Over the past month, I have (very) slowly been making my way through William Willimon's book, Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry. In a section discussing different images and models of pastoral ministry, Willimon suggests the recovery of a classical form of Christian ministry:
There is much to be said for the pastor being educated in the classical forms of Christian ministry. The church has much experience as a minority movement. We need to draw from that experience today. In that regard, I predict a recovery of the classical shape of ministry: to teach, to preach, and to evangelize through the ministries of the Word, sacrament, and order. I sense the end of a proliferation of ministerial duties and a reclamation of the essential classical tasks of Christian ministry. Because so many of our people have not been well formed in the faith, pastors must now stress doctrine, the classical texts of our faith, our master narratives, the great themes. The culture is no longer a prop for the church. If we are going to make Christians, we must have a new determination to inculcate the faith. In some ways our age parallels that of the Reformation, in which the church was faced with a vast undereducated, uninformed, unformed laity and clergy. Pastors need to be prepared to lead in catechesis, moral formation, and the regeneration of God's people.
He argues that we no longer live in a culture where Christianity holds a prominent place. As Christians, we are now living in a context in which the idea of being aliens and strangers in the land must be recovered. This was the situation of the early church, and it shaped the way they carried out their ministry. In particular, they invested a great deal of time and energy into the formation of believers. As we now find ourselves in a similar context, Willimon suggests that
more of our pastoral time, in this missionary situation, will be spent in catechesis, the formation of Christians who have the equipment they need to survive as Christians.
I often hear people react against the idea of catechesis because of an assumption that it is mere indoctrination, drilling purely intellectual and academic theological propositions into the heads of children. This, unfortunately, may have been the experience of some – to be honest, this was partly my own experience – but Willimon helpfully points out that catechesis instead is about the holistic formation of believers, equipping them with the tools necessary not only to think rightly, but to live rightly in the world.
In order to understand more fully what catechesis is supposed to entail, it is helpful first to have a well-rounded definition of the practice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides one such definition:
Catechesis...[includes] especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life....catechesis is built on a certain number of elements of the Church's pastoral mission...[including] the initial proclamation of the Gospel or missionary preaching to arouse faith; examination of the reasons for belief; experience of Christian living; celebration of the sacraments; integration into the ecclesial community; and apostolic and missionary witness (II, 5-6).
Catechesis is not just about intellectual matters, but it is about the whole of the Christian life. Recovering this sort of ministry is crucial for discipleship, and thus of great importance for pastoral ministry.
As a product of Christian education, and a proponent of it (particularly at the university level), I found the results of this study quite interesting. Cardus, a Hamilton, Ontario-based thinktank, staffed by a number of people I went to university with and highly respect, has conducted a study looking at the lasting impacts of various types of Christian education on the character and aspirations of students. Christianity Today published the page below with some of the findings:
Last November, I took a month-long hiatus from blogging in order to give more time to other things I felt more important. Since I have been back, I confess that I have not enjoyed blogging as much. Part of the reason for this is because I feel a sense of pressure to maintain some degree of regularity in posting. In and of itself, this is not really a problem; I always have something on my mind I could blog about. The problem is that I am something of a perfectionist when I write, and I'm not satisfied until I have said everything I want to say in just the right way. And so I can have a blog post I started on Monday that is not ready to be published until Saturday because I constantly read over it, rework it, and polish it until it is right. When I'm already working fifty hours a week and have all kinds of other things going on during the week, that is additional stress that is entirely unnecessary.
I have been thinking about changing how I blog. The time factor is one of the reasons. But there is another, more significant, reason for my decision to make this change. In an opinion piece in the March web edition of Christianity Today, John Dyer, the web development director at Dallas Theological Seminary, observed that with the advent of blogs and social media, anyone can publish anything with the click of a button. He noted,
What few of us realize is that when we press those 'Publish,' 'Post,' 'Comment,' and 'Send' buttons, we are making the shift away from merely 'believing' truth and stepping into the arena of publishing that belief. In doing so we are effectively assuming a position of leadership and teaching.
Jamie Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, recently articulated the idea that just because you can publish something, doesn't mean you should. There used to be a difficult process you had to go through in order to get published, requiring one to submit manuscripts, get the approval of an editor and a big-name publisher. Smith argues that there is wisdom in that process:
I just wonder if there might be a few young theologians out there who are willing to at least pause and consider the possibility that there remains some wisdom in the establishment--and so might, for the sake of their work, submit to the disciplines of the process, even find the gifts hidden in rejections, rather than scurrying to find what upstart press will get their book into print. They might be grateful later, and theology might be better for it.
The point, I think, is that few of us are learners. We either don't want to be, or we just don't know how to be. Lately, I have become increasingly aware that I need to be a learner again. Human nature inclines many of us to want to be teachers, or to be complacent with the knowledge and wisdom we have already acquired. Being a learner, however, requires deliberate effort. It requires being willing to listen, think, read, contemplate, and digest. A few weeks ago, I was talking about how little I have been reading lately, and I noticed that even as I said that, I have an ongoing impulse to spit out thoughts whenever they come to me (using the outlet that is this blog).
It seems to me that there is an unhealthy disconnect there. As I move closer to taking up a role that puts me in the position of a teacher, I am growing more conscious of the need to assume the posture of a learner. I need to be much more intentional about taking in the knowledge and wisdom of others who are far more learned than I am. There are any number of ways to do this – reading books, listening to lectures, having face to face conversations with others.
So, for now, this means I will be putting down my own pen in order to learn and grow from what has flowed from the pens of others. I have a few ideas for how the format of this blog might change in light of this:
• I have a pattern already of quoting portions of books I am reading that offer something interesting and insightful. But up to now, I have usually framed the post with my own commentary on the quote. With the new format, I will offer a lot less commentary and let the quote speak for itself.
• In the same vein, I will post links to articles around the web that I find interesting and worth reading and thinking about. I already do this regularly on Facebook, but will probably do it less there and more here since I have a bit more space to make notes on it (Facebook limits you to something like 450 characters).
• There will be very few posts that contain content I have written entirely by myself. These are the types of posts that usually take me the longest and cause me the most stress. This is not to say there will not be any of these, but they will be very infrequent.
Instead of this being a place where I just air out my own thoughts, I want it to be a space that facilitates learning by pointing to the wisdom and thought of others and gives us a forum to interact and converse about all kinds of different topics and ideas. In addition, this may provide us with more opportunities for conversations. One of the goals I have had with this blog is to post about three times a week. This has been a big challenge up to now, but I suspect that with this change that goal will be much more within reach. As always, thanks for visiting, and I hope you enjoy the new format.
Building on my post earlier today, I noticed that Anthony Bradley wrote an excellent article for World Magazine online on the opportunities available for missional churches to get involved in education in their local communities. Anthony writes, 'Outside of a church, there is no better way, institutionally speaking, to demonstrate love for our neighbors than to provide education that surpasses failing public schools in quality and virtue, especially in inner cities.'
There are huge opportunities here for churches to play an active role in the renewal of the city and to help bring children up understanding reality through the lens of the Gospel. Check out this video below to learn about the incredible work that is being done in Philadelphia by Christians who are committed to Christian education and the people in their communities.
I noticed on Facebook yesterday that a number of my friends had posted this as their status:
A boy writes a letter to God: 'Dear God, why do you let bad things happen in our schools?' God replies, 'Dear Son, I'm not allowed in your schools.'
The line of argument is clear – since God is no longer 'allowed' in the public school system, a judgement of some sort has been pronounced upon the public school system such that 'bad things' continue to happen.
A few things should stand out immediately here. In the first place, there are two major theological errors at work. It is implied, for one, that the bad things that are happening in the schools are outside of God's control. The bad things happen because God is no longer present in the schools. The second error, then, is related to the first – God is no longer present in the schools since he is not acknowledged or welcomed. So, there is a denial of God's sovereignty in directing history, and his omnipresence.
In the second place, this is classic American civil religion at work. The widespread belief among evangelicals in the United States is that God is judging their nation because the broader culture no longer acknowledges and worships him. This is a big deal particularly because of the pervasive belief that in some sense, America is a sort of promised land entrusted with a mission from God to be a light to the rest of the world. For years now, especially since the infamous Scopes Trial of 1925, Christians in the US have felt that the schools have been a prime battleground for what James Davison Hunter has coined the 'culture wars'. Years of fighting over all kinds of issues – prayer in the schools, teaching evolution versus creationism – have created a strong perception of victimisation. Broader culture and liberal social elites are on a mission to suppress Christianity. And so the 'bad things' happening in the schools is judgement finally being rendered on those who have opposed the presence of Christianity in cultural institutions like schools.
One of the things that continues to confuse me most about this country is the expectation that Christianity should be given a prominent place in American culture. In a nation where freedom of religion and separation of church and state are constantly heralded as good things, why should anyone expect that public schools be of one particular religious tradition? Public schools function as educational institutions for everyone in society at large. To be sure, the schools are not irreligious – after all, all of life is religion – but unless this was a Christian theocracy of sorts, the public schools are under no obligation to be overtly Christian (or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Taoist, for that matter).
For reasons I cannot understand, there continues to be a widespread confidence among American Christians that the political process can solve all of their problems. Civil religion maintains that so long as people will acknowledge God, the country will be a better place – increased prosperity, more churches on street corners, stores closed on Sundays, less R-rated movies coming out of Hollywood, and so on. And the primary way for this to be achieved is by systematically legislating morality, such as demanding that each school day open with prayer and that evolution be stricken from the science curriculum.
It should be obvious that, in the end, this would achieve hardly anything in terms of 're-Christianising' America. Imposing laws on people will not change their hearts. Old Testament Israel bound all of its citizens to the laws of God, but a quick read through the prophets reveals that despite following these laws, their hearts remained bound to idols. The idea of re-Christianising America is in and of itself a misguided notion, but for the sake of argument, the point at which this begins is in the hearts of its people as they hear the gospel and respond to it in faith. Jesus did not entrust the Great Commission to public school teachers or to the government, but to his people. He gave us the task of making the known the good news of the Kingdom of God.
Sociologist Peter Berger has written of 'plausibility structures,' the idea being that people will embrace a system of actions and beliefs, an understanding of reality, that seems plausible to them. As Christians, our responsibility is to embody a biblical worldview such that it becomes a credible and alternative plausibility structure. If you want to talk about cultural change, it doesn't begin with legislating prayer in schools. It begins with Christians faithfully embodying the story of Scripture.
Parents, if you want your children to receive a Christian education, that is your responsibility. You cannot expect to send your children off to school and have them return as mature and faithful disciples of Christ, even under the best of circumstances. The Bible gives clear mandate for the primary role of parents in the education and formation of their children; Deuteronomy 6:6-9, which has been called the great charter of Christian education, serves as a clear example of this:
And these words that I command to you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, an they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Although I have expressed my disagreement with the line of argument above and the understanding that presupposes it, I do readily agree that, by and large, the public school system is an environment that makes the task of raising children to love and serve the Lord a great challenge. For this reason, I am a proponent of Christian education by means of institutional Christian schools or homeschooling (although I certainly recognise both that Christians schools are not wholly immune to the problems of the public school system, and that not all parents are of the means to be able to take advantage of these alternatives).
Whatever form it takes, the important thing is that parents actively take a primary role in educating their children. Because children go through the educational system in their most formative years, it is so very crucial that parents are wholly conscious of the responsibility they have toward their children and are intentional and deliberate in their efforts to counter the worldview their children will come into contact with on a daily basis with the narrative of Scripture. And we as the church must ensure that we do not leave them alone in this task. We all have a responsibility for the children in our churches, and must give parents our wholehearted support in raising their children to love and fear the Lord, whether it be praying for them, teaching them in the context of the church's educational program, or mentoring and discipling them.
In the end, it really makes no difference whether or not God is 'allowed' in the public schools. While it might be nice if the environment in which many children are educated were less hostile to our faith, the burden of responsibility to raise and educate children rests on the parents regardless of circumstances. What makes a difference is parents who seize hold of their calling to educate their children. If you want your children to receive an education that honours God and teaches them to be disciples of Christ, it begins with you.
