In one of his novels, William Faulkner wrote, “That which is destroying the church is not the outward groping of those with in it, or the inward groping of those without, but the professionals who control it and have removed the bells from its steeples.” (quoted by Dr. Lovitt H. Weems, Jr., at his Inaugural Address as President of St. Paul’s School of Theology, December 11, 1985.)

I don’t know everything that Faulkner meant by that. He may have been talking about the fact that the professionals within the church often forget who they are and what it is they are called to do. We become more interested in being professional in terms of how we do our jobs - than we are professionals in the sense of professing the faith that has been entrusted to us. We forget that as Paul put it “we have thi…