How the Call to Improve Theology from the Pulpits May Sweep Over the Larger Problems
If you’ve read anything I have released on Substack as of late, you know that holistic spiritual formation is passion of mine. The more I consider how churches are organized and structured and how discipleship programs are designed, I continue to find the top-down, head-knowledge model of discipleship to be deeply incomplete and flawed in the ultimate pursuit of discipleship: being conformed into the image of Christ.
Recently, a friend of mine shared an article with me to encourage and challenge me to think as a ministry leader and aspiring theologian. The article was written by a church history professor from my seminary, a professor I enjoyed learning from. In his article, Dr. Hannah surveys the state of Evangelicalism and suggests that the problem rooted behind Biblical illiteracy and dysfunctional discipleship models is the lack of theological depth in the pulpit. The article briefly touches on how various responses to the dysfunction and lack of depth in Christian formation fall short and don’t take the reality of sin seriously. Then for the the majority of the article, Dr. Hannah surveys the work of Puritan theologian John Owen. While I appreciate many theological aspects of what Hannah summarizes from Owen’s hamartiology (theology of sin) and pneumatology (theology of the Holy Spirit), I find his overall analysis and evaluation to be lacking. Below is a modified response to the article my dear friend and brother in Christ forwarded to me.
This article was sweet reminder of my time with Dr. Hannah in class at Dallas Theological Seminary and also made me think back to my reading of J.I. Packer’s book Keeping in Step with the Spirit. The survey of theology from Owen seems to be a grounded, realistic hamartiology and yet vibrant, fully-engaging pneumatology! As I read the article, I largely understood and followed the summary of Owen’s theological work. It does seem that Evangelicalism (especially) needs to return to a robust theology in it’s preaching and teaching. However, I am not sure I completely align with Dr. Hannah on his cultural & ecclesiological evaluation of the problem of Evangelicalism and his suggested solution through the summarization of Owen’s work (at least on its own).
Many of the churches in the land seem content with the repetition of heart-warming, inspiring stories and the rehearsal of positive experiences, what is designated as “celebrative worship,” with a foreboding absence of doctrinal teaching. Negative, oft-discomforting statements in the Scriptures are glossed over, if not completely avoided, with the result that saints endure elemental pabulum and the unbelievers come away with the impression that Jesus looks remarkably like them! Though touted as a serious Bible-oriented movement, the lack of in-depth doctrinal interest in the churches belies a terrible tragedy. The pastor’s role has become that of an amiable good-fellow; the once profound emphasis on character has receded for an emphasis on personality. The result is that the Lord’s people have little instruction in the Scriptures; what they may receive is most likely a medley of diverse theological elements that are mutually contradictory and confusing.1
While I affirm the problems Dr. Hannah observes, I want to counter that the solution to this problem is bigger than just a return to and repackaging of Puritan theology. From my observation, the problems of mainstream Evangelicalism run deeper than bad preaching and lack of theological depth and clarity. In other words, the problem of our dysfunctional discipleship runs deeper than our weekly exposition of the text; it follows then that adjusting our preaching isn’t the only or entire solution. If content is the only problem then content is the solution; however, I am not convinced that it is that simple.
Dr. Hannah doesn’t directly suggest an exclusivity to his answer to the problems he observes. But as I read his article I was reminded of how many times I’ve witnessed ministry leaders or church members carry this kind of presupposition around with them that the quality of teaching and preaching is directly and singularly correlated to healthy spiritual formation. I am sure that Dr. Hannah, with his wealth of understanding of church history, understands the problems and answers to the current problems in the church much better than myself! However, I wonder how much this assumption of a ‘content-answer to a content problem’ silently exists in various spaces of the church in the West? Is fixing our preaching really going to singlehandedly fix all our problems?
The Broader Problems & Answers
In my seminary studies and recent reflections, James K.A. Smith and Andrew McGowan have been very instructive to my reflections on Christian worship. As a historian of early Christianity, McGowan points out that ancient worship was centered on embodied, ethical living not songs, services, or even messages. The rule of life, the practice of sacraments, the communal gatherings, all emphasized embodied discipleship as being, doing, and becoming rather than primarily knowing that then trickles down and shapes to the other aspects of a person. One could argue that the early church was fully injected with the apostle’s teaching and inspired letters that were as rich in theology as it gets! Point taken, but I do think the orientation of discipleship, community and the placement of knowledge and doctrine in the life and witness of the church was vastly different than Evangelicalism typically appears today. The early church emphasis was embodied belief, not thinking one’s way into the Kingdom of God. The church in the West also inhabits a very different cultural, moral, ethical and religious landscape. It has inherited a very unique socio-religious and religious history. This context is all the more reason to embrace a more holistic spiritual formation beyond just “shoring up” a church’s pulpit preaching. As much as I love robust theology and delight in the preaching of it, I’m not sure that this is the root behind the discipleship problems Dr. Hannah observes. For a while I have sensed that there is more to the problem and solution than an adjustment to our pulpits’ content.
Smith has been very instructive here. In his first two books of his series, Desiring the Kingdom & Imagining the Kingdom, Smith lays out how practices, rhythms, and habits shape people as embodied agents of desire (creatures of love & desire) and how social imagination, communities, and storytelling can powerfully shape people (even people with the same doctrine and robust theology!) I think these things can be largely unnamed, unexamined, and untouched (at least with intention) in Evangelicalism. Even if we return to robust teaching, if people are trained in habits and liturgies that form them the opposite direction of their preachers’ excellent exposition and elders’ robust theology, they might experience inner turmoil and bumps in the discipleship journey. This is because, as Smith puts it, we aren’t primarily thinking kinds of creatures. Jonathan Edwards and Augustine back him up on this idea, as they locate the primary anthropological center of the person in one’s desires. In other words, a 30-60 min exposition, no matter how theologically robust and excellent, will not effectively combat the week-long formation that comes from practices & habits as well as communal narratives and cultural, shared imagination.
Owen’s framework, especially its pneumatology, can be super impactful if our starting point considers people as embodied agents of desire. “Walk by the Spirit” & “resist the flesh” are two of the center-stage ethical commands the Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians & Romans. I agree with Owen on this emphasis as I do believe the ethical framework of the Spirit versus the Flesh to be a vital, central foundation to Christian discipleship and formation. However, instructing or preaching this very concept to people still fails to address the root of the issue. People are shaped, formed, and learn most deeply by what they participate in, what their community is collectively stewarded and led to imagine and envision, the stories and narratives their discipleship plays out in, and the community’s culture. Theology and knowledge shape all these things, but they can’t replace them. If we take Owen’s theology and ignore some the context of the challenges we face and turn a blind eye to these other aspects of formation, I suspect we fail to plug all the “holes in the boat”. Rather, we will keep looking at the one hole we’ve plugged and wonder why the boat is still sinking.
Spectator Spirituality
Disembodied, head-knowledge discipleship models will never fix all the problems, no matter how robust and excellent its theological content may be. To quote Biblical scholar and priest David S Harvey “I don’t think church is a spectators’ sport.” When the weekly gathering becomes a spectated gathering structured more around sitting, listening, and thinking as opposed to participating, becoming, and being, is there any other result than spiritual spectatorship?2 As theologian and priest Fr. Joash P. Thomas Thomas noted recently: “A people that experience church entirely as a spectator will struggle with {the Christian call for} justice because all of a sudden justice is asking them to do something but ‘I thought my Christianity was something I simply observed.”’3 I’d add that to this that these people will struggle with any and ALL kinds of requirements and invitations from an embodied, holistic discipleship because that way of following Jesus is costly, participatory, and invites a sacrificial surrender. From my observation, many of these types of Evangelical gatherings typically require a person to only sit and listen, perhaps with the highest cost being the invitation to feel something uncomfortable as they listen and think. This model then allows the individual to leave with very little tangibly asked of them during the communal gathering and very little required of them once they leave. If the weekly gathering is more of a sentimental cycle of feel-good or feel-bad spectatorship (being reminded by the preacher that you’re loved by God or being convicted of your sin) than a communal practice of collective, participatory worship, is it any surprise that people leave unchanged and unformed? What else should we expect but spiritual spectatorship from these sorts of gatherings? Now it should be very clear from beyond this article that am not against the preaching of the good news. I am simply suggesting that improved preaching and content is insufficient for holistic spiritual formation.
While the new birth happens to us, we are active in our growth as Christians. Growth does not just happen. There are no easy short-cuts or quick victories. It is a journey that will inevitably lead to glory, but the road is long and circuitous. Do not be called aside by the lure of “the easy, higher way”; it simply does not exist. The mark of the saint is not victory; it is a struggle with the enemy who is already condemned, a struggle which is never eradicated until we hear our Savior’s call to enter into his glory in the last day, the first day of our rest from the power of sin.
Dr. Hannah ends his article with the observation that “growth does not just happen.” I wholeheartedly agree. But are we so sure that there is a direct, correlative line between our sermons’ content and our churches’ formation? Are we so certain that one quick fix will solve the whole problem?
Soapbox Moment
As an aside, I also wonder how Evangelicalism’s emphasis on individualism also plays into the problems Dr. Hannah rightly calls out. Or its politically dysfunctional marriages to empires and national power (both now and historically). Or it’s engagement with the world always from a place of being history’s heroes. In days like these, I observe how quickly my church tradition sweeps over apologies, acknowledging mistakes, or repenting for it’s failed endeavors and how quickly it returns to the stage to lead ‘the room’ with all the answers. Some of these trends, I barely have words to fully describe or point out with any sort of competent accuracy that would be helpful in more detail. But cause me to further wonder if Owen’s theological framework might be utilized to understand both the problems and the solutions more holistically. The reality of the Flesh needs to be considered at a communal and institutional dimension just as much as it is talked about at a personal level. However, leading a congregation to intellectually reflect on the institutional reality of sin is still a widely inadequate solution to the issues many are noticing in discipleship and ecclesiology in the West.
Now I do agree that there are problems within the content of the sermon-centric model. From my perspective, Evangelicalism suffers from a lack of engagement not only with robust theology as Dr. Hannah suggests but also from a lack of interaction with robust and diverse understandings of Hermeneutics and Bibliology. I remember years ago, as I was currently working in a nondenominational, Bible church, being started at how little was invested in shepherding its people in hermeneutics and knowing how to study and interpret the Scriptures with a faithful, robust methodology. This startling observation was something I noticed as I my assumptions were challenged in seminary: ‘“Surely, a pastoral investment of time and programming to disciple people to handle the Scriptures well would be a top priority. Why isn’t it?” But this issue is just the tip of the iceberg. The broader problems in Evangelicalism go beyond hermeneutical illiteracy.
Yes, I still believe we should consider recovering a deeper, wise, and informed way of meeting with the Text rather than just letting the pastoral few or theologians in residence “handle it.” This is especially important if the social imagination, collective communal storytelling and culture, and habitual practices of the corporate and individual are as influential as Smith and others suggest. While we’re at it, church history would be another great companion to communities who are seeking a revival of robust theology and depth. The maxim “history repeats itself” is well known but not embraced in practice enough.
However, all these content changes (as much as I love the thought of all of them) would be content-oriented adjustments and quick fixes if a more holistic consideration of spiritual formation, anthropology, and social imagination aren’t also considered. The allure of quick fix solutions is the promise of immediate change and simple answers; however, transformation requires more from all of us. Real change in our communities and organizational structures requires holistic reflection, courageous imagination, and a curiosity to learn and grow. In my estimation, this seems to be true at an individual, communal, and societal level. But it also must become more than an intellectual inquiry or reflection; it must be an embodied, participatory, and collective endeavor of the people of God. Jesus invites us to nothing less than all of this.
- https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/articles/john-owen-and-the-normal-christian-life ↩︎
- These two should don’t have to be in a diametrical, either/or opposition but rather should be welcomed as an ecclesiological both/and! ↩︎
- To hear the whole conversation click here: https://joashpthomas.substack.com/p/make-church-churchy-again-justice?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web ↩︎
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