Monday, November 24, 2025
If I am to be a teacher of faith, I need to be a practitioner of faith. This was true for me as a college music professor. A professor professes. Not just in words, but in practice. They must be in the field, researching, practicing, studying, and evolving.
I know professors who do not practice. I call them false prophets or professors of platitude. This usually happens with tenure. The professor becomes an ornament. They’re craft is frozen, stored on a shelf, never to be in the field. They talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. That’s called a sellout, an empty shell who has forgotten the practice of getting their hands dirty.
A good teacher is one who, herself, practices. Ministers make the worst teachers. They don’t practice. They platitude. Practicing keeps you in touch with your flock (or your students) because the teacher is still, and will forever be, an innocent student. Teaching might be considered advanced student-ing, or perpetual study. What kind of practitioner doesn’t practice? A preacher who doesn’t practice! A fraud.
Ministers regurgitate words and crystalize God into an old coot. Tenured professors reuse old lectures, turning their craft into statuary. Crusty musicians do the same-old spiel, turning music into a wooden spindle. All of it is an insufferable bore.
The real creator is practicing, in the field. Stone pillars can’t preach. Faith is hard because it keeps you on your toes, humble. It must be renewed, never mastered. There must be room for doubt, otherwise you are a fool preaching platitude – and faith is not dead, but alive.
The living are those who practice. If you’ve mastered it, you’re dead.
Devoted practitioner, in the field, hands dirty, heart full of love and dwelling among us – as us.
That’s more like it – equality. We’re all studying and practicing, even “the master.”