The Things at the Heart of Evangelicalism

My doctoral Project focuses on the use of catechetical methods in the local Baptist congregation to renew discipleship efforts among the more spiritually mature believers. I have been living and breathing catechesis, catechisms, and discipleship theories for months, and consequently I’m growing more and more convinced that Baptists need to re-appropriate some of the ancient practices of forming believers into the image of Christ.

My work has kept me aware of new books and programs on discipleship, especially those that seek to integrate the ancient forms of catechesis into evangelical churches. Since 2011, Christianity Today has published articles as a part of its “Global Gospel Project.” The Project seeks to “create a common ground catechism for today’s church.”[1] The editors and authors of the series “present and prepare teachings that reach across evangelical traditions and across the world.”[2]

The Project is about those theological foundations at the heart of all evangelical traditions. The focus is always on “beliefs and doctrines that unite evangelicals.”[3] The theological identities of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are addressed, as is the theological understandings of the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. The Project is an attempt to begin conversation among evangelical traditions that unites on those essential Christian beliefs common to us all. It an attempt, for better or worse, to describe an evangelical orthodoxy though conversation.

The editors of the Project understand it to be a type of catechism, an ecclesial concept that has great meaning and tradition for some evangelical traditions, but not for others. Shellnutt says, “While catechisms—doctrinal teachings in question-and-answer form—have educated Christians throughout church history, they've never looked quite like this.”[4] She’s right: if what Christianity Today is producing is not a question-and-answer framework of discipleship instruction, then it’s not, strictly speaking, a catechism.

What the “Global Gospel Project” resembles is a form of catechesis. The articles produced by Christianity Today generate a conversation that includes more than one perspective on the theological issue at hand. This act of dialogue is an act of discipleship that invites the learner into a stretching and challenging encounter with the Church and with more experienced mentors, in this case those mentors being the authors themselves.

I’m excited to see how the “Global Gospel Project” develops in coming months. The editors of Christianity Today have caught on to a need in our churches that is exactly what I have become passionate about: the need to establish more rigorous and doctrinally-specific discipleship actions. Their Project is an expression of this need, and I find the way in which the articles are written helpful and fair to both sides of a theological issue.

I do have some reservations about the Project, though. First, the publication of the NIV Vital Faith Bible as a companion to the Project is disappointing. With the great flood of issue-based and demographically marketed Bibles out there, publishing another edited version of the Scriptures is not something that should take the time or money of the Project’s leaders. I understand that the goal is to demonstrate that “all of doctrine rises naturally though Scripture,” but that the association of a particular theological system of evangelical orthodoxy with a specific version of the Scriptures over-standardizes the Project.[5] Until this point the Project has been about articles and interpretations that are associated with a magazine and are therefore removed from spatial and spiritual proximity to the Bible. As a pastor I cannot emphasize how difficult it is to separate the Scriptures from what Ryrie, Scolfield, or the other study Bible editors have added to them.

Related to this concern is the very foundation of a proper catechesis (or catechism, if we must call the Project thus), which lies in the participation of a new or immature believer in a community of faith that includes spiritual mentors to further the development of the disciple. Study Bibles render concrete and solitary those things that the Project (in its current form) would have us experience in dialogue within our evangelical faith community. A catechesis that is not a rigid, question-and-answer set of doctrinal statements must develop in conversation with real partners who have experienced the truth of God in their lives and can help others learn and grow. So far the Project has provided great conversation starters on theological topics, and I pray it will continue to do so. We must remember, though, that community is at the heart of all our theological considerations.

Finally, there is a clear and bright limit to the orthodoxy the Project can hope to establish among evangelicals. The catechesis of the ancient church established a Christian orthodoxy among converts, but today such unity (uniformity?) seems impossible. Even as we are able to talk about the doctrine of God or sin or even the interpretations and use of the Lord’s Prayer, we will inevitably run headlong into those points of disagreement that have led to the mosaic of belief that is evangelicalism. Issues on the Trinity, baptism, communion, and church polity would naturally appear in a catechism or a proper catechesis, but these topics would be difficult to properly and adequately address in the Project’s format.

This may be a good thing. Perhaps the articles in the Project will inspire local congregations to reaffirm their own specific beliefs about important doctrinal issues and their tradition’s stance on them. Perhaps the Project will develop enough momentum in evangelical congregations to begin a distinct emphasis on catechesis. That is certainly what is needed, and I pray that the Project will spark just such a fire.

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[1] Shellnutt, Kate, “The Global Gospel Project: A Big-Picture, Common-Ground Catechism.” Christianity Today (www.ctmag.com), 8/14/2013.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Kevin Emmert quoted in Shellnutt’s article.

On the Teaching Ministry of a Congregation

I’m grateful for David Lewicki’s post last week on his congregation’s revision of its educational ministries.[1] His church is very similar to those of my experience, that is, they emphasize a Sunday School program that meets weekly at the church and leans heavily on “expert” teachers to communicate the church’s desired curriculum.

Lewicki points out that his congregation has a “wealth of leadership” that provides his Sunday School classes with highly educated teachers who can develop their own curricula and bring the lessons “to life.” By pointing out this uniqueness in his congregation, though, Lewicki has pointed out the inherent weakness in the Sunday School model that many of us have inherited: what if you don’t have expert teachers?

Because I grew up in a typical Southern Baptist church and have worshipped and served in four since, I can certainly say that this is not an isolated problem. Sunday School teachers are often those adults who would be so brave as to volunteer and have little to no theological training of their own. Yet this model is essentially Baptist – because we emphasize the Priesthood of the Believer so strongly it is not uncommon for the Sunday School teacher (especially in adult classes) to be more of a facilitator. By not having any theological training (or requisite spiritual maturity) as a prerequisite to being a Sunday School teacher, many classes are limited to peer groups who struggle through issues or Biblical passages together, consensus being the only curriculum to be taught.

Lewicki mentions that a weakness of the Sunday School model is that it does not inherently produce “experts.” For all the years that a believer sits in Sunday School classes, there never comes a time when they “graduate” or are heralded as an “expert.” Not even the teachers that prepare such wonderful curricula at Lewicki’s church hold accreditation or degrees from North Decatur Presbyterian Church. Instead, they have gone to other institutions where they earned degrees through intense study.

Both of the models in Lewicki’s article have strengths and weaknesses. Aside from the traditional Sunday School model he examines the now-passé “small group” model. Again, the lack of experts teaching or developing curricula shows up: “Prepared curriculum is always thinner than what a gifted teacher brings, and leaders often do not have the training and experience to guide participants through the deepest spiritual waters. Conversation gets easily sidetracked by individuals moving tangentially to the subject matter.” This is the same dilemma of the Sunday School class led by a peer of the students. While the small group is great at fellowship and democratic participation in the lesson, it is lacking in direction, focus, and rigor.

Lewicki’s church is determined to re-examine its teaching ministries by asking better questions of these ministries. He says, “We've focused on content rather than on the larger vision. We've wondered too much about "what topic should we be teaching?" and too little about "what is the goal of learning?" Topics and methods follow after the bigger vision.” Still, though, the language of these ministries seems trapped in the pedagogical vocabulary of 19^th-century America. Topics, methods, the goals of learning, all are right at home in the original intention of the Sunday School movement, that is, to educate children (and eventually adults) in basic literacy and decency by using the Bible as a textbook.[2]

Pedagogy, student expectations, curricula, and measurable outcomes are all good and necessary things to consider in our educational ministries. However, as our congregations re-envision just what our churches should be teaching, consider that our understanding of teaching must be tempered by the Christian goal of forming (i.e. making) disciples. We are not in the business of granting degrees to people who have attained a level of knowledge or expertise in Biblical knowledge; we are to be about the work of making disciples. This work extends far beyond whatever Sunday School has become and deeper still that whatever cell-groups hope to be.

Lewicki has 6 suggestions for a revised framework of Christian education in his congregation, and I say he’s spot-on. Making “self-feeding” disciples is exactly right, but it is never the end-goal. So long as we endeavor to make self-feeding sheep we continue in the ways of individualism in our discipleship, which unfortunately undercuts the “communal nature” of Lewicki’s second point of vision. Rather, let us emphasize spiritual formation leading to spiritual maturity in our congregations so that they can become “feeders” too.

Let us further not cling to the vocabulary of 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st century American education. We are the in heritors of a Great Tradition of making disciples that is more rich and varied even than our rigorous psychological/pedagogical paradigms. I would humbly suggest that we reach back to the vocabulary of catechesis when we discuss our educational ministries.[3] If it is true that “learning is about doing, not just knowing,” then let us emphasize the being of a disciple and let biblical and theological learning take its rightful place as a subordinate to the activity of being made into the image of Christ.

I am immensely interested in catechesis as a faithful practice of making disciples. I do not advocate the creation of a rigorous catechism by which a provincial interpretation of Scripture and Christian theology is ground into generation after generation of believers.[4] Instead, let us emphasize the formation of disciples through the rigorous and spirit-stretching practices of classic Christianity, all under the guide of mature believers acting as mentors for the immature. Then, I think, our Sunday Schools and small groups will not dissolve, but will be informed and enlightened by the mature “experts” that our churches produce year after year.

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[1] http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2013-05/what-church-supposed-teach

[2] See C. B. Eavey, History of Christian Education, Chicago: Moody Press, 1964; p. 222-37.

[3] For those readers keeping score at home, this is the subject of my Doctor of Ministry Project. Some valuable resources on catechesis include Packer, J. I. and Gary A. Parrett, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010; Parrett, Gary A. and S. Steve Kang, Teaching the Faith, Forming the Faithful, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009; Harmon, Steven R., Towards Baptist Catholicity, Eugene OR: Paternoster, 2006.

[4] Contra Nettles who believes that static documents of “official” Baptist positions on Biblical interpretation should be re-introduced to ensure doctrinal purity in the local congregation. See Nettles, Tom J., Teaching Truth, Training Hearts: The Study of Catechisms in Baptist Life, Amityville, NY: Calvary Press, 1998.