{"id":15614,"date":"2017-12-01T00:09:08","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T08:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15614"},"modified":"2017-12-02T19:05:22","modified_gmt":"2017-12-03T03:05:22","slug":"pithy-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/pithy-theology\/","title":{"rendered":"Pithy Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who Needs Theology <\/em>by Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson is an accessible invitation into the world of theology. It\u2019s a persuasive pitch for every believer to take up the mantle of being a theologian. Grenz\u2019s 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 \u201cgood\u201d 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, \u201cwhat you believe about God is the most important thing about you.\u201d 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

Within this idea of \u201cgood theology\u201d, 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 \u201cPop Theology.\u201d This is the feel good, quick bite, microwave ready, candy theology. It often isn\u2019t wrong, it just isn\u2019t complete. These might be statements such as, \u201cEverything happens for a reason\u201d, \u201cGod will not give you more than you can handle\u201d, and \u201cGod helps those who help themselves.\u201d Some of these are more like American idioms as opposed to Christian truths.<\/p>\n

But to clarify, just because something is pithy does not make it \u201cfolk\u201d theology. It\u2019s the job of a communicator to take something complex and make it simple. That\u2019s 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\u2019s the job of a communicator.<\/p>\n

Sometimes Christianity\u2019s 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\u2019s not watered, down but rather boiled down to something that is easily memorable and graspable. Here are a few examples\u2026<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Pain that is not transformed, is transmitted.<\/li>\n
  2. Are you becoming the person, that the person you\u2019re looking for, is looking for?<\/li>\n
  3. The devil has the biggest youth group in town.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Very pithy. Very true. All of these statements communicate strong truths and also point us to an obvious next step.<\/p>\n

    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 \u201cministerial\u201d theology. The majority I think would fall under “lay” theology, and unfortunately, some would perhaps fall into “folk” theology.<\/p>\n

    In my denomination, it has been said that \u201cno one values higher education.\u201d To be fair though, I think this might be changing, because well, I\u2019m 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 \u201cPentecostal theology\u201d an oxymoron. But again this is changing with James K.A. Smith\u2019s Thinking in Tongues <\/em>and everything that Dr. Amos Yong writes.<\/p>\n

    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\u2019t have a lick of college credit to their name. Some might gasp at this, while many from my denomination would say, \u201cSo? Let\u2019s look at how effective they are.\u201d And indeed many are effective without it. And for those pastors who do have their bachelor\u2019s degree, there is hardly any interest for them to go back to get their masters. Their question is, \u201chow will help this my ministry?\u201d They have the perception that\u00a0 “a university is not where you go to learn ministry\u201d It\u2019s the perception that the university only has, as Grenz labels it, academic theology<\/em> to offer. The Master\u2019s of divinity is rightly named because it has much less earthly value.<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    How has ministry been done by Pentecostals? Here is our praxis\u2026<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Does it work? –\u00a0Yes.<\/em><\/li>\n
    2. Is it sin? – No.<\/em><\/li>\n
    3. Ok let\u2019s do it!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      This is why many church buildings in Pentecostalism were built very cheaply because they didn\u2019t think they would have to worry about passing the building down to the next generation.<\/p>\n

      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) \u201cmore were added to their number daily.\u201d<\/p>\n

      The challenge I see in front of me is that a large portion of my denomination\u2019s pastors have settled for perhaps \u201clay\u201d theology at best, while some might even be lingering in folk theology. It\u2019s 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\u2019s hard enough to define what \u201ceffectiveness\u201d means for churches.<\/p>\n

      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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Who Needs Theology by Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson is an accessible invitation into the world of theology. It\u2019s a persuasive pitch for every believer to take up the mantle of being a theologian. Grenz\u2019s best argument is that everyone is a theologian whether they know it or not. Therefore, adding some intentionality can go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[198,1017,698],"class_list":["post-15614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grenz","tag-lgp8","tag-who-needs-theology","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15614"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15625,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15614\/revisions\/15625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}