Street Divinity: Cultivating Wisdom in the Wild

In every age, the church faces the question: how will we faithfully navigate the terrain in a world always changing like cloud formations in the sky? Each time we have a snapshot of our reality, atmospheric conditions change, and we need to adapt to the weather.

As a practical theologian, applied sociologist, and missional practitioner, I’ve spent my life at the intersection of declining congregations, classrooms, emergent spiritual communities, tattoo parlors, jails, rehabs, burrito shops, and mainline pulpits. My previous research on Contextual Intelligence (CQ) involved developing a framework for recognizing and responding wisely to shifting, diverse, and often unpredictable environments. CQ teaches us to “read the signs of the times and know what to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32).

The societal landscape is changing.

We live in an age of profound disaffiliation, where institutional religion has lost much of its credibility and spiritual hunger is migrating to the margins. We need more than strategies and slogans. We need a new kind of intelligence. A new kind of leader. A new language to communicate with a new world.

It’s time to talk about Street Divinity.

From Practical Divinity to Street Divinity

John Wesley spoke of practical divinity… faith not locked in the academy but lived on the ground. Methodism was born not in cathedrals but in coal mines, class meetings, and city slums. It offered a theology of holiness that took the form of embodied love, social justice, and relational discipleship.

Wesley was deeply committed to what he called “plain truth for plain people.” He believed the gospel should be communicated in the simplest, clearest language possible so that it could be received by those experiencing poverty, the uneducated, and those outside the bounds of institutional religion.

In his preaching and writing, Wesley emphasized the importance of “adapting your subject to the hearer,” urging preachers to consider the context, experience, and capacity of their audience. This pastoral instinct wasn’t about watering down the message but about embodying the incarnational nature of Christ—translating divine truth into everyday speech, stories, and settings. For Wesley, faithful ministry meant meeting people where they were and making sure nothing in our style or delivery became a barrier to grace.

In many ways, Wesley was an 18th-century exemplar of wise leadership. Sociologist Monika Ardelt (3D-WS) defines wisdom as three distinct dimensions: cognitive understanding, reflective insight, and compassionate action.

Passio Dei is an attempt to reinterpret the heart of the Wesleyan tradition, not by returning to the past, but by living it forward in fresh ways.

Street Divinity is practical divinity, evolved for the 21st-century street: the gritty, hybrid, pluralistic, post-Christian reality where people still long for transformation but can’t find their way to the altar rail.

What Is Street Divinity?

Street Divinity is the integrated practice of contextual intelligence and 3D wisdom—applied in real time, with real people, in the real world.

It is:

• Cognitive: grounded in theological and cultural literacy, able to translate sacred truths across social and generational boundaries.
• Reflective: attuned to inner life and social location, willing to question assumptions, hold tension, and learn from failure.
• Compassionate: manifest through empathetic concern, in acts of radical solidarity, healing presence, and circle-expanding love.

Street Divinity honors the sacred in everyday places. It learns from those experiencing poverty and marginalization, as well as the addicted, the doubter, and the spiritually homeless. It’s as comfortable in a recovery circle as it is in the sanctuary. It thrives in the margins—because that’s one of the places where Jesus is still walking.

Drawing on the Contextual Intelligence Framework, it combines a hermeneutic (a method for interpreting Scripture) with a semiotic (a method for interpreting culture), that Leonard Sweet and I call the Issachar Mandorla.

Who Are the Street Divines?

Street Divines are the modern Issacharians—those who understand the times and know what to do. They are bi-vocational pastors, barbers and beauticians who council, social workers who theologize, tattoo shop owners who preach through ink, and grandmothers who launch fresh expressions over bingo and biscuits.

They don’t just teach doctrine, they embody it. They carry a blend of street smarts and sacred imagination, honed in the furnace of real life. They are multilingual—able to speak church, but also TikTok, trauma, theology, and trap music.

They may or may not be ordained clergy, because they are ordained by baptism and anointed by the Spirit to serve their daily context.

Why Now?

Because we are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Because followers of Jesus offer the gift of community which can heal the world.

Because the church as we know it is dying in its pews but rising in the wild.

Because people are leaving institutional religion, not because they’ve rejected Jesus, but because they’ve never encountered Jesus with skin on… wise, humble, compassionate, contextually intelligent followers who embody his way, truth, and life. Followers who don’t just preach the kingdom but live it on the block.

Street Divinity is the next evolution of practical theology. It’s time for seminaries, churches, and ecclesial networks to train for it—not just in classrooms, but on curbs, in shelters, in start-ups, and street corners.

What Comes Next?

In the coming months, our team will be launching a new initiative, The Street Divinity Project, to train new kind of leaders and nurture them in a supportive community. Drawing on our work with Fresh Expressions, Contextual Intelligence, and the Passional Church movement, this project will integrate field-tested, evidence-based, frameworks with the 3D wisdom model to cultivate Street Divines.

Think of it as a seminary of the streets. A wisdom school for everyday saints. A praxis lab for the Spirit’s wild work.

It’s not about building the next big church.

It’s about cultivating wise leaders for the world as it is.

If you’re interested in joining this journey—from theory to street, from theology to transformation—let’s talk.

The streets are speaking. Do we have the ears to hear?