To go deep means many things. I want to suggest that a crucial aspect of depth is intimacy with tradition. Tradition is what has been handed down to us from the past, in the vast majority of cases in the form of written texts. Pastors should take the time to read ancient texts, to weigh their words carefully and ponder the life situation and existential concerns of their authors. Ancient words can reveal to us how we have come to be where we are in our pilgrimage.
There is a modern chauvinism which has survived into postmodernity which regards the past as being largely irrelevant to the present and the challenges of the present so unprecedented that earlier generations could not possibly have anything of value to say to us. It is the attitude which sees contemporary sexual liberation, for example, as the apex of human self-actualization. G. K. Chesterton called it the "arrogant oligarchy of those who happen to be walking around.”
Much more life-giving is the realization that theology is, in the words of P. T. Forsyth, "thinking in centuries.” We need to enter into conversation with the voices of the past, not out of antiquarian interest, but to remind ourselves that we are not the first people to have grappled with these problems and that ours is the not the only perspective from which to see them. The work of Thomas Oden over the past twenty-five years has been invaluable in helping to recover these "classic traditions” and showing how contemporary the words of long ago often ring.
We can never completely escape our own 21st century world view. An essential aspect of humanity is that we are situated in time and that we view everything from a particular perspective. However, we have been given the gift of imagination and empathy which, properly exercised, allows us to set aside the distorting prejudices of contemporary culture and read ancient texts on their own terms, respectful of their own integrity. Again, this can be a challenge because we are inundated with powerful cultural shibboleths like "Everything written before the 1960s is the propaganda of patriarchy.” But we can by an act of will step outside those prejudices to share, at least in part, the vision of the past. To read the reflections of Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity, or Richard Baxter on pastoral care, or John Wesley on the Holy Spirit situates our own parochial concerns in a much larger context. It is not always necessary to plough through entire texts, either. Modern scholarship has produced excellent anthologies and collections of the best from the past, as well as insightful studies of major figures.
All university libraries will extend borrowing privileges to non-students for a small annual fee. Many classic texts can be found on the internet, for example on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website (www.ccel.org). There are major on-line libraries such as www.questia.com which make available vast resources we could not have dreamed of only a few years ago. Technology will be a great boon to a learned ministry.
Breadth
As well as depth, learned pastors need to cultivate breadth quite simply because you never know where you might learn something of true value. I discovered two of the principles for ministry that I have found most useful from business writers Peter Drucker and John MacDonald. In his book
Managing the Non-Profit Organization, Drucker argues that the purpose of non-profit organizations, among which he includes churches, is to "produce transformed individuals.”
In effect, Drucker is saying that the "product” these organizations turn out is changed people. When I read this it completely altered my understanding of the church’s purpose and ministry. We tend to think that what the church "produces” is programs which will attract people and meet their needs. This generates a philosophy of ministry, however, that is inward focused. What we should be concentrating on "producing” is people whose outlook, character and commitments are transformed by the Gospel, so that they will act as leaven in society at large. MacDonald, in his book
Calling a Halt to Mindless Change takes aim at the prevalent claim that the world has completely changed and that businesses must totally revolutionize their way of operating. This claim is simply false, MacDonald argues. Certainly there are significant differences between the 1990s, for example, and the 1950s. But the fundamental principles of successful businesses – sound business practice and attentive customer service – have not changed. The rush towards such revolutionary changes as radical restructuring and downsizing in the wake of the last major recession, according to MacDonald, was not dictated by major social change alone but by several decades of careless and short-sighted business decisions. The implications of MacDonald’s analysis were immediately obvious to me. Churches that run headlong into a complete dismantling of their institutional and community life on the basis that "the world has changed” will inevitably throw out the baby with the bath-water. While our methods of organization and communication need to evolve, Christian communities are built on the same foundations as always – nourishing worship, authentic spirituality, effective pastoral care and evangelistic zeal. I cannot even remember how or why I came to read these two books. I’m sure they were recommended to me by friends in the church who work in the world of business. My point is, however, that if I had said, "I don’t have time to read that kind of stuff,” I would never have stumbled across these two invaluable insights.
Here’s another way of illustrating the same point that knowledge comes from unexpected sources. The great American historian J. H. Hexter has distinguished between the actual subject matter of the study of history and the perspective which the individual historian brings to his or her work. The first aspect Hexter calls the "first record” and it consists of the artifacts, evidence and "traces” which the past has left behind. It is the material that the historian works with to try to understand the past. The other aspect Hexter calls the "second record.” This is the sum total of all the skills knowledge and experience which the guides the historian’s approach to the historical task. No historian ever simply "lets the facts speak for themselves.” History always involves a complex process of selecting, ordering and interpreting certain facts deemed relevant by the historian so that they create a coherent pattern of understanding. This process is determined, at least in part, by the prior knowledge and experience the historian brings to his or her work.
Hexter draws a metaphor from the social and economic organization of a medieval town to describe the relationship between the first and second records. In the Middle Ages each town was bordered by a cultivated area called the "sown.” Hexter draws an analogy between the sown and the organized body of fact, knowledge and methodology that are the historian’s primary and immediate concern. But beyond the "sown” was the "waste” – not a desert or a wasteland, but uncultivated tracts on which livestock were free to roam and graze. This is like the second record, Hexter says, which consists of what the historian has picked up along the way by "grazing.” It might be reading done in other fields, or seemingly unrelated bits of information, or the historian’s own personal experience. Often this uncultivated "second record” furnishes the unexpected insight that propels the historian to pursue a fresh line of inquiry. It gives the study of history a serendipitous and imaginative creativity that would never arise if historians confined themselves narrowly to "the facts.”
Hexter illustrates his analogy by an example from his own work. He came across a passage from Thomas More’s Utopia that was difficult to interpret by conventional methods. Hexter describes how his reading of that passage was guided by chance insights he had picked up from reading works on sociology and economics (in one case simply to pass the time while waiting for a friend in the library) and by the similarities between his (Hexter’s) own life situation and that of More when he wrote Utopia. It was the dynamic interplay of the first and second records, the "sown” and the "waste”, that influenced Hexter to treat the evidence in a certain way and guided him to fresh insights about a man who lived in the 15th century. This is not pure subjectivity, reading into the evidence what the historian wants to find, or distorting the facts by one’s personal prejudices. Hexter, by all accounts a brilliant historian, found what he believed to be something true about Thomas More. But the impetus for his search was inspired, in part, by an imaginative use of his own second record.
What does all this have to do with a learned ministry? Simply this. Learned pastors are not only men and women with a wide knowledge of the Bible, Christian doctrine, pastoral psychology or effective homiletical techniques. They are people who are sufficiently attuned to their own second records that they can derive fruitful insights from unexpected sources.
I learned as much about the craft of sermon preparation and presentation from a year spent intensively playing the piano as I did from seminary homiletics classes or how-to preaching texts. I have gained as much insight about relationships between men and women and dynamics of marriage from the world of literature as from books specifically concerned with psychology or counselling. Time spent reading Middlemarch by George Eliot, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler or Updike’s Too Far To Go have deepened my awareness of the promise and pathology of marriage in ways that I have been able to apply directly to my ministry.
The learned pastor cannot be a specialist, he or she must be a generalist. Learned clergy must learn to graze widely and wisely in many different fields because one never knows where one might find that felicitous phrase, that rich insight or that fragment of life that will connect the many dots of pastoral experience into a gracious and meaningful pattern.
A word at this point concerning so-called "popular culture.” Even as we become learned, we must remember that we are called to work in a particular place among particular people. It is essential to avoid any hint of social snobbery, as if the pastor is superior because he or she reads Dostoyevsky rather than watching Days of Our Lives. Our "learnedness” has to make room for contemporary and popular modes of expression, including film, television, music, fiction and news media. The people in our pews likely know much more about Seinfeld than about St. Augustine and a truly learned pastor will at least have a passing acquaintance with the richness and variety of popular cultural forms, particularly if he or she wants to converse with the younger generation.
I have suggested that the learned pastor should graze widely. However, this does not mean haphazardly. We have heard a great deal in the last few years about "the purpose-driven church.” Learning needs to be purpose-driven as well. There needs to be a broader vision which gives meaning to the "this and that” quality of daily life and pastoral practice. Breadth of knowledge is merely dabbling unless it contributes to a greater whole.
That greater whole, of course, is the Gospel – what we have come to know of Jesus Christ. Christ is our ultimate "hermeneutical principle” by which we judge the significance and importance of everything we know. As Christians, we are to "take every thought captive in obedience to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5.) Learned clergy are always pondering the foundational principles and affirmations that permit them to synthesize what they learn into a pattern of meaning that furthers the Gospel.
At this point, we revert to a different sense of the term "depth.” Learned clergy cultivate depth not only in their familiarity with tradition but also in their personal spirituality. Learned clergy must be men and women of prayer. It is finally Jesus Christ, made known by the Holy Spirit who measures the worth and significance of our learning.
Humility
A final characteristic of a learned ministry, in many ways the most important of all, is humility. "Remember who you are,” the spirit of Musafa says to young Simba in
The Lion King. No pastor should fail to heed this advice. For Christians, especially for pastors, remembering who we are is always a counsel of humility. It means to remember
whose we are. It means to remember
why we do what we do and
for whom we are doing it.
I once heard of a minister who considered the success of a sermon to be directly proportional to the difficulty the congregation had in understanding it. A great sermon, in his estimation, was one that left the people scratching their heads in bewilderment because it demonstrated how much smarter and more educated he was than they were. Of course, this man was not a learned pastor at all but an ignoramus because he completely misunderstood the nature of his vocation. His learning lacked the essential ingredient of humility.
Humility takes different forms. As this anecdote illustrates, learned clergy are not men and women who stand above their congregations intellectually, like those mathematicians whose reasoning is so complex that only a handful of other human beings on the planet understand what they’re talking about. Learned clergy are those who have sampled as widely as they are able, given the limits of time and ability, from the riches of human learning, and apply what they have learned to the spiritual welfare of the people given into their care, for the sake of Jesus Christ and his Kingdom.
Like most pastors, occasionally I get notes and letters from parishioners. Recently a letter arrived at the church from an older couple who have been long-time members of my congregation. They apologized for not being able to attend more regularly but failing health made it impossible. However, they said, they appreciated receiving copies of my sermons from our church website. "When we heard that our church had called a minister with a Ph. D. in Religious Studies,” they wrote, "we were worried that you might be way over our heads. But that hasn’t been true at all. You are able to explain the Bible in a way that really makes sense to our daily lives and deepens our faith.” I consider this to one of the highest complements I have received in twenty-two years of pastoral ministry. I was deeply touched.
Learned clergy are humble and obedient servants who devote themselves to loving God with their minds, the better to lead God’s people.
