Category: Ecclesiology

Why the theology doctorate and why ecclesiology is practical

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date August 15, 2012
4 Comments on Why the theology doctorate and why ecclesiology is practical

I am continuing to work away at my dissertation. As of tonight, it stands at 92,085 words (303 pages in Microsoft Word). The dissertation only needs to be 80-100 K words but I have lots of revising to do. I think the product (likely a book a few years from now) will be both a significant contribution to the literature surrounding Karl Barth's ecclesiology as well as an excellent entry point for people interested in the theology of the church. In the dissertation, I explore how Barth's understanding of the church has been understood across the ecclesial spectrum from Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholic to Lutheran to Anglican to Reformed to Methodist to Mennonite to Baptist.

"But why do this?" you may ask, "Why spend what will be six years of doctoral work at Duke (coursework, languages, exams, dissertation, etc.) when you could have been 'doing ministry'?"

"Well," I answer, "My hope is that I will be able to assist people in ministry for decades to come because of this time given to study."

"But," you say, sputtering, "Ecclesiology? Ecclesiology?!"

Good question. When I say "ecclesiology," I am referring to something that provides insight into very "practical" questions, in particular, the questions that pop up almost every day in ministry, "What are we supposed to be doing? How are we to prioritize and think about the infinite demands and needs in front of us?"

Some people have a go-to answer, "What we need is . . ." and then they say, "excellence" or "the sacramental" or "to be missional" or "the spiritual disciplines" or "social justice" or "community." But most of us sense it must be all or at least many of those things. But that just puts us back to where we started: "How much of each of these things? How do we prioritize how we spend our time in ministry?"

The immediate Sunday school answer is "Look in the Bible!" and that is largely right. The trick is to read it all, digest it all, and synthesize it all, and run our conclusions past others in the church to screen out idiosyncratic interpreterations that might accidentally lead us over the cliff into cult, scandal, and abuse. The good news: this is "theology" and we are all allowed to, even supposed to do it. We get to do it–reading, thinking, praying, talking! Woo-hoo! All Christians are to be theologians–that is, trying to understand what God is telling us. The bad news is it is a big task–it takes awhile to read the whole Bible, digest it, and make sense of it and mull over all of it with other Christians. The nice thing about academic theologians like Karl Barth is that they offer us their take, a suggested preliminary synthesis. The good theologians don't expect us to swallow it whole. They instead want us to be like the Bereans who examined the Scriptures every day to see if what they heard was true (Acts 17:11).

Back to our practical question of "What do we do?!" Again, it is useful and primary to go to the Scriptures but as we do we might want to keep in mind Barth's suggestion that what we might find when we look in the Bible is an emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the primary actor, or the most important active participant. This conviction is suggested in Barth's titles for his sections on the church in the Church Dogmatics: "The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Church-Community," "The Holy Spirit and the Upbuilding of the Church-Community" and "The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Church-Community." In other words, Barth thinks, as he reads the Scriptures and how others have read the Scriptures throughout church history, that it is pretty important to remember that what we do really pales in comparison to what the Spirit does. This is not to denigrate human action but just to keep it in perspective. It is the Holy Spirit who brings together the church, edifies it, and sends it. It is only on a subordinate level that we help. Now that might strike you as just nitpicky semantics. You reluctantly grant, "Ok, ok, I'll try to preface my statements, discipline my speech, with the phrase 'as far as the Holy Spirit moves' but I still don't see how that helps me know what to do!"

But we have made some progress already modifying our practical "ecclesiology" question from "As church ministry people, what are we supposed to do given the infinite demands and options?!" to "I wonder what the Holy Spirit is doing. How is the Spirit gathering, upbuilding, and sending the people of God?" Again, you may suspect that this still does not get us anywhere. Worse, you are right to worry that someone might get the idea that we are talking about some sort of mystical "sensing" of what the Spirit is doing that will lead us to do all sorts of wacky stuff that our glands (which we thought were the Spirit) told us to do. No, instead, the Holy Spirit is not just doing random "feel good" things. As I mentioned, Barth organizes his comments around the Spirit's gathering, upbuilding, and sending of the church-community. It is useful to think of the Spirit of Jesus Christ doing what Jesus did in the Gospels with his disciples: gathering them (that is, calling them), upbuilding them (that is, teaching them), and sending them. Of course there is more content that fills out this gathering, upbuilding, sending outline: Barth goes on to emphasize that what, rather who, people are gathered to is Jesus Christ ("where two or three are gathered in my name"); that upbuilding has to do with service; and sending has to do with witness. Again, I am just sketching a few key themes in ecclesiology but I think this brief glimpse demonstrates that the muddle of possible tasks and initiatives in ministry might find some better, wiser, more biblical, formulation than the buzzwords listed above: excellence, sacramental, etc.

My modest contention here is that whatever "practical" ministry questions you lob at ecclesiology, ecclesiology has some useful material to toss back. If you ask about affinity-based youth ministry vs. intergenerational worship services, ecclesiology will ask you to consider whether the sending is being undervalued for the sake of upbuilding or vice-versa. If you ask about a study that shows people like cathedral churches more than mall-like ones, ecclesiology will suggest reflection on what it means to witness. If you ask about: Godly Play vs. Group Publishing curriculum; church planting vs. megachurches; topical sermons vs. expository ones; Chris Tomlin vs. the Book of Common Prayer; short-term missions trips vs. microfinance; ecclesiology will suggest biblical texts and considerations, along with analogous situations in church history, all of which may help (if the Spirit wills!) bring truth and love to the situation. I look forward to, Lord willing, decades of those conversations–that the church might be built up–for the world.

This is just a little informal splash of an explanation why I think ecclesiology is practical which also gets at why I am doing this theology doctorate.

"What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants." (1 Cor 3:5). A good life that.

There are lots of other posts about Karl Barth and Ecclesiology under those categories on the blog and in lots of tweets saved on the blog at the Twitter category.

John Howard Yoder, at age 30, on Newbigin and the church as missionary

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date August 16, 2011
1 Comment on John Howard Yoder, at age 30, on Newbigin and the church as missionary

I thought John Howard Yoder's reference to Lesslie Newbigin was amusing in the quote below. This reference to Newbigin is the only reference to an individual contemporary in the pamphlet. Yoder (1927-1997) age 30, not only takes a little shot at Newbigin while agreeing with him fundamentally, he misspells both his first and last name. One book on Yoder is entitled: A Mind Patient and Untamed–untamed indeed.

John Howard Yoder, Ecumenical Movement and the Faithful Church (Scottdale, Pa: Mennonite Pub House, 1958), 32. "The content of this pamphlet . . . appeared serially in the Gospel Herald during January and February 1957." p. 44

"Alone of all the churches of the Reformation, they [the Anabaptists] insisted that the church is essentially missionary, and that she must be separate from the world, even if that world be Christianized; this is an idea which Leslie [sic. Lesslie] Newbiggin [sic. Newbigin], one of the bishops of the United Church of South India, thinks is a new discovery, and which is gradually becoming one of the accepted principles of ecumenical discussion."

Interesting background:

Both Yoder and Newbigin knew Karl Barth in the 1950's when he was articulating his ecclesiology.

Newbigin and Barth worked together regularly from 1951-1953 on the "Committee of Twenty-Five" theologians in preparation for the 1954 World Council of Churches conference. Newbigin (1909-1998) was 48 in 1957 and had published The Household of God–his most systematic book on the church–in 1953.

Yoder took courses with Karl Barth (1886-1968, age 71 in 1957) and others in Basel from 1950-1957.

Barth wrote his three ecclesiological paragraphs in the 1950's: § 62 The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Christian Community in Church Dogmatics volume IV.1 in 1953; § 67 The Holy Spirit and the Upbuilding of the Christian Community in CD IV.2 in 1955; and § 72 The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian Community of the Church Dogmatics in CD IV.2 in 1959.

13 Ecclesiology Conversations: Making sense of the Guilds, Conversations, Silos and Books

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date July 22, 2010
7 Comments on 13 Ecclesiology Conversations: Making sense of the Guilds, Conversations, Silos and Books

I want to help "congregations" or "local churches" to thrive. What I mean by that is that churches should be sitting under the Scriptures, practicing communion and baptism, living ethically like Jesus, and communicating the gospel to outsiders. In my work, I draw upon what I have identified as 13 different types of books which all focus on this goal. The problem is that I have had to discover these various conversations happening in different guilds, conferences, associations, and academies. I think there is significant overlap in content among these books. For the sake of clarity, I have limited my list to books written by professors for an academic audience rather than popular books by pastors written for other pastors. I have given examples to show what I am thinking by each category. My hope is that identifying the current silos will help people start talking to one another.

constructive ecclesiologies that explain the position of one denomination or tradition. For example, I have been drawing upon: baptist ecclesiology (Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision by Steven R. Harmon; Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology by Paul S. Fiddes; Free Church, Free State: The Positive Baptist Vision by Nigel Wright; On Being the Church: Revisioning Baptist Identity edited by Brian Haymes, Ruth Gouldbourne, and Anthony R. Cross; Can These Bones Live?: A Catholic Baptist Engagement with Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, and Social Theory by Barry Harvey; Systematic Theology (three volumes) by James McClendon); Very similar is free church ecclesiology (After Our Likeness by Miroslav Volf) and anabaptist ecclesiology (Royal Priesthood by John Howard Yoder). Someone else will want to read in their tradition: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, Wesleyan, Pentecostal/Charismatic ecclesiology. One should also be familiar with the denomination's polity or book of order or book of discipline.
ecclesiological surveys (An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen; Models of the Church by Avery Dulles; Household of God by Lesslie Newbigin). All three of these books give very interesting and useful perspectives on the above range of ecclesiological perspectives.
evangelical ecclesiology (Evangelical Ecclesiology: Reality or Illusion? edited by John Stackhouse; The Community Of The Word: Toward An Evangelical Ecclesiology edited by Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier; Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Introduction by Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger). 'Evangelical' means a trans-denominational phenomenon consistent with David Bebbington's definition (biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, activism). Thus churches from different traditions or denominations may have some things in common.
New Testament ecclesiology (Church, Ministry, and Sacraments in the New Testament by C. K. Barrett; A Vision for the Church: Studies in Early Christian Ecclesiology. edited by Markus Bockmuehl and Michael B. Thompson; Community Formation: in the Early Church and in the Church Today edited by Richard N. Longenecker; The Churches the Apostles Left Behind by Raymond Brown). These books tend to have an anti-bureaucracy, anti-hierarchical flavor since they focus on the earliest Christian communities as depicted in the New Testament which did not have a lot of time to evolve into institutions. These books describe the various ways the church has been described in the New Testament. See also my Working bibliography of biblical studies books on ecclesiology
church planting (Church Planting by Stuart Murray; Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer; Evaluating Fresh Expressions: Explorations in Emerging Church: Emerging Theological and Practical Models edited by Martyn Percy and Louise Nelstrop). Reflection on new local churches which is an issue all denominations are reflecting on. There is thus enormous variety within this category. See also the bibliographies by Stetzer and Bryan Stone.
emerging churches (Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger). This category is not being talked about much anymore but it has catalyzed discussion of ecclesiology in all the other categories.
evangelistic churches (Evangelism after Christendom by Bryan Stone; Live to Tell by Brad Kallenberg; The Evangelistic Love of God and Neighbor by Scott Jones; The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church edited by Paul Chilcote and Laceye Warner). These deal with the connection between the church and evangelism.
missional churches. (Missional Church edited by Darrell Guder; The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin; The Ministry of the Missional Church by Craig Van Gelder). These deal with thinking about the church as if it is a missionary church.
church leadership (Letters to New Pastors by Michael Jinkins; Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry by Will Willimon; Making Spiritual Sense: Christian Leaders As Spiritual Interpreters by Scott Cormode; Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson; Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry by L. Gregory Jones and Kevin Armstrong; Faith As a Way of Life: A Vision for Pastoral Leadership by Christian Scharen). These deal with thinking about what kind of leadership helps churches to thrive.
church consulting (We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era by Patrick Keifert; Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change by Mark Lau Branson). This deals with the process by which churches are helped to assess themselves and move forward.
practical theology (Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People edited by Dorothy C. Bass; For Life Abundant: Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry edited by Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra; Practical Theology by Richard Osmer). This is a discipline that attempts to put the social sciences and theology in conversation for the good of the church.
congregational studies (Studying Congregations: A New Handbook edited by Nancy Ammerman, Jackson Carroll, Carl Dudley, and William McKinney). This is a field that is associated with the practical theology field and the church consulting field.
youth ministry (Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church by Kenda Creasy Dean). Dean's book is connected with practical theology. But youth ministry books in general hope for thriving congregations which will attract and disciple youth.