Are your theological interpretations of the faith
growing?
For thirty of the forty years I served the church in an appointment
by Annual Conference I served on a Board of the ministry. The
responsibility of the board was to ascertain when a candidate was
ready for ordination. Most candidates began their seven year pilgrimage
with a childhood interpretation of the faith. Most of them grew
considerably over those years in their theological concepts. The reason
they grew was the boards insistent on thinking theologically. Thinking
people are growing, maturing individuals worthy of leadership. Most of
the people who move upwards in the ministry are individuals who are these
maturing people.
One of the best ways to grow is to share your thoughts on the faith with
your peers. Most of us have views of the faith that differ from each
other. In discussing our thoughts we grow. One of the
tragedies of the ministry is that we stay to busy with our work that we have
little time for reflection. Without reflection our sermons become filler
material and bore our congregations to death. More and more empty
spaces appear in our sanctuaries. In fact our churches are dying because
of combination of boredom and rejection.
In challenging the minds of our people we enable their faith to become a living
reality. Several years ago I received a telephone call from an individual
from a church that I had served 30 years before. His question that
he was afraid to ask his pastor was a statement … “Tom Jesus
was not God … was he?” The man who was asking
this question was in his seventies. He was the most successful
businessman in town. I knew he was always trying to figure out how to
make a buck, but I was completely surprised that he was engaged in
serious theological thinking. Undoubtedly his pastor was not because he
did not feel free in asking him this question.
If you are not struggling with your theology and preaching that struggle you
are cheating yourself and your congregation. Few clergy wind up serving
their seminary professors as pastor. I had that responsibility
about 25 years into my career. The man who taught me theology in
seminary invited me out to lunch and in our conversation shared his
pleasure in finding a student of his who had taken the theological
enterprise seriously. We spent the rest of our time together
discussing our individual struggles.
When I started this blog site I had the hope that it would become a place where
clergy could and would share their own struggles with the faith. It is in
sharing our differences that we grow. Each one of us has thoughts that
could help another become a stronger preacher, person, and leader in the
church.