I enjoy telling my students about “the first person filled with the Spirit in the Bible”…and that Paul thought it vital to do ministry while “working with his hands” for his own needs, undercutting the culture’s economic and vocational values as he did so.

Anecdote on the way in which this permeates the wider culture. Before seminary I taught for four years in the inner city in Memphis. The motto of our local school system: “Every child, college bound, every day.” I cannot begin to tell you how catastrophic this motto is, given what it communicated to my students back then (and the way it still impacts many of them today). This product of a mindset of bureaucratic educational elite strongly implied that there are “second class” citizens: electricians, plumbers, firemen, etc. That such jobs often pay more than high-debt collegiate endeavors goes unsaid.