The Legitimacy of Scholarship and Writing in Christian Ministry

In the past couple of weeks I have been wrestling through whether or not the radical nature of New Testament Christian ministry allows for a Christian academic, or publishing ministry. What sparked this turmoil was the report of a short-term missions team upon their return from Uganda. It forced me to consider whether spending a large portion of my time working at studying and being a scholar was something that could exist simultaneously with all the other needs of Christians around the world.

While there is no necessary dichotomy between Christian scholarship and radical Christ exalting self-denial. I had to (and still need to) work through whether my desire to be a scholar is a self gratifying desire to live the American dream.

I am very grateful for C.E. Hill and E. Randolph Richards for their insights into the apostolic mission as a writing ministry. While many may believe that writing and scholarship has no place in the radical ministry of the New Testament, Paul did not believe so.

In the approximately 14,000 private letters from Greco-Roman antiquity the average length was about 87 words....The letters of the literary masters, like
Cicero and Seneca, were considerably longer. Nonetheless, Paul stands apart from
them all. (Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing, 163 [quoted
in C.E. Hill, God's Speech in These Last Days)

The average length of Cicero's letters is 295 words; the average length of
Seneca's is a whopping 995. But the average length of Paul's letters is
2,495! Even Colossians, short by Paul's standards, is (by my count, according to
the NA27 text) 1416. ( C.E. Hill, "God's Speech in These Last Days" in Resurrection and Eschatology, 226.

E. Randolph Richards estimates that even after the time and effort Paul and Timothy put into writing Colossians (including pre-writing discussion and possible note-taking and production of multiple drafts) each copy of Colossians would have consumed about half a day of a scribe's work and that Paul would have spent, by conservative estimates, the equivalent of $502. Implying that his longer letters would have
cost even more.

Thus, for Paul writing was not a waste of his time and money, when he should have been visiting or planting a church, but a vital part in his role as the apostle to the Gentiles, and so it should not be considered a waste of time for you or I today.