{"id":20574,"date":"2018-11-29T09:20:26","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T17:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=20574"},"modified":"2018-11-29T09:20:34","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T17:20:34","slug":"theological-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/theological-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"Theological Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of my favorite things about being a minister is teaching a new member class.\u00a0 These classes provide the opportunity to better learn about the history and faith story of people who have chosen to make their spiritual home the community I am blessed to serve.\u00a0 What an honor.\u00a0\u00a0 Every now and then one of these classes presents the unique happenstance when only one member of a couple decides to join the church, but both members of the couple come to the class.\u00a0 Sometimes, the partner who isn\u2019t interested in joining the church practices another faith and is supportive of their significant other.\u00a0 However, other times the partner will come to the class and after the conversation has been going on for a while boldly proclaim they aren\u2019t interested in joining because they don\u2019t believe in God.<\/p>\n

This moment is the pastoral opportunity that allows me to merely ask the person to tell me about the God they don\u2019t believe in.<\/p>\n

Often the God that is described involves a bearded, old man who lives in the clouds.\u00a0 Often it involves an inactive divine being, far removed from the hubbub of life on earth.\u00a0 Often it is a God that seems more intent on division, benign laws, and repression of human love.<\/p>\n

And it is in that moment when I lean over to this uninterested partner and tell them the truth.\u00a0 The truth is that I don\u2019t believe in that God either.<\/p>\n

The God I believe in longs for interaction, is active in all our lives, and is most fully known in and through the act of love.\u00a0 The God I believe in is not just an ancient deity that was written about long ago, but is continually being revealed through creation, resurrection, and revelation.\u00a0 These conversations aren\u2019t an attempt by me to sway the uninterested in joining partner, but is actually an opportunity to affirm their disbelief in an attempt to further the dialogue and growth.<\/p>\n

What I haven\u2019t realized until I read Who Needs Theology: An Invitation to the Study of God<\/em> is that these discussions aren\u2019t just moments of affirmation, but should be seen as invitations into the lifetime adventure of being a theologian.\u00a0 As Grenz and Olson state:<\/p>\n

Good theologians discuss intellectual questions and concern themselves with academic debate because their chief concern is life. They want to know the truth not merely so that they might think properly, but so that they might live properly. They engage in theology not merely to amass knowledge, but also to gain wisdom. Good theology, therefore, brings the theoretical, academic intellectual aspect of Christian faith into Christian living. In so doing, theology becomes immensely practical \u2013 perhaps the most practical endeavor one ever engages in![i]<\/a><\/p>\n

Whether one joins the church I serve or not, I hope someone will want the divine to be a part of the conversation as they discern how best to live properly.\u00a0 Whether one is Christian or not, my hope is that anyone\u2019s chief concern is life in the grandest and most all-inclusive sense of the term, and not a definition focused merely on self-preservation. That would not be wisdom; that would not be \u201cgood theology.\u201d[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n

I wonder where the formation of leadership and the formation of theologians intersect.\u00a0 Both clearly involve meaning making[iii]<\/a>, and both clearly involve engagement with others.\u00a0 I think the place that conversation starts is when I answer the questions \u201cwho needs theology?\u201d and \u201cwho needs leadership?\u201d with the same response: everyone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, Who Needs Theology?: An Invitation to the Study of God,\u00a0<\/em>(Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1996). 42<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> Ibid.43<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> Nohria, Nitin, and Rakesh Khurana, Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice.\u00a0<\/em>(Boston: Harvard Business Review Press), 2014. 192<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite things about being a minister is teaching a new member class.\u00a0 These classes provide the opportunity to better learn about the history and faith story of people who have chosen to make their spiritual home the community I am blessed to serve.\u00a0 What an honor.\u00a0\u00a0 Every now and then one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"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":[22,1321,753,1322],"class_list":["post-20574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dimlgp","tag-dminlgp9","tag-grenz-and-olson","tag-lgp9","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20574","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\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20576,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20574\/revisions\/20576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}