Churning New Soil: Nurturing the Cracks in Theological Education
As I write this, it is August in North Carolina. It’s hot and humid. Walking the dog is a sweaty business. So is keeping up my driveway. Yes, my driveway. I am not a gardener. I kill houseplants with benign neglect. Flowers and vegetables grow in my yard only because many plants thrive in North Carolina without careful tending.
But that’s also the problem with my driveway. Plants grow. That’s what they do. So I find myself murderously tending the cracks in the pavement. Through those tiny cracks, all kinds of crabgrass, clover, wild violets, and Virginia buttonweed grow. I could ignore these delicately green, tender-shooted visitors. But eventually they will churn the pavement back into soil with their persistent roots and will to grow. They will throw seeds that will find new cracks in which to flourish.
Theological education also grows and changes—and not always because it is planted in church-supported, democracy-fertilized fields. What kind of growth can we plan for, especially when the number of students cannot be the measure? What is the harvest goal, especially when authoritarian policies built on capitalist aims pave over our previously fertile fields?
This July, those of us who follow the Revised Common Lectionary (Year A) heard parables from Matthew’s Jesus about wheat and weeds, seeds and soil, mustard seeds and yeast. There is a whole lot of gardening—or rather, actual agriculture—in these parables from Matthew 13. Those with ears to hear learn that God’s Word, God’s deep and abiding truth in our world, is abundantly, wantonly scattered across all kinds of soil: rocks, thorns, and probably even concrete and brick (Matt 13:3–9, 18–23). Where seed lands on fertile soil, it flourishes.
Progressive mainline theological education has, for decades, been fertile soil for moral education, social justice, and compassion—the Word of God in conversation with our public sphere. American Democracy, as it emerged from World War II with ideals of dialogue, debate, and consensus, has fertilized this soil and kept it in production. But this same soil has also been fertile ground for radical visions of communal justice and authoritarian dreams of power concentrated in a singular savior. Jesus’s teachings, even Jesus himself, can be wielded in multiple directions.
Sometimes in theological education, we have to ask ourselves what direction we need to take with Jesus’s teachings. According to data from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), overall enrollment in theological education has grown steadily from 1993 to 2025 (from 63,429 to 81,264). Yet those of us teaching in historically mainline, progressive contexts have not felt that growth. A more detailed look at ATS data shows that new enrollments in Evangelical theological programs have nearly doubled (from 7,197 to 13,595), while new enrollments in Mainline theological programs have declined by nearly 25% (from 5,794 to 4,384) over the same period. If seeds are students, then we definitely have mainline soil that is not as fertile as it once was.
Does this mean we are counting how many seeds sprout and flourish as a measure of our value as theological educators or of government’s effectiveness? Are we counting our seeds and judging our soil by its ability to produce more seeds?
American democracy and its mainline churches may have been the fertile soil in which the Word was sown. Perhaps, thinking with Matthew, our observation of decline means we have neglected the soil, and it has become rocky, thorny, or birdy. Perhaps our work is to double down on democratic discourse and debate—to return to the days when respectability came through compromise or the via media. We need to ensure the seed of God’s Word is cast on loamy fields and clear pastures. Then we will see bigger, more prosperous harvests of theological professionals, of progressive church adherence, and of democratic virtues. God’s Word will flourish.
However, there are two fallacies in this analogy. The first is that seeds are not students. Indeed, if we count seeds and their growth, we miss the whole point of the parable. Matthew’s Jesus is clear: the seeds are something less fickle than students and enrollment numbers, votes and polls. Rather, the seeds are God’s Word. And nowhere in the parable do we hear about scarce quantities or even finite amounts of seed. Rather, the divine sower sows Her word abundantly, lavishly, without regard for birds or rocks or thorns or even fertile soil.
The second fallacy has always held true for theological education as well as for the American exercise in democracy. Respectability, fertile soil for democratic compromise, debate, and discourse, is not available to everyone—and never has been. African-American citizens, indigenous peoples, and naturalized citizens of non-European descent have been systematically excluded from our democratic processes—pushed to the rocks, thorns, and bird-feeders of American governmental and mainline ecclesiastical life. What the White Mainline Church has called democracy, others have experienced as intractable racialized exclusion—stained-glass ceilings and concrete barriers where authoritarian systems, both governmental and theological, easily grow.
Assuming God’s Word only has a chance to grow when the conditions are just right discounts what we know about God’s creative impulse toward abundant life—and even creation’s own concrete, tangible reality. Maybe we think our soil, the conditions of democracy that made mainline theological education intelligible, is the problem. But my driveway weeds would beg to differ with the idea that they can only grow in fertile soil. And that fertile soil is found only in passive fields.
Not every plant that sprouts in less-than-ideal soil fails to flourish. Some plants flourish despite our best efforts to limit their growth. My grassy-cracked driveway seems to be a perfect reminder that rocky soil and birdy meals are not necessarily a doom for thriving seeds. We need to see a different, creative ecosystem at work in the parable, in theological education, and in our democracy.
Here’s where we need to go back to the parable itself. In crafting these analogies, we have focused on the rare and the perfect, the seeds that fall on fertile soil. We should, instead, emphasize the extravagance on the part of the Sower herself. While a good farmer will aim to sow precious seeds only in places where they will easily flourish, this parabolic Sower plants them everywhere. These seeds are no less precious, but the divine Sower knows that seeds are not just for harvesting—they nourish birds and create new soil, even in our own driveways.
New plants, the seeds of God’s presence in our world, will take root even in the smallest patch of soil, raising their delicate sprouts toward the sun. Let them grow long enough, and those supple blades of grass and clover will destroy the authoritarian dreams of driveway concrete. The will of roots to grow is more powerful than the bits of rock, clay, and sand clumped together by human will.
In these times, when mainline churches and theological schools keenly feel authoritarian threats to democracy, our hope is not in the amber waves of grain that have flourished with relatively little tending. Our hope lies in the outrageous abundance of the divine Sower’s seeds and the opportunities they offer us to cultivate new soil. After all, Matthew’s parable challenges us to make our hearts good soil—not to tend soil that is already thriving.
I’m still going to pull the weeds from my driveway cracks, but I’ll think about them a little differently. They show me the abundance of new life in our world. In my teaching in theological education, both church and academy, I will look for places where God’s seeds of new life turn concrete authoritarian dreams into fertile soil for God’s justice, compassion, and the repair of creation.