6. Preparing Lectures and
Writing Monographs and Articles

Most graduate schools offer no guidance whatsoever in sound lecture preparation and teaching methods, and as a result, a young teacher’s first students may pay a heavy tariff for the privilege of studying under a well-­qualified expert. In some cases, graduate programs seem to produce scholars who appear to know little outside the narrow confines of their concentration; alternatively, they occasionally result in people who are positively ill-­equipped to teach undergraduates or master’s-­level seminarians. The challenge of preparing interesting lectures will often be compounded by the pressure to either complete the dissertation, or turn it into a monograph and then find a publisher. In addition, the experience of several years in a graduate program may yield up the materials for an article or other pressing research project, and the new teacher will soon find that there is now less time to pursue such projects than there was before. This chapter will provide some basic guidance for outlining lectures, turning the dissertation into a book, dealing with publishers, preparing articles for publication, and coping with the unremitting pressures that will inevitably be encountered in one’s first teaching position.

Course Outline and Lecture Preparation

Most new graduates find that much of their energy in the first few years of teaching is directed toward the production of a series of lectures.1 Beginning teachers commonly offer two major courses of lectures per quarter, at a minimum, and some smaller colleges and seminaries may demand as many as four or five series of lectures in a quarter. Without careful planning and some sense of method for the preparation of course outlines and lectures, the first years of teaching can be a devastating experience. The primary maxim of lecture preparation in teaching is, “Great industry in your first preparation is the foundation for leisure later on”; this principle, if possible, should be remembered in the midst of the inevitable early disorientation and panic one experiences in his or her first teaching assignment. Less facetiously stated, this is a variation on the theme expounded in the discussion on research methods: “Do it right the first time so that you will have something to build on.”

In the first place, it is probably unwise and certainly repetitive (not to say boring), to lecture through the same material and to use the same approach as found in the assigned textbooks. The most significant and constructive classroom lectures are those that supplement the assigned texts by focusing students’ attention on the critical issues that emerge from their studies. A purely narrative approach that surveys long periods in history and effectively reproduces the textbooks is invariably deadening in effect. We prefer a topical approach that selects a pertinent and important aspect of history and emphasizes the details of that aspect or event in order to present a coherent view of the issues involved.2 This topical approach does, however, result in a partial coverage of the period or subject under study, and it must be coordinated with solid textbooks and, preferably, with a well-­selected reserve book list in the library, as well as support from Internet resources.

The old-­fashioned notion that teaching history primarily involves conveying information is perhaps the single greatest cause for the widespread lack of interest in the topic. A certain amount of factual data is undoubtedly conveyed in the approach we are advocating, but in the teaching of history, and in particular church history, far more is at stake than the dissemination of even the most edifying information. Any significant course of historical studies properly seeks to assist intellectual formation primarily in two areas: sharpening the students’ analytical abilities and broadening their imaginative faculties.3 In the specific disciplines of church history and Christian theology, these two intellectual qualities will naturally be accompanied by the cultivation of other, additional dispositions; analytic ability needs to be augmented by a positive estimation of the Christian tradition, and imagination by discernment. But even faith and discernment are gifts that can be supplemented by clear reasoning, comparison, and sound deduction. In other words, historical analysis, while insisting upon a critical and hence somewhat skeptical use of evidence, will not seek to produce skeptics, and nurturing the imaginative ability to grasp the larger whole of religious and churchly reality will not result in the reduction of all religious phenomena to the same bland indiscriminate level of meaning. Ideally, teaching history will help enable students to discriminate between the important and the unimportant, what should be retained in the tradition and what modified or discarded.

This approach to lecturing accomplishes several things; it enables students to observe a historian at work, collecting information, evaluating and ordering it, and interpreting it in discussion with other scholars. A teacher’s candid display of excitement about some recent discovery or about a convincing new thesis in a book or article is one of the most important contributions that he or she can make to the educational process. Such personal involvement in lecturing invariably introduces an element of risk; a teacher’s own favorite research projects should never be foisted onto a discussion of other issues, nor should they be allowed to dominate the discussion. Since a focus on issues invariably involves the evaluation of others’ scholarship, it is also probably well to advise new teachers in particular to emphasize positive examples of scholarship rather than to dwell on the negative. Highlighting issues draws attention to the value of scholarly debate, it shows the way in which knowledge is advanced, and at its best, it can reveal the way in which a community of scholars functions. Conversely, when teachers are required to explain complex ideas and events to their students, their own powers of explication are enhanced, and hence teaching indirectly, but nevertheless truly, complements one’s own program of research.4

In the actual preparation of a first set of lectures it is helpful to utilize standard textbooks, anthologies, and critical editions of collections of documents, in that order. One should begin by becoming fully conversant with several textbooks in the field, in addition to the one that is to be assigned to the class. This advice, while basic, offers several advantages that may not be obvious to the beginner. In the first place, it enables one to develop a general overview of the subject, a sense of sub-­topics and divisions of the subject, and a grasp of the ways in which the materials can best be presented. A survey of the best manuals in a given field is highly valuable if it generates fundamental methodological questions about the discipline: What are the principles of organization in this text? What is sound and useful about the organization? What is less than acceptable about it? What is useful in the author’s basic outline? How does the outline have to be modified in the light of more recent scholarship, in the light of one’s own attitudes about the material, or in the light of what other major scholars have done with the same material by way of organizing it? Once these questions have been asked, via the basic manuals, an outline can be generated for the course and a substantive series of lecture topics can be identified.

For example, a course outline for the history of Christian doctrine ought to rest, in part, on an initial examination of such works as Seeberg’s History of Doctrines, Harnack’s History of Dogma, and various more specialized examinations of various periods in the history of the church, like Otto Ritschl’s Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus. A course outline on American church history should rest, in part, on an examination of the standard surveys by Ahlstrom, Hudson, and Gaustad. An outline of the general history of the Christian church ought to evidence some contact with the standard works by Walker and Latourette. The lectures themselves should proceed from the outline to the sources — often after careful notice of the sources cited (and, sometimes, omitted) by the standard texts. We have noted in a previous chapter the value of utilizing bibliographic essays in the preparation of a first set of lectures. It will usually be impossible to examine all the recent scholarly articles that have appeared on the topic of the lecture, but if one has at least a general sense of the current state of research on a given topic, the authority of one’s presentation will be enhanced accordingly. Some elements of the current state of research should be introduced into the lecture to illustrate to the students the ongoing nature of scholarly discourse.

Once the basic series of topics and the general outline of the individual lectures have been determined, however, do not use secondary literature in the form of textbooks as the foundation for discussion, but turn to standard anthologies, and if possible, collections of documents. For example, Bettenson’s The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius and The Later Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Cyril of Jerusalem to St. Leo the Great can be used as a basis for an initial presentation of patristic theology; or for the history of Christianity in the United States, one might turn to the superb anthology edited by Handy, Smith and Loetscher, American Christianity (2 vols.), or the more recent two-­volume collection edited by Edwin Gaustad. Collections of texts and documents like these are available in almost every field. Used properly they offer a point of entry into the original sources and thereby increase the authority and accuracy of one’s presentation, even in subject areas beyond one’s research specialization. In addition, their use establishes a sound basis on which subsequent lecture preparations can build. If more time is available for preparation, then the actual documents can be consulted either in their original manuscripts or printings, or in standard collections like the Ante-­­Nicene Fathers or the Patrologia. While it is certainly desirable to seek out and utilize the best critical editions of the original sources, to insist on such a practice would probably bring us to an unattainable counsel of perfection. In either case, however, if there is not time to transcribe quotations, it is not a bad idea to bring the source into the classroom and cite it directly.

Careful forethought and a conscientious use of outlines should culminate in a commitment to a syllabus of lecture topics before the production of the lectures, even in the face of a heavy schedule and lectures in several different courses. Oftentimes newly appointed teachers must prepare lectures the night before they are to be presented. If an entire ten-­ or fourteen-­week course has been outlined and the basic resources gathered (or at least identified) ahead of time, the topics will be clear at the point of preparation. This kind of commitment to a course syllabus is helpful both psychologically and emotionally: the pressure of preparation is usually assuaged by a clear definition of the task and a printed promise stated ahead of time in the syllabus.

Finally, as in the case of research notes, lecture notes ought to be taken very carefully, with accurate citation of sources primary and secondary, and with a view toward modification, expansion, and augmentation in the future. In the long run, a poorly prepared initial set of lectures will either linger on, unmodified, as the sum and substance of a particular class, resulting in extreme boredom on the part of both teacher and students, or it will have to be discarded. A well-­prepared basic set of lectures can be expanded, new topics can developed and added, and thereby the learning process can be extended to the professor as well as to the students. In time, the examination of the best critical editions of primary sources may become more than a pious wish, and the course of lectures may actually improve rather than degenerate.

In addition to supplementing lectures and expanding them into ancillary areas, lecture topics themselves should actually be changed from time to time, thereby providing an additional antidote to boredom with the subject, an experience that is almost bound to be translated directly to the students. The topic of the vitality and freshness of lectures leads us to a discussion of the equally demanding matter of style and presentation, though the two may never be entirely separated.

Lecturing and Teaching

When we turn to matters of style and the actual presentation of lectures, we recognize that there will be considerable variations between schools and teaching situations, and that many such matters are optional and properly suited to the taste and preference of the individual. For example, the intangible but essential quality of a teacher’s commitment to the subject matter, his or her ability to display a high level of energy and to convey a sense of the worth of the endeavor, will have a great deal to do with the success or the failure of the teacher. While there is no substitute for this quality of passion, there is also no formula that will produce it and no set of exercises that will supply its absence. Similarly, a halting, dull form of lecture delivery will not easily be remedied by reading a few paragraphs in a book. Several issues that bear upon style, however, are universal, and some general guidelines concerning good form can be laid down.5

Lecture notes must be mastered before the lecture is given. If notes are read, the teacher must, at all costs, avoid the appearance of reading them, or being slavishly dependent on them. Eye contact with students is essential, even when students are dutifully taking down notes. If lectures are not fully memorized, it helps one avoid losing contact with the class to break the sections of a topic up with subheadings in one’s notes that are grasped at a glance, with supporting points in the form of brief phrases. If lectures are written out word for word in longhand, sentences, on the whole, should be shorter than one finds in printed prose.6 Attaining a balance between useful generalization and concrete example is an art, but it is an art that, if attended to, can be developed to a high and rhetorically powerful degree. A line of argument that is sustained too long without reference to a specific illustration will result in the loss of students’ attention; conversely, a long series of stories or an undisciplined use of humor will lead students to conclude that the teacher is more interested in entertainment than the course of study itself. Both extremes will produce understandable frustration in the student.

If outlines are useful in the preparation of lectures, they are also useful in the delivery of lectures. The psychological effect of a carefully prepared outline may be as important as the pedagogical effect, for it immediately communicates to the students that serious preparation has gone into the course. We have found that students on the whole appear to value outlines that serve as a basis for lectures, in part, because they provide a sense of beginning, definition, and closure for the period spent in the classroom. Lecture outlines given to the class at the outset, or presented during the lecture via Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Corel’s Presentations, will relieve part of the tedium of attentive listening, and they will be conducive to students taking meaningful notes. If this technique is adopted, the lecture should follow the outline (since there is nothing more frustrating in a student’s classroom experience than finding no relation between the outline and the lecture), but it need not be followed slavishly. Digressions, especially those involving brief forays into technical topics that inform the general theme under discussion, or aspects of one’s own research interests, are entirely acceptable, and indeed, desirable.

We will not provide here an extended discussion of teaching aids and new techniques; other, more specialized sources will need to be consulted on these topics.7 However, we should note that the use of presentation graphics does offer the teacher a highly versatile and powerful set of tools for teaching, and there can be little doubt about the value of utilizing charts and maps in the teaching of history. Such well-­used sources as Charles S. Anderson’s Augsburg Historical Atlas and Edwin S. Gaustad’s New Historical Atlas of Religion in America can profitably be used to graphically display religious change and trends over time. Two pieces of advice concerning audio and visual aids apply to almost all circumstances. First, the use of such programs as PowerPoint must be carefully planned so that graphics and outlines are smoothly integrated with the overall goals of the lecture. If a mechanical device is utilized, such as an overhead projector or a slide projector, it must be tested and the graphic display actually previewed ahead of time; there is no alternative method for assuring against disaster. Secondly, aids should always have the quality of transparency; the intended enhancement of a point must not be (though it commonly is) either a digression from the main point or a distraction. From a successful British source we find the following understated but pungent advice that well summarizes the essential points concerning teaching aids: “Fear your own preferences. Be ruthless in discarding. Strain always for simplicity, and plan your lectures as you would a campaign.”8

Perhaps the single most important aspect of successful teaching is the quality of conviction noted at the outset of this section. Conviction as an essential quality of teaching does not entail dogmatically defending a particular line of argument; rather it involves conveying a sense of the importance of the topic under discussion. This is not to suggest that a teacher should turn the lecture into a sermon; nor, conversely, do we mean to suggest that teachers should never own or advocate a position. But ownership of a position does not always need to be explicit; if it is always explicit, teaching may degenerate into propaganda. On the other hand, if a person’s teaching lacks the element of passion, it will produce boredom and indifference. If conviction concerning the importance of the topic must be evident, so too must the larger meaning of the topic and how it contributes to the educational goal of the curriculum, and this must be made explicit more than once. In the teaching of history, what a lecturer demonstrates about clear thinking, the art of historical inquiry, and the evaluation of sources will often be as important as the topic at hand. Engaging the minds and the emotions of our students with fresh and interesting ideas is part of our task. If students are not inspired by history, if their imaginations are not stirred and their minds set running in new directions, and if their perceptual horizons are not extended, then we may rightly question whether history has been taught. This means, in our view, that the way in which the teacher handles the subject compares in importance with the subject itself, and thus, just as the content of a course of lectures should be subject to periodic review, a teacher’s style should be regularly subjected to rigorous self-­scrutiny.

Preparing the Dissertation for Publication

The revision of lectures should be an ongoing task, but the temptation to pour all of one’s energy into improving course work must be resisted at some point. It is not a good idea to become so preoccupied with the polishing of lectures that one neglects the other tasks of writing that will, if done conscientiously, offer more substance to lectures than focusing solely on the teaching process. It is crucial for the beginning teacher to grasp that engaging in additional research and preparing the dissertation for publication and writing articles contributes in an indirect but powerful way to excellence in classroom performance. In our experience, teachers that concentrate solely on improving their lectures soon find that they lack in depth of insight and power of analysis. The intimate connection between disciplined writing and articulate speech is commonly acknowledged, but there is an additional, intangible quality of authority in teaching that can only be cultivated by primary research. The teacher that separates these disciplines will soon discover an insurmountable barrier of mediocrity and sameness that can only be overcome by returning to first-­level research and writing.

We recognize that teachers in small colleges and seminaries may be almost overwhelmed with their early course preparation. Considerable effort will be required to find time to pursue research and writing, but since the expenditure of such energy is a good investment, not only in the research itself, but indirectly in their classes and students, movement toward the preparation of the dissertation for publication should begin as soon as the dissertation is complete. This task is complicated by the fact that the aggressive copying program of ProQuest/UMI has made it increasingly difficult to publish even first-­rate dissertations without significant revision based on further research. The preparation of the dissertation for publication today, therefore, involves far more than simply redrafting the prose and simplifying the argument. With few exceptions, publishers will require that revised dissertations demonstrate that substantial research has been undertaken beyond the original thesis.

Armed with this knowledge, the wise mentor (or, for that matter, the student with foresight) will already have determined the way in which two or more chapters may be improved and reshaped. Ideally, this kind of planning should be done while the dissertation is perhaps only two-­thirds complete. It may be that the chronological extent of the original work can be extended, or an entirely new genre of literature, properly excluded from the dissertation, may now be investigated. A new or revised chapter might adopt a different technique of investigation, and occasionally, it may be possible to defend substantial revision simply on the basis of further research in similar sources. The basic method of revision advocated here is not unlike the method by which the topic was originally narrowed, though the process is now, as it were, done in reverse. The question is now one of how the work may be justifiably expanded, within reason, to qualify as a significantly revised piece of original research. One of the chief difficulties in this process is that substantial reworking must forfeit nothing of the originality of the project, while at the same time, the bulk of the project cannot be greatly extended. Publishers will generally resist a typescript of more than 350 to 400 pages for a first book.

The publication of a dissertation may take several forms, but the current availability of unpublished dissertations in various formats usually forces the discussion into two basic lines of argument. Some will advocate that the dissertation should be kept together as a single piece of research and published as a monograph. This advice is common in the humanities. Others, typically in those social sciences that are more quantitatively oriented, or in the sciences, will argue that a dissertation may be divided into several parts and published as a series of articles. One attraction of this second option is that it may require less reworking of the dissertation to turn at least some of the chapters into articles. But there is one major drawback to the second approach that must be carefully understood and weighed. Most academic institutions (and here we have in mind specifically administrators and committees of advancement and tenure in the humanities) will typically not weigh five scholarly articles with the same scales that they weigh a book. Although the amount of energy, insight, and sheer sweat that goes into an article, especially articles involving quantification, may actually exceed the effort put into a small monograph, the monograph tends to carry more weight than the article. It is for this reason that we think it wise, unless compelled by extraordinary circumstances, that research that has once taken the form of a dissertation should be retained as a monograph.

Several useful books and pamphlets have appeared on the topic of how to approach publishers with a book-­length manuscript.9 The best single guide for all of the details of academic book publishing is the Chicago Manual of Style, itself a model of what a scholarly book should be. The latest edition of the stylesheet of the Modern Language Association is also highly valuable. In all of this literature, and in our own experience, several useful admonitions bear repeating. Aspiring authors should give careful attention to matters of prose style and the mechanics of bibliographic citation and footnote apparatus. At this preliminary stage of preparation, it is acceptable to adopt the footnote style of a major publisher, such as the University of Chicago Press. But no opportunity should be given to an editor to reject the typescript out of hand because the arguments are poorly or ineptly phrased. The scholar who dispatches a typescript to a publisher with grammatical, stylistic, or mechanical errors deserves to have it rejected.

A second key to finding a publisher is to examine the kinds of titles that publishers are printing. The book list of university presses is actually more restricted than most people realize, and if a press has previously published no titles in the field of church history, it is unlikely that they will begin with a revised dissertation. Book catalogs and advertisements of books in major journals like the American Historical Review are the most convenient means of learning about the publishing parameters of various presses. In addition to university presses, beginning scholars may well want to look at the publishers who have adopted scholarly monograph series with limited press runs of several hundred copies of books, such as University Presses of America and Peter Lang Publishers. The monograph series by publishers such as Ashgate, Paternoster, Brill, and Brepols should also be examined.

Having determined the names of a half dozen or so publishers who are actively publishing in the area of one’s specialization, the next step is to send a letter of inquiry to these publishers, along with the book’s title page, table of contents, and one or two chapters, rather than the entire work. The cover letter should indicate that the typescript has been extensively revised from its earlier existence as a dissertation, and an attempt should be made to indicate to the editor the potential audience of the work. It is entirely legitimate, at this preliminary stage of inquiry, to send these materials to more than one publisher at a time. If the publisher indicates a serious interest in the manuscript, the editor will then declare whether house rules allow the simultaneous submission of entire typescripts to more than one publisher. (Simultaneous submissions are never allowed in the case of articles submitted to scholarly journals.) If a publisher disallows simultaneous submissions, then one is ethically bound to either narrow the choice to the one publisher, or proceed with several others that may allow more than one submission. Since it is not uncommon in the process of evaluation for typescripts to be tied up for six months or more, the attraction of simultaneous submissions is obvious. On the other hand, it is usually the less well-­established and hence less prestigious presses that allow the practice. If a publisher wishes to see the entire typescript, it may be wise to obtain the style sheet of the publisher or publishers that will be pursued, and then meticulously adopt the style and the recommendations of that publisher in detail.

Finally, even the most gifted and promising young scholar commonly faces the disappointment of having a typescript rejected, sometimes repeatedly. Most typescripts are refereed by two specialists in a field, but editors may unknowingly rely on referees who are constitutionally ill-­equipped to appreciate the line of argument that the book espouses; the quirkiness of some evaluations, to our minds, remains absolutely baffling. The only redress that one has in this world of uncertainty is to take the rejections in stride and turn immediately to other publishers. Carefully done, well-­written scholarship that does make a contribution to a field of study will eventually be rewarded with publication, assuming that the author can manifest sufficient persistence and courage.

Ongoing Research: Articles and Book-­length Projects

In this chapter, we have been advocating the idea that there is a vital, creative, and sustaining connection between a teacher’s ongoing research projects and the best classroom experience where students become excited about learning. On the one hand, lectures should contain information not only about the old issues and debates, but also new interpretations, and in some cases, new information, that bring fresh insights to bear on the perennial issues. This can only be accomplished by serious scholars who are working in the primary sources. On the other hand, interaction with students impresses upon us our own limited conceptual frameworks and thrusts us back into the sources with new and different questions. In a word, the most effective teachers are often the most careful scholars, and the scholar’s quality of work in the guild is formed in part by the experience of teaching.

No matter what one’s own level of commitment to publishing, students of history who aspire to be good teachers should aim to research and write something, since the two enterprises properly nurture each other. One will occasionally meet scholars who only write books and never debate issues at the more discrete level of the journals; conversely, a few scholars never venture into the realm of writing books in the form of unified, book-­length essays, but instead write a series of disparate, disconnected articles and yet somehow find a publisher to publish them as if they were in fact a book. Ideally, however, the two enterprises belong together, and something can be said for the way that articles and book-­length projects are mutually supportive.

One key to the writing of articles is to think of them as smaller, ancillary projects that stimulate and feed a larger, long-­term project, and these long-­term projects in turn, should fit into an even broader pattern of a person’s life-­work. Occasionally, one will stumble across a perfectly self-­contained topic that sparks one’s interest and has little bearing on anything else, and yet it may deserve the time and energy required to turn it into an article. For the most part, however, articles should be viewed as smaller parts of the larger whole of one’s research and writing program. It is at this point that long-­term planning can be useful, and done well, it can save one from engaging in a series of disparate, and finally unrelated and useless projects. No hard and fast rules can be laid down, and an individual’s style and his or her own particular way of arranging work will undoubtedly vary dramatically from person to person.

There are also several useful ways to approach the production of solid research articles that develop out of a broader research program. Research on a larger project will, almost invariably, result in a series of ideas for possible essays on related topics. These topics are not, typically, to be added to the outline of the larger project but instead to be treated as ancillary, shorter projects that do not fit into the larger project and cannot be completed at the same time. One way to manage these ancillary topics is to give them a title, state briefly what they entail, set down a preliminary bibliography, and then save the file. The idea is not lost and it can be reconsidered at a later time. If the topic appears to be fruitful, it can be very helpful to develop, for one’s own use, a more or less formal research proposal in several distinct sections: 1) a statement of one’s thesis and of the problem to be examined and resolved; 2) a review of scholarship on the issue and “state of the question”; 3) a tentative outline of the essay; and 4) a tentative bibliography, properly formatted, of primary and secondary sources. This approach is quite similar to the presentation of a research proposal for a dissertation or of a prospectus for a monograph. Properly done, the research proposal can be expanded and developed into an article. The exercise of writing out the proposal for one’s self, moreover, will serve to establish the feasibility of the project. Being able to identify a scholarly problem and a thesis will provide a sense of the usefulness of the project in moving a particular state of the question forward. Being able to indicate a preliminary outline will help to clarify and organize the project. The whole process may well improve the quality of the final product.

In conclusion, what we can state with confidence is that the best teaching and the best research are interdependent, and generations of past scholars have defined useful categories of discrete literary forms, such as the article and the monograph, that still provide the principal avenue for displaying the results of research and actually extending the scope of human learning. The scholarly guild properly demands a certain depth of investment in research for one’s writing to attain a hearing, and these conventions are not likely to change. Much of the opposition that is expressed to the integration of scholarship and teaching arises from those who have never worked effectively in both fields, or worse, have failed in one or the other.10 Those who suppose that graduate level or seminary teaching can proceed without ongoing first-­level research would sell the enterprise too cheaply, and the same applies to undergraduate teaching as well.

Given the reality and the utility of these structures, young scholars would do well to think carefully about the interdependence of research and teaching. It would be wise for them to consider that a dissertation left unpublished, or an article set aside half finished, is probably a sound indicator that a course of lectures will not be revised, and that it is likely to grow increasingly dull and cold. Similarly, the historian who only publishes with the denominational journal and refuses to risk public statements in the wider world of scholarship should wonder whether there is not a discernable sectarian slant in his or her teaching. In some cases, of course, this kind of focus may be a matter of one’s calling, but in other cases it may signal a loss of nerve or a failure of vision. In reality, the advantages of adopting the conventions and standards of the guild and attempting to work broadly within a variety of fora and scholarly genre far outweigh the risks, and for the historian of the church and Christian doctrine, this seems to us the only possible way to make a viable and lasting contribution to the field.

1. Several helpful guides on this topic have appeared, including G. R. Elton, “Teaching,” in his The Practice of History (New York: Crowell, 1967), pp. 142-78; G. Kitson Clark and E. Bidder Clark, The Art of Lecturing (Cambridge: Heffer, 1970).

2. We have adopted an approach comparable to Elton, Practice of History, pp. 165-66, though developed independently.

3. Elton, Practice of History, pp. 149, 161. Elton provocatively links the teaching of familiar historical topics to the development of analytical rigor, and the teaching of the unfamiliar to the mental quality of imagination and vision, p. 158.

4. Elton, Practice of History, p. 143, on this complementarity.

5. We will not digress here on the rudiments of public speaking. Kitson Clark, Art of Lecturing, pp. 17-23, provides some very basic advice concerning one’s posture, the use of the voice, gestures, blackboards, microphones, etc.

6. Kitson Clark, Art of Lecturing, p. 25, has further detailed recommendations.

7. The History Teacher is a quarterly journal that devotes the first of three sections to the “craft of teaching.”

8. Kitson Clark, Art of Lecturing, p. 41.

9. Several useful pamphlets by the Modern Language Association have appeared, including Oscar Cargill, William Charvat, and Donald D. Walsh, The Publication of Academic Writing (New York: Modern Language Association, 1966); and R. B. McKerrow and Henry M. Silver, On the Publication of Research (New York: Modern Language Association, 1964). See also Howard S. Becker, Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); and Norman Fiering, A Guide to Book Publication for Historians (Washington: American Historical Association, 1979).

10. Such statements include Robert W. Ferris, Renewal in Theological Education: Strategies for Change (Wheaton: Billy Graham Center, 1990); and Bryan Barnett, “Teaching and Research Are Inescapably Incompatible,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 3, 1992). Much of the literature on spiritual formation in theological education seems to work with similar assumptions.