Friday, December 4, 2015

By Dr. Todd Wilson

I’d like to begin this talk on the theme of the pastor theologian for today’s culture, with an observation about pastors in general in today’s culture: Pastors, by and large, don’t know who they are, or what they’re supposed to be doing. Pastors across the country are experiencing a crisis of identity; behind the benign smiles  and inspirational sermons and million dollar building campaigns and ever- expanding ministries, there lurks, in the minds and hearts of many pastors, a sense of confusion as to what a pastor is, and what a pastor does. In the words of  Princeton Seminary President Craig Barnes, “the hardest thing about being a pastor today is simply this: “confusion about what it means to be the pastor.”[1]

Think about it. There’s probably not another profession that suffers from as great a lack of clarity as to what the job itself is all about. Many pastors feel like they’ve somehow lost the script that tells them what it means to be a pastor: who they are, what part they’re to play, when to come on stage, what to say, who to interact with. So they’re often found standing on the stage of ministry as anxious, unscripted stutters, uncertain of what to do, and unsure of who they are.

And the net result? Your average pastor has been reduced to little more than what Stanley Hauerwas has called “a quivering mass of availability.” This may be why so many pastors resign their posts each year. Or why pastors who leave the ministry never want to return to the ministry. Or why among pastors there are so many insane and tragic attempts to conceal the confusion and burnout with various forms of self-medication, from drinking, to pornography, to extramarital affairs, to overeating, to obsessing about money and power, to complete emotional disengagement from the lives of your people—or God himself.

Now, what makes this crisis of identity among pastors especially tragic is that there used to be such clarity about the pastoral calling. For centuries, the church held out a clear and compelling vision of what a pastor is and what a pastor does. In short, a pastor is a theologian. But this ancient vision is now buried under six feet of dirt, so we now hyphenate the word pastor to get theologian back into the definition.

Back in 2006, my colleague Gerald Hiestand and I cofounded an organization devoted to putting the calling of the theologian back into the identity of the pastor. The organization is called The Center for Pastor Theologians.[2] It’s not, I’ll admit, a very creative name. But it’s clear, and the mission is compelling. We exist to resurrect this ancient vision of the pastor as theologian, for the renewal of the church in its ministry and mission to the world. And it’s this ancient and historic yet now obscured and lost vision of the pastor as theologian that I’d like to speak about.

What is a Pastor Theologian? One Person, Not Two.

But, at this point you’re probably asking, What is a pastor theologian? The most helpful thing I can say is this—a pastor theologian is one person, not two. You may have heard the story about the girl who was strolling with her father, a country pastor, through the church’s old adjacent graveyard. As she read the inscriptions on the headstones, a modestly adorned one caught her attention. It had the deceased person’s name, his dates of birth and death, and the inscription: “Pastor Theologian.” When this young girl saw those two words, side-by-side, on the headstone, her face lit up with a mix of surprise and concern; she asked her father worriedly, “Papa, why do they have two people buried in there?”

Now, this would be funny, if it weren’t so true. The fact is, nowadays at least, the designation ‘pastor’ and ‘theologian’ almost always refer to two different people, not the same person. And why is that? Because we no longer conceive of the pastorate as a theological calling. Pastors cast vision, mobilize teams, oversee programs, manage budgets, offer counsel to the hurting, and, yes, preach sermons. But we don’t expect them to give serious intellectual leadership to the people of God. That’s someone else’s job—the Bible scholar, the seminary professor, or the academic, but not the pastor.

What I’m speaking to is the unfortunate division of labor that developed over the last two centuries, and that has divorced the doing of theology from the practice of ministry. And with this division of labor, the pastor’s role is completely redefined, so that pastors are now practitioners, not thought leaders. I recently encountered a striking example of this division of labor. I and my colleague were asked to speak to a Bible college faculty on the theme of the pastor theologian. But not the whole faculty, just the pastoral and educational ministries departments. Not, mind you, the biblical and theological studies departments. When I asked if those departments interact much, someone responded, sheepishly, that they’re actually housed in two different buildings!

Did you know that throughout the history of the church things were different? In fact, the church’s leading theologians were pastors? If we had the time, we could develop this at length. But one quote, from historian Richard Lovelace, will have to suffice. He’s speaking about the time from the Reformation to the Second Great awakening, a period of several hundred years. “The leaders and shapers of the Reformation, the Puritan and Pietist movements, and the first two awakenings included trained theologians who combined spiritual urgency with profound learning, men who had mastered the culture of their time and were in command of the instruments needed to destroy its idols and subdue its innovations: Luther and Calvin, Owen and Francke, Edwards and Wesley, Dwight and Simeon.” Did you hear that definition of the pastor theologian: a trained theologian who combines spiritual urgency with profound learning—someone whose vocational home is in the church as a pastor but whose calling is to feed God’s people as a theologian.

What Isn’t a Pastor Theologian?

That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about the pastor theologian. But I think it’s as important to be clear on what were not talking about when we talk about a pastor theologian. Not just what a pastor theologian is, but what a pastor theologian isn’t. Frankly, as we see a resurgence of interest in the pastor theologian, we see growing confusion about what a pastor theologian is. It may be tempting for some of you, for example, to think of the pastor theologian as a pastor scholar, or pastor smart guy, or pastor with a PhD. But none of these is really the essence of the pastor theologian.

There is, of course, an important place for serious biblical and theological scholarship. The church needs highly trained academic theologians who give their life to robust, rigorous, and often fairly esoteric research—the kind of ground-breaking work the rest of us lack either the inclination or the gifting to do. Here I think of folks like Don Carson or Daniel Block or Mark Noll or Kevin Vanhoozer, serious scholars who write really big books that can be hard to read, even harder to understand, not because they lack clarity but because they have such substance. These are bona fide scholars, and they’re hugely valuable to the church. But they’re not what I have in mind when I speak of the pastor theologian.

Nor do I have in mind the pastor who is simply the really smart guy with the PhD. To possess a degree does not make one a pastor theologian; it doesn’t even make one a theologian, much less a pastor. But we live in a credential-obsessed society, where unless you’ve got a dozen letters behind your name, you’re a nobody, certainly not a pastor theologian. It was for this reason that on the eve of my graduation from Cambridge University with a PhD, my mentor handed me this poem, entitled, So Call Me Doctor!

The title, ‘brother’, once I wore,

But that could satisfy no more,

Since on my journey up to fame,

I added M.Div. to my name.

But still I was not yet seen as bright,

What could I do to make me feel right?

Now they call me ‘Doctor’—how I love it!

No other accolade is above it!

Never was I thrilled like that before,

As on that day upon my door

They added ‘Doctor’ to my name,

Now I’ll never be the same!

So call me ‘Doctor’, – Man alive,

On my ego I must thrive.

At conference rounds I will shine;

Praise the Lord, the title’s mine!

Once I was humble, now I’m proud,

Walking erect with the Doctor crowd.

Surely the world hath need of me;

A man of learning with a grand degree!

The apostle knew no such bliss,

For Paul had no title to equal this!

I tell you my brothers, I’m not the same

Since I added ‘Doctor’ to my name.

If anything, the scholarly wiring and specialized training of academics, which many pastor theologians do tend to have, can be a hindrance rather than a help to being an effective pastor theologian. I remember an older gentlemen bee-lining to me after a sermon. “I know what your problem is.” Really, what’s that? “You need to crucify that Cambridge PhD!” He then walked off. It took me years to get not my head, but my heart around what he was saying. Pastor theologians are pastors, with all that entails, not scholarly smart guys with PhDs who couldn’t find a paycheck in the academy and so wound-up in the church.

What Does a Pastor Theologian Do? Three Primary Tasks

But what does a pastor theologian do, you may be wondering? I’d like to distill it down into three primary tasks. I should hasten to add, though, these aren’t the pastor theologian’s only tasks. Nor are they tasks unique to pastor theologians. Hopefully, every pastor, as a leader for his congregation, will pursue these three tasks. But, for the pastor theologian, this is at the very heart of his calling.

First of all, and most importantly, a pastor theologian feeds God’s people on the riches of God’s word. During the prophet Jeremiah’s time, Israel was in serious crisis; the nation was threated from without, and it was decaying morally and spiritually from within. And God’s answer to the crisis? “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jeremiah 3:15). Or consider the Lord Jesus. “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). A pastor theologian is a theologian, first and foremost, in the pulpit, not the classroom. He’s riveted by the grandeurs of the Bible, and revels in the prospect of serving his people with a substantive, Scriptural diet.

Second, a pastor theologian retrieves the treasures of the Christian tradition in order to reapply them to the contemporary context. A pastor theologian is therefore not only a student of the Bible, but a student of church history. He doesn’t suffer from what C. S. Lewis rightly referred to as ‘chronological snobbery,’ the notion that what is most recent must also be the most helpful, or insightful, or true. Instead, the pastor theologian recognizes the need to mine the Christian tradition for its amazing intellectual and spiritual resources, and then offer them up afresh to the church. If I might use an example from my ministry, over the past several weeks I’ve been preaching a series entitled Mere Sexuality, where I’ve addressed some contemporary challenges to a Christian vision of sexuality by simply retrieving truths that were obvious to Christians of other centuries, but that we’ve somehow forgotten. The Apostle Peter, says his task is simply to stir up their sincere mind by way of reminder (2 Peter 3:1). This is at the heart of the pastor theologian’s task as well, the retrieval and reapplication of classic Christian truths and practices.

But, thirdly, a pastor theologian helps his people think theologically not just about Christian things, but about everything. This is critical. Pastor theologians don’t just train people to think theologically about Christian things, like the atonement, small group ministry, worship services, or missions. Of course, they do all of that. But their task isn’t limited to Christian things. It encompasses everything—how to think theologically about immigration, same-sex practice, and evolutionary biology. In his landmark book, Mark Noll said there is a Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and the scandal is there is no evangelical mind. While we may think Christianly about Christian things, we don’t think Christianly about everything. Learning to do so is one of the chief tasks of a pastor theologian, “to take every thought captive to obey Christ” (10:5).

The Evangelical Church: An Inhospitable Place for Pastor Theologians

Now, in light of the things a pastor theologian does for the renewal of the church, may I say that it’s regrettable that the evangelical church is, by and large, inhospitable to this kind of calling—the calling of the pastor theologian. The reasons for this are complex, not cookie-cutter. But perhaps it will suffice to demonstrate the point if I share a story or two with you.

The first comes from one of our gatherings at the CPT, where we gather (a group pastor theologians) for two days of conversation about life and ministry and, of course, theology. On the first night, we feed them lots of Chicago’s finest pizza, and then gather in my living room to share highlights and lowlights from the previous year. There were a dozen relatively young pastors, all of whom had or were completing PhD’s in various theological specialties. Most were meeting for the first time. As they began to share about their ministry, each spoke of the tension they felt between their pastoral work and their call to theological leadership; and as we went around the room, one by one, a palpable sense of “Me too!” developed. Until that moment, most of these pastors felt completely alone in their calling to bring together these two divergent worlds. In fact, one brother, so overwhelmed to, at last, be with fellow travelers, broke down and began to cry. These study groups continue to meet each year, and we now joke that this first gathering was like a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous—each pastor taking his turn to confess to being a pastor theologian, the rest in the circle offering sympathetic smiles and nods as affirmation of support. “Hi, I’m Todd. I’m a pastor theologian.” “Hi Todd!” As though confessing a disorder, even a crime.

Or consider this example. A colleague of mine was applying for a pastoral role at a well-known church in a large metropolitan area. He was advised, though, by one of the associate pastors, “You should be ready to explain why you got an M.A. in Theology. That might raise some red flags.” He then leaned in closely and added, in a hushed tone, “The fact is, they’re not real big on the seminary around here.”

One final illustration. One of the pastors in our network shared about the time he’d gotten into church early one morning to have extended time in the word and prayer, and to enjoy some extra theological reading: some Calvin or Luther. But around eight o’clock, he heard the rattling knuckles of the executive pastor on everyone’s door, him saying, “Come on, people, I want to hear ministry happening in there!”

Sadly, the evangelical church has, on the whole, become inhospitable to pastor theologians. To quote from one very well-known pastor theologian, Eugene Petersen, “North American culture does not offer congenial conditions in which to live vocationally as a pastor. Men and women who are pastors in America today find that they have entered into a way of life that is in ruins. The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans. Any kind of continuity with pastors in times past is virtually nonexistent.”

A Culture for Pastor Theologians: A Plea to Pastors, Professors and Students

So, you see, if we’re going to recover this kind of pastoral calling, one that is inherently theological in nature, then we need to work toward making the church a more hospitable place for this kind of calling. Which means we need to change the culture of the church so that pastor theologians can thrive—not as an end in itself, or to make the pastor theologian’s life cushier and more comfortable, but for the good of the body of Christ as a whole, in its own spiritual integrity and ministry and mission to the world.

Andy Crouch, in his award-winning book Culture Making, offers a very interesting observation about culture. He says culture makes the impossible possible, and the possible impossible. Take, for example, traveling on Interstate 90 from Boston to Seattle. Nowadays, this only takes fifty hours, an impossibility for anyone prior to the creation of the cultural good called the interstate. But it has the reverse effect too, so that it’s now impossible to travel by horse from Boston to Philly, while in the 19th century it wasn’t.

Now, what I’m suggesting is that we, the evangelical church as a whole, work to change the culture of the church so it’s possible, once again, to be a pastor and a theologian at the same time, while also making it impossible, or at least unlikely, if not undesirable, for anyone to be a pastor without being a theologian.

This is a bold vision, I know, and it simply will not happen without an intentional effort on the part of a whole host of folks—especially pastors, professors and students. And so, in drawing these reflections to a close, let me offer three parting words to these three groups of folks.

First, to professors, may I encourage you to play the part of John the Baptist. Be a voice crying in the wilderness. If we’re going to see a resurgence of theological integrity in our churches, then we need you to promote the pastorate as a viable place to do theological leadership. Don’t underestimate your role in directing the next generation of pastors and theologians. If they hear you speak excitedly about the pastorate as a theological calling, they’ll be much more likely to pursue that path, rather than some other.

To pastors, may I encourage you to stand in the gap. Don’t neglect the gift that has been given you or fall prey to the assumption that academic theologians or Bible scholars can meet all the theological needs of the church. In fact, let me appeal to you to stand in the gap between academy and church, and take on a less passive posture toward providing theological leadership to your congregation. You’re their shepherd.

And to students, may I encourage you to believe it’s possible. While it won’t happen in a year or two, trust that we will see the renewal of the pastoral calling. The church stands in great need of pastors, like some of you, who are capable of being theologians for the sake of the church. And it’s my hope that those of you now preparing to serve the church will take seriously the need for the pastor theologian. And it’s my prayer that those who are gifted would answer that call as our Lord directs—to provide theological leadership to the church, for the renewal of the church, and for the glory of her Savior Jesus Christ.


[1] Portions of this address are drawn from Gerald Hiestand and Todd Wilson, The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015).

[2] For more information, visit www.pastortheologians.com.