Going to Seminary

I was in St. Louis a few weeks ago and was given a tour of the PCA Historical Center by its director, Wayne Sparkman. The Center is situated on the campus of Covenant Theological Seminary. While he was showing us some of the collections, he noted that some major figures in Presbyterian history had kept all of their correspondence and writings, while others had requested that some things be destroyed in order not to have elements of their earlier thought used against them.

Though I am familiar with people doing this, I myself am not particularly fond of this practice. It is well known that Augustine avoided this; instead of destroying things which revealed his earlier thought, he published a whole book full of retractions. One of the professors at RTS Orlando, John Frame, has opted to keep his earlier published material available, recognizing that all thinkers go through a lifelong process of development in their thought and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in that regard.  In fact, it is usually quite interesting to observe how someone’s thought came to be; we find out what they read, who influenced them, and what processes they went through to come to their conclusions.

For the most part, I have kept all the things I have written over the years. My blog is virtually intact from when I started it in 2003. I have admittedly deleted a number of posts, but these were all inconsequential and contained nothing of substance. In addition, I’ve saved most of the papers I have had to write for school. Wayne also encouraged us to save our important correspondence, an idea which has virtually eclipsed the mind of those of us who use email as a primary means to correspond. Simply print off those email exchanges which are noteworthy—even Facebook or Twitter exchanges, for that matter!—and put them in a file folder.

Of course, it is unlikely that many of us will go on to be famous such that our correspondence and writings will mean much at all or be of any great value. But then again, you never know what the future holds and what road God will lead you down. These things may be of significance to someone someday. If nothing else, it would give your posterity a window into who you were.

I work at the bookstore at the Orlando campus of Reformed Theological Seminary, and we’ve been slowly experimenting with using Twitter as a way to send out notices about promotions and sales.  We’re slowly building up our number of followers, and we’ve started to garner some business with it.

Aside from RTS and Westminster Bookstore, I’ve had trouble finding any other stores that actively use Twitter.  A whole bunch of publishers have started using it, like Zondervan and IVP.  But if you know of any seminary bookstores that do, please leave a comment with a link.  I’d appreciate it!

There is a book at the RTS Orlando Bookstore called Rural Evangelism: Catching the Vision. I haven’t read it yet, though I want to. The author’s intention is basically to help rural congregations avoid stagnation and decline by engaging in evangelism methods tailored to the rural context they find themselves in.

Christians in rural settings have some unique challenges that Christians in urban settings might not face. For example, most churches in rural areas belong to mainline denominations and are aging and dying (literally and spiritually). It is very difficult to find a gospel-centered church within a reasonable distance. Some of my extended family lives in very rural areas of southwestern Ontario and face this challenge.  Also, for those who are part of healthy churches in rural areas, it is very difficult to grow the church through evangelism because there is both a much smaller population to draw from and a steady decline in population as people migrate to the cities.

Though I haven’t read the book and don’t know of its worth, I’m glad to see that there is at least someone out there thinking through the challenges local churches in rural areas face. While there is good reason to focus on urban churches, as we do today, we need to make sure it doesn’t become an either/or. Rural areas may be becoming depopulated, but the need and the mission of the Church remains. Earlier, when I considered the call to pastoral ministry, I often imagined myself ministering in a rural setting. Still today, when driving through the countryside or even seeing a picture of a rural church building, the issue comes to mind.

Anyway, these were just a few thoughts I wanted to jot down. What do you think? Have you ever considered or engaged in ministry in a rural context?  What are the challenges and obstacles?

When I visited the site this morning, I noticed the little Feedburner reader count on the right side. At that time it said we had 277 people subscribing to this blog. That’s a pretty impressive number. It then occurred to me that with that number, we’ve probably got quite a diversity of readers. We’re glad that we can reach out this big of an audience.

That being said, while a lot of you have left comments here, we probably don’t even know half of you. So, just for fun, leave a comment with the following information:

• Name
• Where you live
• Seminary you are currently attending, will attend, or have attended and your degree program
• And blog, if you have one

Knowing who is reading the blog helps us when it comes to deciding on what kind of material would be relevant and helpful. We look forward to meeting you!

We had a good discussion here in the last week as we talked about the relevancy of seminary education for today. Tyler Braun told us why he thinks it is still important, and Matt Cleaver offered some suggestions as to why it has lost its relevancy. Yesterday I was browsing through some blogs and came across this post from Professor John Stackhouse, the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia (visit his blog here). He agreed to let us post his thoughts here for your consideration and to round out this series.

If you survey leaders of megachurches in the United States…if you consider most leaders of the burgeoning house church movement in China…if you examine the leadership of exploding congregations in Africa…you notice one striking commonality: Most of them have little or no formal theological education.

A North American correspondent writes,

“Is theological education necessary for people engaged in occupational ministry? If so, is the contemporary seminary scene the best form for education to occur in the future?

“I have been wrestling a bit with this regarding the emerging church, rising student debt, and the complexity of the postmodern world. I think we live in difficult ministry times that demand excellent formation and education, but it seems the pragmatic opportunities for such education is being limited by ‘market realities.’”

I think this friend puts it well. Every leader does need to be “excellently formed and educated.” Those who seek to lead without being properly shaped as persons and educated as leaders may well attract a lot of followers by dint of charisma and hard work. But the lack of well-formed hearts and well-informed minds will put their congregations and themselves in peril: in peril of narrowness, of shallowness, and of heresy. God certainly has guided the church in the past through people without seminary education–indeed, ever since he called fishermen. But he also provided the early church, and every church since, with educated leadership, such as the carefully-trained apostle Paul.

Does a Master of Divinity degree necessarily produce and then certify a fine church leader? Certainly not. But does theological ignorance and immaturity of spirit somehow improve the picture? Hardly.

Yes, seminaries can and do narrow one’s options, but they are supposed to help students avoid bad choices and make good ones—about doctrine, about piety, about liturgy and evangelism and polity and the rest. Yet sometimes seminaries do narrow the options too much, so that those who are not socialized in such places sometimes are the ones who spontaneously innovate.

Creative people, however, normally have a considerable store of knowledge of a field before they innovate—in a way that produces lasting, influential, and positive results. Anybody can do something merely new in church: that doesn’t require knowledge, insight, or special imagination. Just have everyone who leads the service wear a pink hat, or just have everyone who attends a service keep hopping from one foot to another. (I hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas….) But lasting, influential, and positive results normally come from people who know a given field well—so well that they can see what needs changing and then how to change it for the better (a terrific book in this regard is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity [Harper, 1996].)

Still, most aspiring pastors aren’t looking to be especially creative, but competent, compassionate, and Christ-like. So do you need to go to seminary for that?

Well, yes. At least, some people do.

Obviously, for at least some kinds of ministry among some kinds of people, a high degree of sophistication is necessary. To be sure, well-educated congregants have the same basic needs as everybody else. But they have other needs as well that require leaders to have thought about a number of things and to have thought through at least a few of them. So those who are considering pastoral work among university or high-tech populations, therefore, will need to take seriously the peculiar intellectual demands of such work.

Yet ministry among anyone can be improved by good theological education: among kids, among teenagers, among the oppressed, among the interested and the confused of any age and situation.

For everyone asks about the problem of evil. Everyone wants to know about how to interpret Genesis 1-3. Everyone wants to know how to take the Bible’s “tall tales” of Flood, Exodus, Jonah’s fish, and Jesus’ resurrection. And everyone wants to know how to find Christ, follow him, and enjoy his company forever—in a way that avoids extremes, or compromises, or imbalances, or pat slogans.

So who shouldn’t get a proper Christian education? (That’s why I like teaching at a place that educates even more laypeople than it does pastors.) Yes, theological school is costly. But, as the old saying goes, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Okay: so far, this is what you’d expect from a guy who earns his bread at a theological school. So let’s recall again that lots of leaders around the world today don’t have seminary education and seem to enjoy God’s blessing. And that’s been true in every era of the church.

You don’t need a seminary education to introduce people to Jesus. You don’t need it to preach the gospel. You don’t need it to administer baptism or the Lord’s Supper. There is much that can be done, has been done, and is being done by simple Christians with a simple understanding—and much that puts our educated, sophisticated churches and leaders to shame.

The point is not, however, whether God uses some people in some situations to do good pastoral work. The point, rather, is whether God is calling some people in some situations to do pastoral work that really does require sustained education in the Scripture, theology, history, liturgics, administration, counseling, and other staples of contemporary seminary education.

The point is whether God is calling such people to join seminary communities in which, for a few years, they can be immersed in an environment of mutually reinforcing teachings and practices that will form them in a fundamental way for a lifetime of fruitful—and, doubtless, also creative—service.

And the point is whether we ourselves want to be pastored by people who have never been taught even the basics of Bible history, of how to interpret a parable, of the history of missionary success and failure, and of what makes for a good marriage. Yikes, I say.

I know seminary costs a lot. I didn’t earn a typical seminary degree at a typical seminary, but my theological education cost a pretty good whack of cash and it took me quite a while, so I sympathize.

Medical education and engineering education also require a lot of money and time, however, and I don’t think that pastoral work is any less conceptually difficult than medicine and engineering. I want my surgeon to know what and how to cut, and I want my engineer to know how to build a bridge that will stay up, and I want my pastor to know how to lead us to become a better church. So the money and time is justified if the education helps a lot toward that goal.

Thus the question is whether, in fact, seminaries offer good, and good enough, education for those whose callings require it. And I would then say that some seminaries do, and some don’t. Some are academically arcane; some are dogmatic and authoritarian; some are sloppy; some are only warm and fuzzy; and some are self-righteous—and guess what kinds of students they tend to attract and to produce? Yikes again, I say.

So this is not a brief for seminary education in general, nor is it a blanket endorsement of every theological school. Heavens, no! But it is an encouragement to those serious Christians, like my friendly correspondent, who wonder if the time and money is worth it. For some people, at the right theological school, it is. And maybe it is for you, too.

In sum, academic snobbery—”Every pastor ought to be a seminary graduate”—flies in the face of church history and contemporary experience around the world. Yet anti-academic snobbery does, too—”No pastor needs to go to seminary, and I sure don’t.” The church has been too richly blessed by well-trained leaders—from Paul to Hildegard, from Augustine to Luther, from Aquinas to Bonhoeffer, from John Wesley to John Sung—for us to cavalierly congratulate ourselves on our avoidance of formal training.

The church today needs a wide range of leaders with a wide range of preparation. Let each of us, then, seek the best education available to us: counting the cost, yes, and also the benefit of it–to ourselves and to all those whom we will influence.

We had a good discussion here in the last week as we talked about the relevancy of seminary education for today. Tyler Braun told us why he thinks it is still important, and Matt Cleaver offered some suggestions as to why it has lost its relevancy. Yesterday I was browsing through some blogs and came across this post from Professor John Stackhouse, the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia (visit his blog here). He agreed to let us post his thoughts here for your consideration and to round out this series.

If you survey leaders of megachurches in the United States…if you consider most leaders of the burgeoning house church movement in China…if you examine the leadership of exploding congregations in Africa…you notice one striking commonality: Most of them have little or no formal theological education.

A North American correspondent writes,

“Is theological education necessary for people engaged in occupational ministry? If so, is the contemporary seminary scene the best form for education to occur in the future?

“I have been wrestling a bit with this regarding the emerging church, rising student debt, and the complexity of the postmodern world. I think we live in difficult ministry times that demand excellent formation and education, but it seems the pragmatic opportunities for such education is being limited by ‘market realities.’”

I think this friend puts it well. Every leader does need to be “excellently formed and educated.” Those who seek to lead without being properly shaped as persons and educated as leaders may well attract a lot of followers by dint of charisma and hard work. But the lack of well-formed hearts and well-informed minds will put their congregations and themselves in peril: in peril of narrowness, of shallowness, and of heresy. God certainly has guided the church in the past through people without seminary education–indeed, ever since he called fishermen. But he also provided the early church, and every church since, with educated leadership, such as the carefully-trained apostle Paul.

Does a Master of Divinity degree necessarily produce and then certify a fine church leader? Certainly not. But does theological ignorance and immaturity of spirit somehow improve the picture? Hardly.

Yes, seminaries can and do narrow one’s options, but they are supposed to help students avoid bad choices and make good ones—about doctrine, about piety, about liturgy and evangelism and polity and the rest. Yet sometimes seminaries do narrow the options too much, so that those who are not socialized in such places sometimes are the ones who spontaneously innovate.

Creative people, however, normally have a considerable store of knowledge of a field before they innovate—in a way that produces lasting, influential, and positive results. Anybody can do something merely new in church: that doesn’t require knowledge, insight, or special imagination. Just have everyone who leads the service wear a pink hat, or just have everyone who attends a service keep hopping from one foot to another. (I hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas….) But lasting, influential, and positive results normally come from people who know a given field well—so well that they can see what needs changing and then how to change it for the better (a terrific book in this regard is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity [Harper, 1996].)

Still, most aspiring pastors aren’t looking to be especially creative, but competent, compassionate, and Christ-like. So do you need to go to seminary for that?

Well, yes. At least, some people do.

Obviously, for at least some kinds of ministry among some kinds of people, a high degree of sophistication is necessary. To be sure, well-educated congregants have the same basic needs as everybody else. But they have other needs as well that require leaders to have thought about a number of things and to have thought through at least a few of them. So those who are considering pastoral work among university or high-tech populations, therefore, will need to take seriously the peculiar intellectual demands of such work.

Yet ministry among anyone can be improved by good theological education: among kids, among teenagers, among the oppressed, among the interested and the confused of any age and situation.

For everyone asks about the problem of evil. Everyone wants to know about how to interpret Genesis 1-3. Everyone wants to know how to take the Bible’s “tall tales” of Flood, Exodus, Jonah’s fish, and Jesus’ resurrection. And everyone wants to know how to find Christ, follow him, and enjoy his company forever—in a way that avoids extremes, or compromises, or imbalances, or pat slogans.

So who shouldn’t get a proper Christian education? (That’s why I like teaching at a place that educates even more laypeople than it does pastors.) Yes, theological school is costly. But, as the old saying goes, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Okay: so far, this is what you’d expect from a guy who earns his bread at a theological school. So let’s recall again that lots of leaders around the world today don’t have seminary education and seem to enjoy God’s blessing. And that’s been true in every era of the church.

You don’t need a seminary education to introduce people to Jesus. You don’t need it to preach the gospel. You don’t need it to administer baptism or the Lord’s Supper. There is much that can be done, has been done, and is being done by simple Christians with a simple understanding—and much that puts our educated, sophisticated churches and leaders to shame.

The point is not, however, whether God uses some people in some situations to do good pastoral work. The point, rather, is whether God is calling some people in some situations to do pastoral work that really does require sustained education in the Scripture, theology, history, liturgics, administration, counseling, and other staples of contemporary seminary education.

The point is whether God is calling such people to join seminary communities in which, for a few years, they can be immersed in an environment of mutually reinforcing teachings and practices that will form them in a fundamental way for a lifetime of fruitful—and, doubtless, also creative—service.

And the point is whether we ourselves want to be pastored by people who have never been taught even the basics of Bible history, of how to interpret a parable, of the history of missionary success and failure, and of what makes for a good marriage. Yikes, I say.

I know seminary costs a lot. I didn’t earn a typical seminary degree at a typical seminary, but my theological education cost a pretty good whack of cash and it took me quite a while, so I sympathize.

Medical education and engineering education also require a lot of money and time, however, and I don’t think that pastoral work is any less conceptually difficult than medicine and engineering. I want my surgeon to know what and how to cut, and I want my engineer to know how to build a bridge that will stay up, and I want my pastor to know how to lead us to become a better church. So the money and time is justified if the education helps a lot toward that goal.

Thus the question is whether, in fact, seminaries offer good, and good enough, education for those whose callings require it. And I would then say that some seminaries do, and some don’t. Some are academically arcane; some are dogmatic and authoritarian; some are sloppy; some are only warm and fuzzy; and some are self-righteous—and guess what kinds of students they tend to attract and to produce? Yikes again, I say.

So this is not a brief for seminary education in general, nor is it a blanket endorsement of every theological school. Heavens, no! But it is an encouragement to those serious Christians, like my friendly correspondent, who wonder if the time and money is worth it. For some people, at the right theological school, it is. And maybe it is for you, too.

In sum, academic snobbery—”Every pastor ought to be a seminary graduate”—flies in the face of church history and contemporary experience around the world. Yet anti-academic snobbery does, too—”No pastor needs to go to seminary, and I sure don’t.” The church has been too richly blessed by well-trained leaders—from Paul to Hildegard, from Augustine to Luther, from Aquinas to Bonhoeffer, from John Wesley to John Sung—for us to cavalierly congratulate ourselves on our avoidance of formal training.

The church today needs a wide range of leaders with a wide range of preparation. Let each of us, then, seek the best education available to us: counting the cost, yes, and also the benefit of it–to ourselves and to all those whom we will influence.

It was entirely coincidental that within about a week of each other, two seminarians would write blog posts on the relevancy of seminary education, one arguing in favor of it, the other against it. I contacted them soon after to see if they would be willing to submit their posts to the site so we could engage a wider audience on the issue, to which they agreed. Yesterday we heard from Tyler Braun, and today we hear from Matt Cleaver on why seminary education is no longer relevant. Matt is a student at Luther Seminary enrolled in their Distributive Learning program and the youth director at Hope Lutheran Church in the Dallas area. Here are Matt’s thoughts.

As someone who is in seminary and also interested in how to best train and equip church leaders, I found Tyler’s post about the relevance of seminaries quite interesting while at the same time disagreeing profoundly. I believe traditional full-time residential programs that require someone to relocate themselves to a brick-and-mortar institution for a period of 2-5 years are becoming increasingly irrelevant and unhelpful:

1. Seminaries remove people from ministry contexts. The traditional seminary model has certain values that undermine local gatherings and remove people unnecessarily from their faith communities. Field experience is not the same as long-term ministry.
2. The process of seminary is no longer effective in preparing for ministry. When the dominant church model was oral proclamation, reasoned argument, and apologetics, perhaps sitting in classrooms studying the minutiae of supralapsarianism, practicing speaking skills, and honing rhetoric was helpful. Today, however, we are moving past such a model and moving towards organic, relational, flat styles of ecclesiology and mission, making the seminary model less relevant.
3. Denominations are becoming a thing of the past. Many seminaries are bastions of denominational conformity and preservation. Unfortunately for them, most of today’s younger generation could care less about denominations.
4. The future of ecclesiology is in the priesthood of all believers. Many future church leaders will be bi-vocational, making a dedicated graduate degree impossible. Dedicating full-time graduate level study to something that doesn’t pay the bills is not a practical option.
5. Seminaries are about credentialing as much as training. For many, a degree from a seminary is a prerequisite to apply to many professional church positions. The priority is not on finding the best preparation for ministry, but on opening potential doors.
6. The cost is too high. Especially in mainline churches where churches are shrinking, our churches are less financially viable and pastors are coming out of seminary with more and more debt, such a trend is not sustainable. We are bankrupting our churches by making them pay for pastors’ debt burdens.
7. Resources are becoming available for little to no cost. The open-source movement is beginning to catch on in areas other than software. This trend will eventually mean that the best scholarship and ministry resources will be published for the world to see for free, making it very difficult to convince someone to pay thousands of dollars for access to cutting-edge thinking and research.
8. Technology has made brick-and-mortar institutions less important. With the advent of broadband internet and its related technologies we are not bound by geography when it comes to learning and training. Workshops, seminars, online conferences, and whole semester-long classes can be done over the internet. Relocating to do such a thing makes less and less sense as time goes on.
9. You learn too much too quickly. Trying to learn necessary skills and theological background in one concentrated time of study makes it more difficult to implement the lessons you are learning in the classroom. A more sustainable model would be to take one or two classes at a time, take steps to implement those classes, and then move to the next topic.
10. Seminaries usurp the role of the church. This is my biggest problem with seminary programs. Why do we have to go off somewhere for 2-4 years to study theology? What are our churches doing? Shouldn’t the church be the place where people are taught, trained, and released for ministry? The fact that training has been outsourced to the seminaries is a sign of a failure of the church. The future of ecclesiology will see churches as places for equipping their congregations for mission and make seminaries ultimately irrelevant for training church leaders.

Now, the above list is quite forward-looking. Maybe seminaries are not completely irrelevant today, but at the very least, seminary is becoming irrelevant, quickly. The seminaries that see this coming and adapt might survive and be able to adjust. But those who stay stuck in a model that is 150 years old are bound to fail.

My experience at Luther Seminary in a non-traditional degree program has significantly shaped the way I think about the future of training church leaders. Luther Seminary is one of the institutions that is taking innovative steps to adjust to the changing world with their Distributed Learning program and by offering Online Seminars to average church leaders. However, I think they are taking the first baby steps to really help people rethink what it means to train church leaders. I hope they and others will continue to push the envelope and not get behind the curve of cultural and ecclesiological development.

Lastly, it would be a tragedy for there to be no form of Christian scholarship. I hope there are always places for people to get Ph.D.’s in various fields of study, but I believe that the future of equipping and training people for local congregational ministry has already begun the shift away from the brick-and-mortar institutions towards the local church.

It was entirely coincidental that within about a week of each other, two seminarians would write blog posts on the relevancy of seminary education, one arguing in favor of it, the other against it. I contacted them soon after to see if they would be willing to submit their posts to the site so we could engage a wider audience on the issue, to which they agreed. First up is Tyler Braun arguing that seminary education is still relevant for today. Tyler is a student at Multnomah Biblical Seminary and the praise band director at Sunset Presbyterian Church in Beaverton, OR. Here are his thoughts. (We’ll run the contra argument on Monday)

Being in seminary I hear a lot about why it is or isn’t necessary for pastors. I hear “seminary isn’t relevant anymore” or “I could just work at a church and read books instead.” I’m don’t want to be legalistic and say it is a have-to, but to just throw seminary out as irrelevant is disingenuous to me.

I recently read an interview with Leland Eliason, who is about to retire from Bethel Seminary. It spurred on a few thoughts in my head about whether seminary is relevant to today’s world or not.

1. Seminary is more relevant in preparing today’s church leaders than ever before. Why do I say that? Today’s world knows less about Christianity and the Bible than ever before. Seminary is the one place where a student can give full devotion to learning about theology and the Bible in an accredited process.
2. Sometimes we get too wrapped up in being relevant. I loved what Leland said in the interview. “What I often say to people thinking about seminary is that a seminary degree will create a structure of discipline for you to read and study and learn in areas that you would want to learn anyway. Without the structure seminary provides, you may not find the discipline to make it all happen.” Seminary doesn’t have to be relevant to be vital. The one thing I’ve seen in the past 2 years is that seminary is instilling in me a discipline to be able to handle church ministry for the next 50 years.
3. Reading a bunch of books does not prepare you for ministry. I’ve read a number of blogs and heard a number of people say that a pastor could get a seminary education by simply reading a ton of books on theology, the Bible, etc. Seminary is interacting with students and professors, writing position papers, praying, doing an internship, and much more. Reading books is only a small part. Leland said, “Seminary provides the tools to mine the truths of God’s Word over the long haul.”
4. Seminary allows you to learn from Godly men and women who have gone ahead of us. Most professors have already been in pastoral ministry. They know the ins and outs, and know what it takes to make theology hit the ground running. I have several professors who always talk this. Theology to them isn’t about learning systems or terms, but it is about life change through doctrine. Professors aren’t out to just earn a paycheck, they are working at seminaries to be mentors and to invest in others.
5. The process of a seminary education has been tested and proven effective. That doesn’t mean seminaries never change, because clearly the best seminaries are adapting to the shifts in culture, but the premise behind how seminary prepares you for ministry has been proved.
6. Seminary is humbling. It took about 2 weeks for me to realize I was in over my head. The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know, and that I am no where near understanding God’s revelation. Everyone needs to realize that they cannot do ministry on their own and seminary will teach you that lesson quickly and often. Seminary teaches you the need for accountability, support, and wisdom from others and a strong reliance on God.
7. Seminary provides you with a base that will allow for a lifetime of successful ministry. Leland knocks it out of the park with the ultimate value of a seminary education:
   

   “I think the danger of doing pastoral ministry without the equivalent of seminary education is in being contemporary without having roots in the history of the church. The history of Bible and theology, for example, turns up every conceivable heresy that we find in our world today. They have surfaced before in an earlier setting. They may be called something else, but in essence there are rarely new heresies. If you have the benefit of church history, it shapes a world view that diffuses the enthusiasm for everything that’s new by tempering it with the truths of God that have been given to us through the Scripture and godly teachers down through the centuries.”

So what do you think: Is seminary relevant?

As far as I can remember, I never once heard a sports-related illustration in a sermon when I was growing up. However, since I have moved to Florida, I have lost count of how many times I have heard them used. My tendency has been to react to this in two ways, and not necessarily in this order: first, to acknowledge the effort of these pastors to contextualize; second, to cringe because of the reference to an aspect of American culture marked by pervasive idolatry (especially when you hear reference to the “Holy Trinity” of sports!).

To be clear, I have nothing against sports in general. I rather enjoy watching a good football or hockey game. But I do think using sports analogies in sermons is problematic because it both undermines the gravity and seriousness of the Christian life, and, as I mentioned above, utilizes what is to many people (unwittingly or otherwise) an idol to represent a Scriptural truth.

Allow me to illustrate (no pun intended). Recently a book was published, written by a pastor in Texas, who used stock car racing as a metaphor for the Christian life. It was featured on the blog of The Atlantic last month. Here is the synopsis:

Is your spiritual engine running on fumes? Do you feel like you’re falling behind in the race of life, or that you’ve hit the wall? Get ready to start your engine once again. In The Race-From Pit Row to Victory Lane, the author of this new book offers timely and comprehensive insights that will fuel your relationship with God. Join him as he parallels the Christian life to NASCAR racing.

Just as NASCAR teams work together to improve a car’s performance in Pit Row, God has provided all we need to drive a victorious race. The author points out that we have a pit crew-other believers-and a crew chief in God. By making frequent pit stops for God’s Word, Worship, Fellowship, Prayer, Accountability, and Encouragement, we equip ourselves for ultimate performance. He explains how these are like fuel, new tires, a strong battery, receiving instructions from the Crew Chief, listening to your spotter, and receiving a refreshing drink during a NASCAR event.

But it’s not all fun and games. He also warns of accidents resulting from debris that Satan throws our way; Satan wants to put us on the “dnf” list-did not finish. The author forewarns of wreckage that can disqualify us. NASCAR teams understand that having the best car does not guarantee victory on every race day. Forty-three cars begin each race, but not all will finish.

One of the reasons I think sports illustrations fall so far short is because despite surface similarities between faith and sports, the analogies break apart really quickly. I’m sure all of you can deconstruct the analogy above in a matter of minutes.  While these analogies might initially connect with people, my concern is that in the end it trivializes the Christian life. This reminds me of Terry’s post a while back on being careful in how we use the word “awesome.” He rightly pointed out that in using this term so casually it begins to lose its meaning, especially when talking about God. Similarly, when we use sports as an analogy, we lose our grasp on how serious of a matter the Christian life is.

Now, although a lot more could be said on this, my point here is not merely to denounce sports as an analogy. There are many other trivial illustrations that detract from the reality and gravity of the Gospel and the Word of God, from our faith and our lives as followers of Christ and as witnesses to the Kingdom. The question we need to ask is, what is the intentionality of our illustrations—are we looking to draw laughs, get the listener’s attention, or legitimately use an analogy to bring to light an important truth or teaching?

On that note, let us discuss this. I want to pose the question of what makes for a good illustration or analogy in a sermon. For those of you who have taken preaching classes and labs, what are the important elements in a sermon illustration? What qualifies as a good illustration, and when do we cross the line into illegitimacy? Is my critique of sports illustrations too harsh? Should allowance be made for comedic illustrations? Are analogies even necessary in a sermon? The comment form is your soapbox. Please engage!

About a month ago, I was sitting in my Tuesday evening class, and of the ten students in the class, there was one I didn’t recognize. During a break I went over to introduce myself and found out that this guy is a pastor in a small church in northern Switzerland and is here on sabbatical for a few months.  I’ve gotten to know him quite well over the past month, and we have had some interesting conversations about ministry. One of our discussions in particular is worth sharing.

This guy is a pastor in the state church, which in Switzerland is historically Reformed, though quite liberal now (as most, if not all, European state churches are). He himself is of a much more orthodox theological persuasion, attending a PCA church here and taking classes at RTS. He spent a short time ministering in one of the free churches in Switzerland, which are much more akin to our evangelical churches here, but did not remain there for long. He felt them to be far too preservationist and inward-focused, concerned only with themselves.

So he decided to go back to the state church. Why? Here he’s the associate pastor of a parish that has about 3200 members, of which only about 200-250 show up on a given Sunday. Like other parts of Europe, it’s a dying church where people retain their membership only because that’s the traditional thing to do. They still want the church to marry them and bury them, but the majority are not Christians, have no interest in the faith, and no use for the church beyond its service to them.

For him, it’s a wide-open mission field.

He tells me, for example, that it’s not unusual to do one funeral a week because the parish is so large and the population is aging. What does this mean? At a time when people are thinking about ultimates like life and death, there’s huge opportunities. He says, “All these people come to the funeral, and I get the chance to preach the gospel to them.”

This really got me thinking. Here in North America, when we have strong theological convictions about certain things we tend to flock to churches that share those beliefs. But here, this pastor is going the opposite way, seeing it as a big ministry opportunity. We’ve got large denominations that resemble the state churches of Europe in terms of vitality, and we often just leave them for dead. Even within mainline evangelicalism there are many members who are only minimally committed to the church.

So what do you think? Is there any plausibility to this pastor’s reasoning? Have you ever considered ministry in a setting like that?