Researching Theology

It has been a great delight to watch several distinctive, possibly iconic types of assignment unfold as we’ve designed the MDIV curriculum at Wesley Seminary@IWU.  One is a particular kind of spiritual formation journaling that we are still fine tuning.  I’ll no doubt report here on it later.

Today I want to share with excitement how innovative what we’re doing is with theological and Church historical research. These disciplines are so consistently taught systematically–from beginning to end!  The idea seems to be that if you know the theologians, if you know the span of systematic theology, if you know the span of Christian history, then you will be able to access it at random to apply it when situations arise.

But how many MDIV students typically get so thoroughly acquainted with systematic theology and Church history to be able to perform such feats?  In fact, it has been quite a challenge for us to figure out how to teach someone to do what all pastors actually do with theology and Church history to the extent they use it at all.  How do you access these disciplines randomly, on the basis of pastoral need, rather than systematically?  How do you find relevant information when you do not know theology and Church history thoroughly?

For theology, we are building a sense of the “usual suspects.”  Not only can one of course approach theological issues from the standpoint of standard textbooks like Oden, McGrath, and Migliore, but we are developing a list of core theological resources to thumb through with each pastoral issue.  Here is the resource list as it has developed so far:

Augustine: The New Advent site is outstanding.  Check out the Enchiridion, for example, a nice overview of Augustine’s thought.  Also his Confessions.

Catholic Catechism: An outstanding sense of the common faith of Christendom, with of course some points you will quickly recognize as foreign to Protestants.  Here is a good table of contents.

Luther: Our new professor hire, John Drury, suggested a helpful way to approach Lutheran thought (even beyond Luther) is the Formula of Concord.  Here is a site where you can search all the contents.

Calvin: His Institutes on the Christian Religion are of course the best overview of Calvin’s theology, found here among other places.  By the way, this Reformed site has an incredible set of links to various historic confessions across the board.

Wesley: Northwest Nazarene University is the place for Wesley sources.  Here are 44 standard sermons and here are others of his works, including his Plain Account of Christian Perfection and Explanatory Notes on the New Testament.

Barth: I suspect you will have to use Google Books to look at Barth (e.g., here) since he hasn’t been dead long enough…

 

Featuring: John Drury

This week we are featuring our newest faculty hire, to begin July 1 as the first full time theologian of the seminary, John Drury.  John is in the final year of his PhD in Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and has distinguished himself at every point along the way.  His theological mentors have long recognized him as fully capable to engage intellectually in the academy with the best–and we trust he will in the days to come. 

But his heart is with God’s people, and he is an ordained minister of the gospel who has put theory into practice in the local church while on his academic pilgrimage.  He was raised at the center of The Wesleyan Church (he probably knows too much!) and truly comes at truth with the approach of “faith seeking understanding.”  He is married to Amanda, who is also currently working on her PhD at Princeton in Youth Ministry.

We asked John to present a few words on his vision for what his role at Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University might be:

“I am called to the theological formation of the church for the sake of its mission as God’s agent of transformation in the world. Therefore, I understand the vocation of theology as one of service: service to the world, through the church, and especially through its designated ministers. So it is with great joy that I have been invited to join a faculty committed to an integrated curriculum, where theological reflection is consistently placed in service to the concrete practices of the church. Such a vision for theological education fits my own vocation and passion. I look forward to coming alongside those who are ministering in the church in order to learn from them what God is doing in their midst and to help them sharpen their perception of the depth and diversity of God’s work among us. I am especially looking forward to the communal aspect of Wesley Seminary, both in terms of the faculty cooperation in the design and deployment of courses and in terms of the long-term mentoring within the spiritual formation cohorts. I believe that God has blessed and will continue to bless this new seminary, and I trust that God will use me and my particular gifts and calling to advance the mission and vision of Wesley Seminary.”

 

Featuring: Dr. Charles Arn

This week we want to feature our very own Charles Arn, Visiting Professor, indeed the first newly hired professor at the seminary.  Renowned church health expert, omnipresent in online classes, and a model of diligence, God has introduced Dr. Arn to a talent he didn’t even know he had this year–the gift of (online) teaching.  We asked him to give a brief word this week:

“What a day we live in!  Students from New Zealand, Panama, Florida, California, and just around the block in Marion, Indiana…all participating in the same seminary class!  That’s the make up of our first online cohort of students at Wesley Seminary.  And it is my privilege to facilitate this class of 20 enthusiastic learners. 

Over the years I have had more than a few veteran pastors say to me: ‘I wish I had learned that in seminary.’  Happily, I don’t expect to hear that from Wesley Seminary graduates, because of the strong commitment by faculty and administration to preparing learners for the ‘real world’—in every class.  In fact, before students are even accepted into the program they must be in a ministry setting where they can apply their learnings each week.  We are already seeing churches benefit from our students’ insights, as illustrated in this note I received yesterday from a senior pastor whose youth director is enrolled at Wesley Seminary:

‘The information on church lifecycles that he brought from your class has been an integral part of our church’s 30^th anniversary vision chats.  Thanks so much for all you’re doing.’

To be honest, I have no interest in creating ‘busy work’ for tomorrow’s pastors.  (Nor, I think, do they have an interest in pursuing such.)  That is why I am so excited about helping to pursue the vision of Wesley Seminary—to prepare future church leaders to be world changers through their congregations in pursuit the Christ’s Great Commission. 

All aboard…

 

Keith Drury’s Convocation Sermon

Back in August, Keith Drury preached the inaugural seminary convocation sermon.  It was a lovely service and one we plan to have every August.  All are welcome!

Keith Drury has posted his sermon notes on one of his blogs.  It was a truly “good” sermon…

 

Biblical Research–turned in

I think most of our first two cohorts are enjoying the “pioneer” nature of this first praxis course, Missional Church.  By pioneer I mean to say that we are experimenting, seeing what works, what everyone can handle, what is most beneficial.  It brings a certain freshness to what we’re doing. 

Being able to promote under a name and a permanent head has already helped recruiting.  Apparently the phone was ringing this week!  We continue to wrestle with finding the balance of not requiring too much work for individuals we have not just allowed but required to be involved in extensive ministry.  Needless to say, it’s been demanding for those who are full time pastors to fit in 7 credit hours worth of classes each week!

One of the iconic assignments I’ve mentioned here before is the “Integration Paper.”  On Friday students turned in biblical research toward a particular pastoral issue they identified back in Week 3.  I spent quite a bit of time developing a sample to go along with the process as it currently stands:

1. Week 4 they identify passages relevant to the pastoral issue.
2. Week 5 they brainstorm the meaning of each passage primarily taking into account the immediate and broader literary context of the passages.
3. Week 6 they look at commentaries and find relevant background information.
4. Week 7 they draw conclusions on the original meanings of the passages and turn all this research in.

The process will now move into phase two–theological and historical research.

 

New Name, New Head!

We finally have a name, a logo, and a permanent head: “Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University.”  The website is very well done: http://wesley.indwes.edu.  And our permanent fearless leader is the Rev. Dr. Wayne

Schmidt, who has been a pastor and church planter at Kentwood Community Church in Michigan outside Grand Rapids for 30 years.  Thanks to God for great beginnings!

 

Big seminary week!

… not in terms of classes but in terms of announcements.  This Friday night after the Board of Trustees meet, we should have an official announcement about the name of the new seminary and its Vice President as of January 1.   I can’t wait.

 

“Embodied creatures” more than “thinking things”

One of the books some faculty, staff, and students are reading together this Fall at Indiana Wesleyan University is James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.  Several professors read the Introduction for a lunch meeting today.  Let me just note how compelling Smith’s fundamental thesis is, how well it coheres with the Wesleyan tradition, and how well the design of the new seminary embodies its insights.

Smith teaches at Calvin College and is thoroughly surrounded by the rhetoric of worldview that permeates some Christian circles, particularly Reformed circles.  He rightly observes that such rhetoric is highly unbalanced in its focus on the “cognitive,” on ideas.  Smith does not dismiss the importance of ideas.  And we would agree with those who would say that ideas do matter.  Ideas do have consequences.  In theory, right ideas would lead to right action.

But the reality is quite different from the theory.  Preaching or lecturing are not very effective tools of change–either of lives or ideas.  Youth pastors spouting what youth should or should not do cannot hope to compete with basal urges and socially reinforced “liturgies.”  “Ritual” has always been more powerful than word, and narrative is more likely to convince than propositions.  We cannot protest that it should not be this way because reality often does not care how things should be.

These are my descriptions of a reality that can hardly be denied with a straight face.  Into this imbalanced situation, Smith rightly points out that “education is not primarily a heady project concerned with providing information; rather, education is most fundamentally a matter of formation, a task of shaping and creating a certain kind of people” (26).  How well this perspective on education fits with the Wesleyan tradition!  For us Christianity has always been more about life change than a tidy system of faith affirmations.  We are not ashamed when others might criticize Wesley for producing a set of sermons rather than a systematic theology.  Exactly!

It is thus with delight that I look at the curriculum God has helped us design and what I see is an embodied curriculum, a curriculum that requires a person to be in ministry in order to complete the assignments.  And as the skeletal curriculum continues to take on flesh, we will be more intentional about incorporating acts of worship into acts of thinking.

 

Fall Courses Week 3

The missional church course this week is looking at some of the skuttlebutt about Christian institutions as bad.  Bud Bence, our Church Historian in Residence, is playing the Devil’s advocate for Constantine as a positive influence.  They’re reading some material from Charles Arn about church life cycles, then analyzing their own church.

For Change and Transformation, they’re looking at the Renovare movement and Gary Thomas’ book, Sacred Pathways.

 

First unrestricted donations…

After lunch today, Russ Gunsalus, Bob Whitesel, and I walked over to the development office and each donated $100 to the seminary.  Now mind you, we received our first grant yesterday, and someone else set up the first scholarship.  But we wanted to be the first on some list… especially after President Smith yesterday unveiled a BHAG (=Big, Harry, Audacious, Goal) of 1000 students in seminary MA, MDIV, and DMIN programs in a shorter amount of time than I personally was thinking!

Here’s a picture of us in the development office:

Taken by Bob’s iPhone.