Pithy Theology
Who Needs Theology by Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson is an accessible invitation into the world of theology. It’s a persuasive pitch for every believer to take up the mantle of being a theologian. Grenz’s best argument is that everyone is a theologian whether they know it or not. Therefore, adding some intentionality can go a long way in forming good theology. And “good” theology is the key. Often many people have rejected theology altogether because of being burned by a toxic environment or teaching. But No theology is not a replacement for bad theology. We need good theology. It was A.W. Tozer who said, “what you believe about God is the most important thing about you.” Theology, after all, can shape our worldview and can affect how we process all of our major life events and minor day to day experiences. This is because it will affect how you view, process and respond to your environment. For example, if you’re your theological lens allows you to view your suffering as purposeful, then you can endure even the deepest suffering with joy and peace. But without a good theology of pain suffering can only lead us into aloneness and nihilism.
Within this idea of “good theology”, Grenz laid out a five-tiered status of theology that is a particularly helpful description for church leaders. The five levels of theology according to Grenz are folk, lay, ministerial, professional and academic. Grenz points out that both Folk and Academic theology become of little use since folk theology is often not quite correct and academic theology becomes only theory but not actually applicable to real-world issues. Folk theology could also be renamed “Pop Theology.” This is the feel good, quick bite, microwave ready, candy theology. It often isn’t wrong, it just isn’t complete. These might be statements such as, “Everything happens for a reason”, “God will not give you more than you can handle”, and “God helps those who help themselves.” Some of these are more like American idioms as opposed to Christian truths.
But to clarify, just because something is pithy does not make it “folk” theology. It’s the job of a communicator to take something complex and make it simple. That’s why 200 people can walk into a church on a Sunday morning and the pastor speak for 35 minutes about something as absurd and counterintuitive as salvation, and every person can leave knowing what they have to do to be saved. That’s the job of a communicator.
Sometimes Christianity’s best communicators can be criticized for being too shallow, but I think this is perhaps because they speak in a way in which people can actually understand them! Andy Stanley, Steven Furtick, Chrstine Cain, are all great examples of delivering pithy phrases. But the truth is that there is very deep and complex professional theology behind all of this. It’s not watered, down but rather boiled down to something that is easily memorable and graspable. Here are a few examples…
- Pain that is not transformed, is transmitted.
- Are you becoming the person, that the person you’re looking for, is looking for?
- The devil has the biggest youth group in town.
Very pithy. Very true. All of these statements communicate strong truths and also point us to an obvious next step.
This concept of differing levels of theologies is particularly significant for me because I see an overwhelming majority of ministers within my denomination who are not up to the level of “ministerial” theology. The majority I think would fall under “lay” theology, and unfortunately, some would perhaps fall into “folk” theology.
In my denomination, it has been said that “no one values higher education.” To be fair though, I think this might be changing, because well, I’m here in this D.Min program. And there are a handful of other AG/Charismatic guys in the Cohort 6 & 7 and not to mention there are 7 or 8 Assemblies of God Universities. But nonetheless this has been overwhelmingly true, and some might have even have called the phrase “Pentecostal theology” an oxymoron. But again this is changing with James K.A. Smith’s Thinking in Tongues and everything that Dr. Amos Yong writes.
And yet despite its advances, there is still a lack of value of education in our denomination. I know stories from pastors who say 30 years ago they were fired from the churches for wanting to go get their masters degree at night school. I know many youth pastors, senior pastors, associates pastors who don’t have a lick of college credit to their name. Some might gasp at this, while many from my denomination would say, “So? Let’s look at how effective they are.” And indeed many are effective without it. And for those pastors who do have their bachelor’s degree, there is hardly any interest for them to go back to get their masters. Their question is, “how will help this my ministry?” They have the perception that “a university is not where you go to learn ministry” It’s the perception that the university only has, as Grenz labels it, academic theology to offer. The Master’s of divinity is rightly named because it has much less earthly value.
For those who think this sounds absurd and might begin to hold less respect for my denomination, you have to understand that this is the language and posture of people who are passionately devoted to the Missio Dei. This is the language of an evangelistic movement. This is the language of a denomination that went from 0 to 600 million in just over 100 years. The attitude of these people was and still is to a certain degree, “Jesus is coming back SOON, so we need to save souls NOW”. So they might say, folk theology is fine as long as people are getting saved.
How has ministry been done by Pentecostals? Here is our praxis…
- Does it work? – Yes.
- Is it sin? – No.
- Ok let’s do it!
This is why many church buildings in Pentecostalism were built very cheaply because they didn’t think they would have to worry about passing the building down to the next generation.
And to some degree, we have treated education the same way we built buildings early on. We put the least amount of resources and took the cheapest and quickest route. This was not out of laziness, it was out an intense conviction for salvation for the lost. While the Catholic church has been around in some form or another for over a thousand years measure their growth and success by the decade, Pentecostals do so by the week, how many were saved this Sunday. Or perhaps even by the day, because after all in the early church (right after Pentecost) “more were added to their number daily.”
The challenge I see in front of me is that a large portion of my denomination’s pastors have settled for perhaps “lay” theology at best, while some might even be lingering in folk theology. It’s my belief that a pastor should do the upfront work and continual work of educating themselves so that they can bring their congregation to strong foundational truths. The congregation will only rise to the level of the pastor, so if she has not learned and is not teaching good theology, then her followers will only perpetuate the cycle of cheap theology. What would be convincing is to find statistical data comparing the effectiveness and longevity of ministry between the different levels of education of ministers. Of course, this is making sweeping assumptions, as it’s hard enough to define what “effectiveness” means for churches.
My research question focusing in on “how can I sway the pendulum a little farther back towards the side of valuing education for Pentecostals and charismatics.” I think laying out the differences and significance between the levels of theology is a start which might help Pentecostals and charismatics see the value of gaining more theological education. Additionally, clearly stating and remarketing higher education as practical and immediately beneficial to the effectiveness of ministry will do much in encouraging ministers to consider higher educatin again.
9 responses to “Pithy Theology”
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Hi Kyle,
Thank you for enlightening me about your denomination. I was not aware of the situation with higher education and the AG. As your research tries to swing the pendulum back towards more education, it is impressive how you are taking the lead with your own studies. How do you feel it is going so far?
I loved you starting out with the Tozer quote…
Kyle
Thanks for your honest look into american christianity and pop culture. I also appreciated you delving into the world of AOG and your own tribes obstacles to learning. We can all look with our own groups and see how we have been misguided by a theologian stance or our fear of appearing as though we were “doing” theology. Our denomination has some aspects of this as well. I wonder at what point did being dumb and uneducated make us more holy? (maybe a rhetorical question). Do you think the current generation of pastors (or leaders) will need to retire in order for a change in this philosophy on educations? Interesting topic, Kyle.
Loved your reflections, Kyle. Thanks.
Your understanding of AG praxis was succinct and humourous to me:
Does it work? – Yes.
Is it sin? – No.
Ok let’s do it!
It strikes me, as a non-American, that this is also a very American approach. We non-Americans admire American ingenuity and can-do attitude. It’s innovation. I love it.
I wonder how much our theologies are impacted by our national identities and cultural contexts? I think a lot.
In the words of Mr. T… “I pithy the fool”. Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly what he said, but I use that to touch on what you said in your post; I love how you discussed problems in your own church movement, sadly, I don’t love that it is not only prevalent there. It seems there has been such a scary move from doctrine to numbers in churches today. The message does not seem as important as methods of simply drawing in the flocks. I have always held that the old saying, “What you win them with is what you win them to,” was practical food for thought in ministry. However, that does not seem to matter so much anymore as long as we can count them “saved”. When I was a youth minister much earlier in my years, I went to a youth rally with my group of teens; the guest speaker had been a pro-football player that had retired a number of years previously after getting addicted to drugs. After losing his family, his career, and about every friend he had, he found his way to Jesus through drug counseling. Shortly after he started attending a congregation that was so moved by his transformation story that they immediately hired him to become their full-time minister. There was only a couple problems: he had no experience preaching, and d he had no bible knowledge whatsoever (which was evident from his sermon). So why was he in the pulpit? Answer: what could do a better job drawing crowds than a ex pro ball player?
I feel there is such a push to teach about “God” that there has been a failure on so many levels to teach about God accurately.
Great post Kyle. So a question: how do you feel that your D.Min is going to change your ministry in the Pentecostal church?
Kyle!
Wow, great post– nuanced, multi-layered, a ton of insights that you share. I think you are right to connect “folk theology” with “pop theology”… It’s not that nutritious, but mmmm, it tastes so good. In your denomination and tradition, as you pursue re-orienting people toward the benefits of further academic study, how will you balance those two needs. To be educated and people who love learning, while also communicating clearly and in a memorable/pithy way…
Kyle,
I appreciate the insight you have given into your denomination. There are pockets of baptists who believe the same way, all school is, is a waste of time, we need to be about the Lord’s work. I have heard that before. I appreciate your candid view and your passion to make a change within the norms. Besides just the normal pushback, is there anything you anticipate as being hard to overcome in this vein.
Jason
Hi Kyle! It was fascinating to learn more about your “tribe” as Greg coined it. What an interesting history and research topic. You, my friend, are a theologian. I suspected it from the day I met you and witnessed you intently listening, internally processing, and only speaking when you knew exactly what you wanted to say! One of your statements “What would be convincing is to find statistical data comparing the effectiveness and longevity of ministry between the different levels of education of ministers” is totally possible! In social work we are always looking at assessment and outcome and you could totally do this with your research. Of course it’s on you to define effectiveness based on desired outcomes, but I think you probably already know what those are in your mind. Have you considered integrating that into your project?
Hey Kyle thanks for your post. I think there is a difference between “folk theology” as Grenz articulated and the communication of complex ideas in simple ways. CS Lewis was a master at teaching some of the most complex ideas about God in ways that children could understand. But his wasn’t folk theology, it was just good theology communicated well. I think folk theology would be something more like, “God helps those who help themselves.” Trite, cliche, past down from generations through grandma’s advice, and frankly not biblically accurate. Anyway, I’m looking forward to learning more about your research and the tradition in which you are living and serving. Sounds really interesting!
Kyle, great post and very interesting. Ironically, I grew up and am ordained in the Church of God (Anderson, IN), which also does not require any college education to be licensed or ordained. This meant that many pastors were uneducated and therefore at a “lay theology” level. While this allows more people to enter professional ministry, I agree that pastors having more theological education will help reduce the cheapening of theology. I’m curious what ideas you have to increase the awareness of pastor’s level of theology.