The pursuit of wisdom

Wisdom in our world is short supply. It has been supplanted by instant gratification, pragmatism, a pursuit of the superficial and hectic schedules that drive out reflection and intentional living. Wisdom is a trait all of us desire but one that many are not willing to pay the cost for.

Wisdom comes at a cost just as any other pursuit of value does. Things of great value do not come cheaply or easily. 

It was the writer of Proverbs that said "My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 1:1-6)."

At its most foundational level, wisdom comes from and mirrors God who is the source of all wisdom. Thus it goes without saying that understanding Him and His desires for our lives is central to learning to walk in wisdom. We do that by spending quality time in the Scriptures which is where we start to understand the heart of God, the principles of God and what it means to follow him. The Scriptures are called the ancient paths in Proverbs and those ancient paths are the paths of wisdom. 

Ironically, while we love to be cutting edge and modern and up to date - the wise individual walks the ancient paths that God laid down for us. The path to wisdom in the current world is an ancient path found in the unchanging character of God.

In the Scriptures we find the word of God but it is in prayer that we commune with God. Where we talk face to face as it were and wrestle with the issues of life and His work in our lives. Prayer is time exposure to God and in that time together we don't change God's heart but our heart becomes more like his. As our hearts become like His heart we start to desire to live by His wisdom.

Wisdom does not become operable in our lives until we choose to take what we have learned in Scripture and apply it to the situations we face on a daily basis. That takes deep reflection on our part and is the reason that many choose to journal - recording their thoughts, clarifying their priorities and measuring their lives against the Ancient Paths laid down by God. It is not possible to pursue wisdom without regular reflection, evaluation and realignment of our lives.

In our pursuit of wisdom, choosing to spend time with people of wisdom is one of the best investments we can make. Other wise people help us to think more wisely ourselves. They ask great questions and offer us perspectives that others would not. Wise friends are not caught up in the zeitgeist (beliefs, ideas and spirit of an era) but in the character of an unchanging God.

For those who need to proof-text all truth from Scripture

OK, so I will make some unhappy on this one. While all Scripture is truth, not all truth is found in Scripture! Don't get me wrong, Scripture is the final revelation of God until He returns and we realize His personal presence for eternity. The Scriptures give us what we need to understand God, ourselves, salvation and what it means to be transformed into His image. It is not, however, designed to prove all things. While you can reference many things back to Scripture (like theology), it was never meant to be the proof text for all things.

I am bemused by those who desire a verse to "prove" all things. Without the verse, some will reject any proposal related to the church or the Christian life. That is frankly an unnecessary exercise in many cases. Ironically, those who need a text for all issues often misuse that text. 

But there is another issue. The Scriptures talk a great deal about wisdom. In fact, one could argue that wisdom is the central theme of the book of Proverbs. What is wisdom? It is the application of intelligence, common sense, shrewdness, astuteness, judiciousness, judgement, prudence and circumspection to issues at hand. For the believer, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom for it informs all of our decisions but life and leadership is full of issues where we must apply our common sense, intelligence and wisdom to the issue at hand.

God gave us minds to think. He did not give us a manual to look up all situations in the Bible. In most cases, we must make appropriate applications to the issues at hand. 

In a recent blog I suggested that the New Testament gives us implicit and explicit suggestions as to who makes for a good leader in the church.

An anonymous reader left this message: "Perhaps you could add some biblical support to this article, so we know how you arrived at your conclusions, eg. A verse for each leader qualification. Thanks!"

I answered: "With respect, it is not necessary to find a proof text for each of these. For instance it is self evident that an individual who is not passionate about Jesus cannot draw others to him. It is self evident that a leader must love people as Jesus loved people. It is self evident that humility is a requirement as that is the heart of Jesus and in a team setting one must submit themselves to the will of the majority (speaking of healthy church leaders)."

Anonymous replied: "TJ, how do you know that that these things of which you write are self-evident?"

Evidently if there is not a verse this individual won't buy it. I don't get that. What I do get is applying good thinking to good theology and coming up with good practices.

Introducing (or reintroducing) people to the Word

It would be interesting to know how many of those in our congregations have ever read through the entire Scriptures. In my experience the percentage is not high. We read many books about the Christian life but many of our people have not read the book of life themselves.

A best practice I have observed is that of congregations reading through scripture over the course of a year together. If this is encouraged from the front, through the ministries of the church and with regular encouragement it is possible to see a high percentage of folks participate.

All of us deeply desire life change for our people. We also know that spiritual transformation is not what it ought to be in our ministries. Could it be that part of the reason is that our people are not living in the word themselves and therefore not experiencing the Truth first hand?

I often wonder what the simple practice of regularly reading God's word would do for God's people in our day. If what Psalm 119 says about the word is true, they are missing out on a lot by not soaking themselves in His truth.
It is simple but profound. Think about it.

Biblical illiteracy and its implications in the evangelical world

My parents generation knew their Bibles because they actually read it regularly and were taught the major theological terms/themes and their implications. My generation knows about the Bible because we read Christian living books once in a while but basic theology is weak. So what happens with my children's generation and the next? 

Each generation of believers is one generation away from biblical illiteracy and that illiteracy is very real today among evangelicals. As I pointed out in another blog (An essential Biblical vocabulary), many believers, including church leaders cannot even define the most basic theological terms which the Bible uses to define faith, our human condition, God's work on the cross, His work in our lives nor do they understand that God is calling them not only to salvation but to join Him in His work.

This illiteracy problem is also tied to the content of our preaching today which is often so geared to be "practical and relevant" that it becomes more self help and about us than about God who is the source and goal of our  lives. In fact, whenever our teaching and preaching is more focused on us than on God we know that the balance has shifted from Him to us - a subtle but deadly shift. The Scriptures are living water for our souls because the lead us to Him. The more we drink the more satisfied we are.

The result of this is inevitable: A cultural Christianity with a general knowledge about God but not a biblical Christianity with a specific knowledge of God. That is a subtle but deadly shift.

We vastly underestimate the power of God's word to actually bring change to people's live through the work of the Holy Spirit - including our own. As Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Notice the the integral connection between our understanding of Scripture, its formative work in our lives and our resulting work on behalf of God and His Kingdom. These are all tied together and all related to our interaction with His Word and His Spirit as we read that Word. There is no substitute in our spiritual formation for direct, regular, honest, personal interaction with His Word. 

I would encourage all church leaders to consider these questions:

1. Do we have an ongoing plan to influence our congregation to be in God's word regularly so that there is no-one who calls themselves a Christ follower who is not regularly in the Book?
2. Do those in our congregation understand and can they articulate the theological concepts of the Bible? (If they cannot they most likely do not have a Scripturally based understanding of God and man)
3. Are you raising up a generation of young people who know their Bibles and interact with it regularly? Do they understand the basics of of the faith? Can they articulate them?
4. Finally, what is the quality of the church leaders' interaction with Scripture and are they theologically literate? If not it starts with you!

We would not settle for illiteracy when it comes to reading. Why do we so easily settle for illiteracy when it comes to God and His Word? Speaking of relevance - there is nothing more relevant than what God wants us to know about Him, to do in response, to understand and to apply to our lives. That is real relevance.

Reading Scripture for the first time

It is amazing to me how much the “enlightenment” and the rise of “rational thinking” has impacted our reading of Scripture. What we call the enlightenment coming out of the dark ages had many advantages, allowing scientists, for instance to test their theories and come to grips with the real workings of our cosmos.

But it had other consequences as well. In a rational world, God does not break in and do the unexpected – yet any reading of the Bible shows that He indeed does. The rational world would believe that God operates according to a set of predictable rules. Yet how predictable is a God who comes to earth in the form of a baby, lives in squalid Nazareth and dies on a cross to pay for our sin of rebellion against Him? What sense does that make? It is so irrational that many refuse to believe. And a virgin birth on top of it!

Read Scripture to a child and they get it. They believe it. They devour it. They are mesmerized by the stories of an unpredictable God who is at once tame, fierce, predictable, unpredictable, doing the miraculous and surprising people at every turn. They have not yet been tainted by rational thinking that seeks to tame the untamable Aslan. 

Then listen to many messages from the “grown ups” including many pastors which turn the unpredictable into the predictable and find ways to deny the very power of God to break in and do what we don’t expect him to do. We tame God with our theology and make him fit our rationale box. Especially we tame the Holy Spirit because He is scary in his unpredictability so defining what He can and cannot do is paramount: especially if you want Him to fit your theological system.

God is not tamable. He is so far beyond our grasp and our understanding. If the edge of the known cosmos is 13 billion light-years away, he is infinitely further from that in our understanding of Him. What is amazing is that he still knows when a sparrow dies, Still intervenes in the lives of all who call Him Lord.

Still He surprises us daily with His grace. Demons are still cast out in His name, people healed miraculously in His name, lives changed dramatically in His name, the forces of evil in the universe pushed back in His name. Yet He acts according to His sovereign purposes and will surprising us with his timing and His wisdom which is beyond our understanding.

If we could reclaim the ability to read Scripture through the eyes of a child, unencumbered with our finely tuned theological systems (yes they have their place but they can also limit us) we might be surprised at the God we find. He would be more personal, more difficult to pin down, more powerful, more unpredictable in His intervention in human affairs and we would be more ready to see His surprises in our lives.

Some theologians will push back and say, "but we have 2,000 years of biblical interpretation since Jesus that needs to be kept in mind when we read the text." I agree that we have many insights from those who have gone before us. I also believe that we are often held hostage by the theological grids that we have been taught that keep us from seeing God in his full Glory. No theological system is perfect and many have significant deficiencies. What happened at taking Scripture at face value? 

Try reading the Bible as if you were reading it for the first time.  

Small shifts of truth - the Evil one's tactics

Have you ever thought about the lies that the evil one loves for us to believe? His strategy is to move the ground of truth ever so slightly but that tiny move makes all the difference in the world in reality. Think about these lies:

• God is good most of the time. 
• You need to earn God's favor.
• Some of the Bible's moral commands are irrelevant in today's sophisticated world.
• You are just an ordinary person and not equipped to do much in ministry.
• God will never be happy with you given what you have done.
• Since God is love He will not condemn anyone to eternal hell. In the end it will be OK for most people.
• God does not heal today. That was for New Testament times.
• If someone is sincere they will be accepted by God no matter what their religious path.
• Believing in demons is pretty silly.
• You cannot afford to be financially generous with God. In a few years you will be in a better position and you can do it then.
• Some people are not worthy of God - or for that matter of my attention.
• Grace is for the lost, not for us who already know God. 

The evil one is skilled at customizing lies to fit our circumstances and our particular vulnerabilities. Often they play like tapes in our heads and we are hardly aware of them.

How does one counter the lies of Satan? Daily time in God's word where we constantly evaluate our lives and our thinking against His eternal, unchanging, life giving truth. The Psalmist says, "I have hid thy word in my heart that I might not sin against thee." Put another way, I have saturated my mind with God's truth so I know the difference between the lies of the evil one and the truth of God. And I know that one is life taking (Satan) and one is life giving (God).

Remember: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life,and have it to the full (John 10:10)." 

You can only counter the lies of Satan with the truth of God. Spend time with His truth regularly and you will recognize what is not truth. The reason so many Christ followers don't recognize the lies of Satan is that they have not spent enough time in the truth of God. Without knowing truth we cannot know the lies. Scripture matters to our daily lives in more ways than we realize.

Unleashing our lay people and overcoming the dysfunction of professional ministry

I believe that one of the five dysfunctions of the church is that of professional ministry where we hire specialists to do the work of ministry rather than to equip others to do ministry. This professionalism is even more interesting in that the movement I am a part of (the EFCA) and sister denominations came out of lay led movements in the eighteen hundreds.


The free church movement came out of an environment in Europe where the state church (non free churches) had become liberal, were not preaching the Gospel and where parishioners were not encouraged to study scripture themselves. Because they were not being fed in church, many started to meet in homes to pray, worship and study scripture resulting in the pietistic movement which brought revival to a number of countries in Europe and with that revival the planting of non-state run churches (free churches) which then spilled over to the United States. It was Europeans out of the free church movement who planted the same kind of churches here in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds.


Fundamental to this movement was the belief that lay people who had not had formal theological education were qualified to teach, preach and lead the church. One did not have to be a "theologian" in the professional sense of the word or have had formal theological education. In fact, many of these lay leaders and pastors had a greater understanding of scripture and the Christian life than their "educated" counterparts. 


Today, however, it is very rare and often difficult for those in the EFCA and fellow free church movements to become ordained without a formal theological degree. The unwritten understanding is that you need to have a Bible school or seminary degree in order to pastor. And the ordination process is designed to enforce this.


As the leader of the EFCA international mission, ReachGlobal, I work in an environment that is much closer to the roots of our movement where it is informally trained leaders who lead and pastor churches internationally. Most of the world cannot afford the luxury of a formal theological education given the poverty of the majority world. That, however, does not keep them from growing churches that are often healthier from a Gospel perspective than many churches in the west with their formally educated clergy. 


I am not anti theological education. I have one of the best and it has informed all my work. What I do object to is the professionalization of ministry that requires a theological degree to be in full or part time ministry or to be ordained in many of our movements. Many large churches in the west are rejecting that paradigm, training their own leaders and releasing them to preach, teach and lead in their settings. 


In basically ruling out ordination for those not professionally trained we perpetuate the clergy/lay distinction and send the message that to really be effective in ministry one must have a theological education (read degree). It is a good thing this was not true in the early church. Or in the majority world. 


Rather than discourage lay people from leading, teaching and preaching we ought to encourage it. It would raise the level of biblical understanding in our churches and release new ministry personnel who are either part time (bi-vocational) or full time. And why would we not encourage these very people who are gifted to plant and pastor churches themselves regardless of whether they have a formal degree or not?


Further, why ordain only people who can give the definition of obscure theological terms rather than ordain those who know the bible, can explain it well and teach it diligently? Knowing what superlapsarianism and infralapsarianism means is far less important than simply knowing good biblical theology that comes from a knowledge of the bible and can be applied to everyday life. We ought to know the biblical terms. Why should one need to know the litany of theological terms dreamed up by two thousand years of theologians in order to be effective in ministry? Or for that matter, Greek and Hebrew in order to preach well? I have a hard time believing that those would be the standards that Jesus would have for those in ministry!


Why cannot we open real ministry up to those who are trained both formally and informally and encourage both to get into ministry either full or part time? The church might actually see significant growth in the United States if we again allowed it to be a movement of lay people, not just those who are professionally trained and can get through an ordination process that is designed to weed out those who are not. I wonder how many lay people were given gifts by Jesus to lead, teach and preach that we do not unleash in meaningful ways because they are lay and not professional clergy?

Theologians in the pews

OK, I don't like the lay/clergy distinction but recognize it is there. However, there is a long history within the evangelical tradition of theologians in the pews, not simply in the pulpit. In fact, it was the theologians in the pews who left the state church in Europe and formed "free churches" when the theologians in the pulpits no longer held to the truth of the Scriptures. This illustrates the importance of ordinary men and women who are also biblically literate. We cannot simply outsource the role of theologian to those with the requisite degrees. We need people who think deeply on the things of Scripture and their application to life and the church.

Perhaps the Bereans of the New Testament best illustrated this tradition as they carefully studied the scriptures. Today, every tool available to pastors is also available to the rest of us - even tools to study the original languages (without having to learn them and most pastors forget what they learned of those quickly and use those tools as well). 

There are many believers who are content with a simple knowledge of God and Scripture. But the health of the church requires that there are also those who go deep, drinking regularly at the well of truth and are able to teach and translate that truth to the lives of everyday people. It is a laudable goal, especially if that learning first goes into the lives of the learner. 

When I was a child it was not unusual to have such people fill the pulpit from time to time. Today that is rare but there are more people who can teach and preach than we often acknowledge. It makes a statement when someone without a seminary or Bible school degree gives the message. It illustrates to others that Biblical truth is accessible to all rather than some. 

It is often those "lay theologians" who challenge the church in missional directions. They are less enamored with "scripture light" that characterizes much of today's preaching. That is why effective Bible teachers in the local church are so loved. Many want to delve more fully than Sunday mornings lend themselves to. 

If you are a lay theologian, a theologian in the pew, I salute you. You are deeply needed by the body. Keep it up and help all of us both love the Word more deeply and apply it more effectively. If you are a pastor, what are you doing to encourage, use and build into the skills of your theologians in the pew?