Teaching Theology

Not Much Good

Reading the parable of the talents, few theological teachers would place themselves in the role of the recipient of five talents. I guess that most of us would identify with the servant given two talents. We are not great theologians whose work will shake the world and transform the Church. We are not endowed with outstanding gifts of communication and teaching. We are not those who are destined for greatness in the kingdom.

Those who are can stop reading at this point.

Aha, you are still with me. So you agree that called to teach we are, but silver medals are just about our limit. What then is our strategy to be of the most use to the Lord?

1. Acknowledge our weakness. There is a significant body of scripture which sees weakness as of more use than strength – from Gideon and the Amalekites, to Paul’s rejoicing in the weakness from his thorn in the flesh because then he is strong. And it was at Christ’s moment of greatest weakness, on the cross, when he achieved salvation for the world. Our Lord seems to prefer to work through the weak and I see no reason why theological education should be his exception.
2. Concentrate what force we have. Doubtless geniuses can do many things well. But, as the military know, a small force concentrated at a key point can do more than a much larger force dissipated across a wide area.  We must choose what we can do and are called to do, pour all of ourselves into that and say no to the rest (to the extent that our employment allows).
3. Work especially hard. We know as teachers that a student with reasonable intellectual ability and plenty of hard work will often outscore in exams the very gifted student who does not work hard enough. The same is true of us. I have known of many who have done more for the kingdom with average gifts and plenty of hard work than greatly gifted people who never took up the cross of time.
4. Target student development. If you cannot change the world, perhaps God will use you to change his future leaders one by one. Don’t dream of greatness, dream of helping each of your students to grow to be what God wants– and maybe one of them will change the world.
5. Be settled and joyful. The Christian virtue of contentment has a special application for all two talent theological educators. Be the best you can be but be content with the best you can be, and be joyful that God uses you the way he does.

Now and then we will teach a five talent student and that will be a special joy. Most of the time we will need to model, for our ordinary students, how to be ordinary but useful to God.

“We never make mistakes”

The concept of the fallible teacher is a fundamental of good education. Mistakes, failures and inadequacies  are part of life. Can students learn from you how to handle such things if you pretend that, for you, they do not exist?

It is important not to try to be God in the classroom. “I do not know” is sometimes an appropriate response to a student’s question because you are not omniscient. Or, if a student’s comment exposes a flaw in your argument, it is OK to say “well, if that is right, I will have to re-consider what I have just said” because you are not infallible. One of the biggest gifts you can give to your students is your humanity.

It is important also in your life as you share it with your students. If there is one thing teachers in our colleges are least likely to share it is their failures, as if these disqualify one from the teaching office. But was your life so far one glorious procession from victory unto victory? Doubtless that is true of a very few but such teachers will be less useful to students than ordinary people like you and I.

And it is unlikely to be how your students feel about their own lives, so how you coped with failure and mistakes is an important life skill to pass on. Trying for that which is special and falling short is a better example to commend than trying for nothing, for fear of failure, and achieving it. In any case, your students already have a sneaking suspicion that you are not perfect, so why pretend to what will not be believed?

In a leadership position, this is a vital attitude. No leader gets it right all the time, no leader is adequate for all the demands of the job. If you have held a leadership position then you already know that you will need, at times, to be forgiven by those you lead. That forgiveness will usually come if you are humble enough to admit to mistakes. There is a great contrast between the hagiography of popular church history and the realism of the biblical history that records the big mistakes of those used by God such as Moses, David, Peter and many others.

What I am really asking for is a real relationship with your colleagues and students; not a completely open relationship where you share everything – that is reserved for your few nearest and dearest and God- but a relationship of honesty rather than dis-honesty, not pretending to be something more than we are. We do not know, we make mistakes, we get it wrong and sometimes we have failed. And so we become “an example within reach” for our students.

It will not have escaped the notice of many readers that my title is the title of a little book of short stories by Alexander Solzhenitsyn about the then communist authorities in the USSR. Hopefully we do not have the desire for our students to make that comparison.

The Stone Mason

Sometime before 12 BC an architect designed the Pantheon in Rome and stone masons built it. In 1220 AD another architect designed Salisbury Cathedral and, once again stone masons built it. A few years ago, a little chapel in the Yorkshire Dales was re-built by stone masons using the same basic techniques.

To be a stone mason is to possess a craft, a practical wisdom, with a long history. Hopefully also with a future, despite the monstrosities of re-enforced concrete and the tendency to use mechanically constructed concrete blocks in almost everything today. So it is with the task of the thology teacher.  Chrysostom, Bonaventure and Calvin were good at it. It is a complicated craft and takes years to learn well – not something anyone can do once they have learnt the content of their discipline.

Stone masons talk about their relationship with the tradition, their relationship with the stone, and their relationship with the resultant building into which it will fit; about forming the stone with love and care. Good theological educators talk in similar ways about forming living stones for the Church.

Among all the new architectural fashions of today’s theological education, and there are many which are useful, some which are beautiful and a few which will endure, the slow, practical wisdom of the shaper of stones needs to remain pre-eminent.

And sometimes this craft crosses boundaries and becomes high art. Nouwen tells of a boy watching a sculptor at work and eventually exclaiming “I never knew there was such a beautiful person inside that block of stone!”  When you hear that cry in our colleges and seminaries, you know that the practical wisdom, even art, of the teacher is still alive.

Live for that to be said of your students, but be humble. You may be no more than the blunt chisel in supernatural hands.

Bad Language

The way you talk betrays the way you think. The way you think determines the way you act. Words are therefore very important and no more so than in theological education. The problem is that we are talking about it in the wrong way – in the language of business.

The “products” of our colleges used to be the students. Now, they are the courses because these are the things we sell in the marketplace. We enjoy talking about “delivery” of our products (even home delivery) which, when you think about it, is a terrible word to use for a process of education. But each college or seminary now has a marketing director to design the company logo, print the catalogue of products, attend a company stand at exhibitions and place advertisements for our products. What is especially important is our organisation’s “niche marketing” and so our websites are designed professionally for this to come through.

There is plenty of talk nowadays of the student as consumer of higher education and consumer satisfaction (which is increasingly measured), not least because they have a choice and can take their money elsewhere, to other colleges or universities selling similar products. Quality control of the manufacturing process becomes important and careful specifications in “graduate profiles” are used to test the goods leaving the factory.

It may be that we have been so worried about the academisation of our colleges that we have allowed the commodification of our processes to slip in under the radar un-observed.

How has this happened? For five reasons;

1. Our increasing closeness to the secular academy which is going in this direction at high speed.
2. The number of businessmen and secular educators on our college and seminary boards – some of whom cannot make their expertise available carefully enough.
3. A genuine desire to be accountable and professional in our financial dealings.
4. The financial climate which causes many colleges to struggle in as many ways as possible to break even.
5. Over provision in some areas of theological education, too many colleges with too many places to fill and too small a pool of potential students.

There is, of course, much that is good in this development. We can talk of faithfulness, contextualisation into our contemporary society, wisdom in difficult times and the preservation of colleges with long traditions and great ministries.

But there are serious problems about the way we speak and act in this area. Few can doubt that this is becoming an over-contextualisation which has crossed the line into syncretism. We should be more different from the world. There is also a careful difference between what the students want and what the students need which, in humility, teachers are there to discern. Vast amounts of money are now spent on this business/marketing side of the college, especially in the employment of marketing directors, advertisements, etc. And now we are all doing it, we are all back in the same level playing field we were in before, but all are spending much more money.

Above all else, however, this commodification of theological education endangers the very educational process of godly thoughtful student development. Potential students need to make godly decisions about where they should study, not be cleverly enticed. Students and teachers need to be able to sit before the Word of God and the ideas of theology not entirely knowing what will come out of the encounter. They need to have exciting times in the presence of God regardless of the testing process. They need to be accompanied on their development not squeezed into a set of specifications.

None of that is promoted by the language of the factory – but maybe these are the very things which will attract godly students.

Student Futures

Predicting how a student will turn out in life, in usefulness to the Kingdom, is impossible.

The future constantly surprises us. Add to this the problem of chronology – each student blossoms intellectually and spiritually at different times in his or her life – add the tendency on our part to choose the strong as opposed to the tendency of the Lord to choose the weak; and it is clear that we had better steer well clear of predictions.

Yet are there indicators which could lead to fair assumptions about a student’s future? Yes, if we look in the right places.

1. Academics. I know of no statistics to prove this but, from my experience of 30 years in theological education, the high achievers are no more likely to be of use to the lord than others, possibly less so. And yet God rarely uses the stupid. Reasonable ability to process information and make good decisions, right thinking, in depth understanding of scripture and world, are all necessary for effective ministry.
2. Gifting is similar. Five talent people have to struggle with the tendency to crash and burn and with the need for humility. The kingdom is mostly advanced by hard working two talent servants. Yet where academic distinction meets great talents in a humble heart, then God has given another John  Stott to his church.
3. Which brings us to the key point – a sense of in-sufficiency, inability, even an anxiety that what they have will not be enough for the task required. In a good heart, this leads to lively prayer, humility and the best position to be in for God to bless their efforts.
4. The ability to move from words to deeds. Theological education is dominated by the use, reading, manipulation and writing of words. Get stuck entirely inside that bubble and only in a few circumstances (such as the professional theologian working for the Kingdom and even then Liberation theology would say that this is doubtful) do you remain useful for God. Those students who do not just say the right things but go out and do things for God and others are the ones to watch. In the beginning was the Word, but at the end, for students, must be the deed.
5. A sense of life. Even of fun. So many of God’s useful servants have this characteristic that it surely becomes an indicator of usefulness. It radiates reality, warms others, helps towards a happy marriage and carries the servant of God through difficult times.
6. Gentleness with people. This too comes from a humble, patient relationship before God, an emotional recognition that this is how God has dealt with them. If a person is to achieve things for God through others, it is vital, especially for long term ministry in one place.

By God’s grace, what a student is now may bear little relation to what he or she will be when God develops that person for his work, if these indicators are not very visible now, it is no guarantee that they will not characterise that person later in life. So very very rarely reject a student. History shows that God has a tendency to use the stone that was rejected by the builder to be the cornerstone of some work for Him. Let us show respect for God’s work in God’s time in a life that may be, at the moment, frustrating to us.

Sometimes our efforts bear fruit while the student is at college and we can see characteristics developing which give indications of real potential. Sometimes the seeds germinate later, but they will be seeds we have sown as theological educators and we have the satisfaction of knowing that the fruit is at least partly ours.

Death and the beautiful college

At a recent conference in London for European schools, there was general agreement, in research shown and in the room, that the present financial pressure will soon result in the death of a number of colleges. Why does this happen? What can we do?

Colleges often close because of factors external to themselves in society, but in a storm, some ships sink and others stay afloat, usually because of how they are steered.

Some colleges are at an advantage in any case. There are those that belong to a small denomination. In a large denomination with a number of its own colleges, there is always the danger of rationalisation of the provision and closure of colleges. In a small denomination with just one college, denominational pride will not allow the college to close whether it has students or is doing a good job or not. Also, the larger college is able to pay what is necessary for accreditation and immigration requirements for students – in time and money, and can offer a wide range of attractive courses. And then there is the well-endowed or well supported college, with backers who will see it through a crisis.

For those who do not have these artificial advantages, there are just three rules for survival;

1. Do an excellent job with every student who comes through your doors – in academic, spiritual and ministerial formation, all in a loving and caring community. In these days of social inter-connectedness especially, very many students come to us by recommendation, and this is just.
2. Become close to the key people. A college must be responsive to the needs of the churches, missions and students as to content, delivery and objectives. And they must know that we are talking with them and intend to meet their needs.
3. Be true to your mission and vision. The lesson of history is that if this is lost the life of the college becomes precarious. We can be so concerned to do just what the other successful colleges are doing that we position the college right in the middle of a very crowded area of the market where we are not able to perform with excellence.

God calls a college as well as a person. We must remain faithful to our call while we try to be of most use. Do well the job God gave YOU to do. That is the best definition of success; and the result is very much up to him.

A prayer before lecturing

“Lord, here comes that bundle of feelings again; I suddenly feel nervous and tired, but fired up and looking forward to being in front of students again – all at the same time.

This subject area has been such a part of my life for so long, Lord, keep me and the material truly alive; help the students to catch my enthusiasm and my love of it and develop their own happy relationship with the ideas and the scholars.

I need your help, Lord in my attitudes, so that I will be carefully truthful and appropriately deep but clear, with confident judgment but humble. Remind me that I may have read more books than the students but some may well be closer to you. Rather than being defensive or dismissive, may I seek and value their contribution in class so we will enjoy each other’s company on the way to understanding.

Lord, I want to relax and be my honest self before the students. I will be an actor on a stage before them and I recognise in me the desire to be admired. Instead, help me to serve them, to be useful – not only in a narrow range of studies and the passing of their exams or essays, but that I may help them towards achieving their great objective (and mine) of loving the Lord their God with all their heart, soul mind and strength and their neighbour as themselves.

Help me to do this job in your presence, before you and for you. May the attention of all of us in the classroom be on you, understanding you, pleasing you. It is an awesome thought that I will be speaking about you in your presence and that we teachers, according to James, will be judged with greater strictness. Yet you have called me to this and so I am bound to teach.

But I need you. I and my students need from you the necessary wisdom to understand spiritual things, strength to persevere with and be successful in the academic task, and all necessary help to fulfil what we set out together, lecturer and students, to achieve. Lord, in the words of that prayer of Anselm, “By your powerful kindness, complete what in my powerless weakness I attempt”.

And to keep me from despondency, may a few students come up afterwards and thank me for the lecture. Amen”