Pastor: Relevant or Biblical?

As someone who’s been both studying and teaching Christian theology for the past 10 years at the college level and above, these words from Above All Earthly Pow’rs are absolutely critical for reaching people with the Bible’s message:

“…theology, if it is true to its own nature, must be missiological in its intent. Its task is not only to understand the nature of biblical truth but also to ask how that truth addresses the issues of the day. Churches today, who send out missionaries to other parts of the world, would be considered greatly mistaken if they instructed those missionaries to depend only on the Word of God and not to attempt to understand the people to whom they have been sent to minister. But the same token, evangelical theology should not need to justify any attempt that it makes to understand the context into which it is called to speak. If there is self-justification to be made, it is by those theologians who, as D.M. Baillie observed, ‘are apt to be deaf to the questionings of the outside world’” (10).

Today, biblical knowledge is severely undervalued on the priorities of search committees and elder boards when looking for any level of pastoral candidates. Right theology, a solid grasp of the Bible’s content and the Bible’s solid grasp on their hearts has been replaced by having a connection at the church, being spiritual, cool, funny, dynamic, approachable, having sideburns, a fashion sense, a wallet chain and a vision.

To our context, therefore, it is important to reverse David Wells’ words to say it is equally true that any church or theologian or pastor who thinks they can be experts in being relevant with our culture / context / milieu while having a Sunday-school knowledge of the Bible is also “greatly mistaken” as they need to justify why they’ve purposely made themselves deaf to the questionings and commands of God through His Word.