.
First, I had the privilege of writing for Rebecca Lowe and Henry Oliver’s publication, The Pursuit of Liberalism.
The piece was on Charles Dickens’ Bleak House
My main argument is that Dickens has harsh words for systems that dehumanize people and great praise for individual virtue. In this, the novel is representative of important liberal values: suspicion of bureaucratic administrative governance and personal agency.
From the piece:
In Bleak House, Charles Dickens writes about fog like J.R.R. Tolkien writes about trees, which is to say, a lot. And the critics love to tell you about the fog. You’ll read that the fog is moral confusion, the fog distances people who are right next to each other, the fog represents the consequences of sinful actions in the community. But I’m interested in how the fog shows Dickens’s disdain for overly bureaucratic institutions. No matter how much you hate inefficient, bloodless systems, Dickens hated them more. The Chancery, in Bleak House and in Dickens’s day, was a labyrinth of legal disputes, procedures, delays, and expenses that failed to deliver what it promised: justice.
and
Systems like the Chancery can dehumanize people by turning them into predators, but they also provide prey. Bleak House is on the side of the downtrodden, the weak, the vulnerable, and the virtuous who try to help them. But it’s no Christmas Carol. Precious human beings can be robbed of their dignity in a system that does not recognize their equal moral standing.
and finally
Like fog, overly bureaucratic governance obscures our vision. People become numbers. Procedure trumps human care. And the further away other people are, the more our vision is obscured by fog. The solution, of course, is to move closer. The closer we are to people, the less the fog blinds us. This metaphor reveals Bleak House’s liberal impulses. We should shun governance that puts people at a distance, and we should draw near to those closest to us to practice true virtue.
Second, The Gospel Coalition published an article I wrote about lay elders/bivocational pastors/whatever term you want to denote for the volunteer pastors.
I’ve filled such a role for over a decade, it’s long felt like lay pastors are the offensive lineman of churches, crucially important, not noticed unless something goes wrong.
From the piece.
An unspoken categorical split often appears between staff pastors and lay pastors. Staff pastors are on the payroll; lay elders are the unpaid guys. This type of hierarchical division can unintentionally create tiers of elders. The New Testament consistently portrays groups of elders working together (Acts 14:23; 20:17; Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:5; James 5:14; 1 Pet. 5:1).
By building a unified band of pastors equal in authority, despite their differing levels of responsibility, we give our churches healthier leadership—leadership that can take a punch, but, more importantly, leadership that holds each other up.
Lay pastors can help lift what no lead staff pastor should attempt to lift alone. But to do this well, they need experience. Lead pastors should be intentional about giving their lay elders experience by bringing them into the everyday tasks of pastoral ministry.
For whatever reason, Liverpool’s use of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” kept coming to mind.