Andy Rowell

Category: Karl Barth

  • Learning the Craft of Pastoring: Six Practices for Cultivating Excellence in Pastoral Ministry term paper

    I have posted below the paper I wrote for a reading course I did with Ken Carder on the Theology of Pastoral Ministry based on his two courses in which I was his teaching assistant. 

    See Ken Carder: Introduction to Christian Ministry books (Fall 2008)

    and Ken Carder's course The Local Church in Mission to God's World books (Spring 2009)

    I had asked for feedback June 1 on which direction to go: Would welcome your advice on my Theology of Pastoral Ministry paper

    I wrote it June 1-17, 2009. 

    It is 51 pages and 18,000 words.  With the 2 appendixes and bibliography it is 65 pages and 22,000 words.

    This was my 12th and last course to finish for the Th.D. (Doctor of Theology) program at Duke Divinity School.  Yeah!

    In some ways, this represents a synthesis of many of the things I have learned thus far in the Th.D. program.  Someday some of this will be a book but I have lots of other things to work on right now: pass my German and Spanish language exams, then do preliminary exams, then dissertation proposal and then dissertation. See My Th.D. program progress update The book will have to wait. 

    So on the one hand, I feel like this is good stuff that could help people.  On the other hand, this is a paper I wrote in about two weeks and it could use lots of refining and editing.  Because the topic–what is pastoral ministry about–is so gigantic, I treat all of the issues and theologians in eclectic fashion–sampling a bit here and a bit there.   It is much more responsible scholarship to dig deep into one thinker like I have done in most my previous term papers: The Ecclesiology of John Howard Yoder paper and  The Missional Ecclesiology of Rowan Williams, both of which I posted; and a number of papers I haven't posted: missional ecclesial practices in Apostle Paul, the ecclesiology of Matthew and Paul compared, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ecclesiology, church and world in Alasdair MacIntyre and Nathan Kerr, ecclesiology of Miroslav Volf, and preaching in Karl Barth.  In this paper, I consciously and unconsciously draw on a lot of that but try to put something forward more constructive. 

    As always, I am happy to receive feedback in the comments (or by email).  I will take it into account as my views continue to evolve. There is much I still need to learn. 

    Here is the paper:

    Download Theology of Pastoral Ministry Paper Word 2003

    Download Theology of Pastoral Ministry Paper PDF

    I have pasted below the table of contents and introduction.

    Duke Divinity School

    Learning the Craft of Pastoring:

    Six Practices for Cultivating Excellence in Pastoral Ministry

    submitted to

    Ken Carder in partial fulfillment of

    CHURCMIN 399: THEOLOGY OF PASTORAL MINISTRY

    by

    Andy Rowell

    June 17, 2009

    Contents

    Introduction: Why we need to understand pastoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    1
       

    The six practices that form the craft of pastoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    4
       

    1. Becoming a neighbor to the suffering: learning about human suffering from artists, social-scientists and the sufferer . . . . . .

    7
       

    2. Becoming a master pastor observer: learning about different styles of pastoring from sociology, historical exemplars, fictional and real life exemplars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    16
       

    3. Becoming a student of the body of Christ: learning about the function of the church leader in the New Testament. . . . . . . . . . . .

    23
       

    4. Becoming an equipper for holy living: learning about the marks of the church from historical theology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    36
       

    5. Becoming a believer in the missionary nature of the church: learning about the church’s purpose through biblical theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    41
       

    6. Becoming a lover of the missionary God: learning about the triune god from prayer, Scripture, and systematic theology. . .

    45
       

    Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    50
       

    Appendix A: Bonhoeffer and Barth both moving toward the center from the realist and idealist poles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    52
       

    Appendix B: The discipline of “practical theology” is also attempting to do this integrative work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    56
       

    Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    59

    Introduction: Why we need to understand pastoring

    Is pastoral ministry a troubled profession, perhaps even one in crisis? Or is the profession a deeply satisfying calling to which it is worth giving one’s life? Jackson Carroll, who oversaw a national recent survey of pastors, concludes,

    Most of America’s pastoral leaders—represented by the sample that we surveyed—are deeply committed to their calling to ordained ministry. If they consider a change, it is more likely that they would pursue their call in another church-related occupation rather than dropping out. They are likewise generally satisfied with most aspect of their work. In short, they echo Eugene Peterson’s comment with which we opened this chapter.[1]

    Peterson reflects,

    I’ve loved being a pastor, almost every minute of it. It’s a difficult life because it’s a demanding life. But the rewards are enormous—the rewards of being on the front line of seeing the gospel worked out in people’s lives. I remain convinced that if you are called to it, being a pastor is the best life there is. But any life can be the best life if you're called to it.[2]

    Pastoring is difficult but for many pastors it is deeply rewarding.

    But of course there is more to pastoring than finding job satisfaction. We also want God to be satisfied with what we are doing. Perhaps we are most aware of this while trying to communicate God’s Word to the people of God. Karl Barth felt this keenly as a pastor and as a theologian. At age 28, on September 4, 1914, he wrote to his friend and fellow pastor 26-year-old Eduard Thurneysen,

    Here are two sermons from me; they are simply the last two. You will look at them not as though they were finished products but only as experiments. We are really all of us experimenting now, each in his own way and every Sunday in a different way, in order to become to some degree masters of the limitless problem.[3]

    If preaching is a limitless problem—trying to convey the God of the universe to a sinful and holy group of human beings in twenty minutes, then the pastoral task as a whole is even more overwhelming. If we just had to deliver one sermon a week, that would be difficult, but pastoral ministry has never been characterized as simply that.

    The 24 or 30 course sequence in the Masters of Divinity (M.Div.) degree attempts to cover the necessary ground but students often have difficulty seeing how it all fits together to form a holistic pastoral ministry. “Why do I need to know this?” is not just asked in junior high math classes.

    After entering the pastorate, many new pastors are overwhelmed by the tidal wave of demands and discouraged that their own expectations seem so frequently thwarted by bureaucracy, tradition—in short, other people. Their questions are often desperate, “How do I sort through the chaos to find what is most important? How do I know if I am doing a good job?”

    Eventually pastors, if they hang in there, settle into a routine. This is of course a relief compared to the chaos of the first year in ministry. But Will Willimon worries that it is often then that settling into a routine turns into complacency and mediocrity.

    In a small, rural church, alone, with total responsibility in your shoulders, in the weekly treadmill of sermons and pastoral care, if you are not careful there is too little time to read and reflect, too little time to prepare your first sermons, so you develop bad habits of flying by the seat of your pants, taking short cuts, and borrowing from others what ought to be developed in the workshop of your own soul. Ministry has a way of coming at you, of jerking you around from here to there, so you need to take charge of your time, prioritize your work, and be sure that you don’t neglect the absolute essentials while you are doing the merely important. If you don’t define your ministry on the basis of your theological commitments, the parish has a way of defining your ministry on the basis of their selfish preoccupations and that is why so many clergy are so harried and tired today. Mind your habits.[4]

    Wanting to continue to grow in skill and wisdom, pastors are increasingly returning to school in Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) programs which shore up one aspect of pastoring. But without a broader framework, these programs may simply ossify pastors in their ways. I often hear pastors say, “I’m a preacher, not an administrator.” Their D.Min.degree in preaching reinforces their desire to focus on just one aspect of pastoring. Meanwhile that pastor’s congregation needs a leader willing to learn enough about administration and care for the poor so that they can at least delegate and oversee those areas adequately. Their congregation members complain that even in meetings, “the pastor is in preaching mode” or “using their preacher’s voice.” Meanwhile, the pastor’s preaching is becoming increasingly ineffective as they see it as their primary focus.

    Similar negative consequences result when pastors conclude, “I’m a pioneer, not a maintainer” or “I’m an evangelist, not a theologian.” A string of broken congregations often lie in the wake of this “self-aware” pastor who trumpets, “I know what I’m good at and I know what I’m not.” Admitting that I am only one part of the body of Christ is indeed important but this realization should inspire me to appreciate and learn from the other parts of the body. Fascinatingly, Paul does not say, “Once a foot, always a foot.” Rather, he encourages mobility and growth. “Now eagerly desire the greater gifts” (1 Cor 12:31). Yes, “we have different gifts” (Rom 12:6) and we are to exercise them diligently (Rom 12:8), but there are no biblical grounds for specialization in one area and total neglect in the rest.

    I argue in this paper that pastoring consists of six areas. The pastor seeking excellence ought to cultivate their abilities in all six areas. Pastors never arrive at excellence. The church is a sign, instrument, foretaste, and herald of the reign of God. We point, we never arrive. We become better signs, instruments, forestastes, and heralds. We grow closer to excellence but pastoring is an art, a craft—consisting of a series of demanding practices. We can never cease learning.

    But a comforting thought is that we can do it with others. We can learn with and from others.

    And an even more comforting thought is that we do this work with God. The church is God’s idea. The Spirit of God empowers the work. One can never get over the stunning designation—the church is the body of Christ.

    Seminarian, take heart. New pastor, press on. Veteran pastor, continue to sharpen up. These are the six practices of our work.

    [1] Jackson W. Carroll, God’s Potters: Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 185.

    [2] Carroll, God’s Potters, 159. David Wood, “Eugene Peterson on Pastoral Ministry” ChrCent 119, no. 6 (March 13-20, 2002): 18. Cf. 18-25.

    [3] Karl Barth and Eduard Thurneysen, Revolutionary Theology in the Making: Barth-Thurneysen Correspondence, 1914-1925 (trans. James D. Smart; Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1964), 26.

    [4] William H. Willimon, “Between Two Worlds” in From Midterms to Ministry: Practical Theologians on Pastoral Beginnings (ed. Allan Hugh Cole; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 284. Cf. 274-286.

  • Book review of Karl Barth biography by Eberhard Busch

    Karl Barth by Eberhard Busch

    5.0 out of 5 stars The most important book to read about Karl Barth, March 23, 2009

    By 
    Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) – See all my reviews

    (REAL NAME)

    Eberhard Busch who became Karl Barth’s assistant in 1965 until the day he died in 1968 wrote this authoritative and fascinating biography of Barth’s rich life (1886-1968) in 1975. Busch also has a highly acclaimed survey of Barth’s theology: The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology Every reader of Barth should read some work by Barth himself (one can begin anywhere but I would recommend the brief and readable God in Action: Theological Addresses [See my review at Book Review: Karl Barth’s God in Action–passionate, short, readable theology] or the early book that made him famous The Epistle to the Romans [See my reflections at Theology of Karl Barth course with Willie Jennings]) and then dive into this biography. There is no better way to understand Barth then to read Busch’s masterly crafted account of Barth’s life punctuated by Barth’s own candid and self-deprecating comments. Of course those already intrigued with Barth will most easily devour the biography but there is also something fascinating about learning how the person who wrote the most pages about God in the 20th century lived his own life. His magnum opus Church Dogmatics (31 vols) is about 8,000 pages. This 500-page biography flies by in comparison to Barth’s own deliberate style.

    Barth had a rich life–here are just a few tidbits to whet your appetite. He felt compelled to speak out about issues that concerned him–against natural theology, Nazism, the demonizing communism, nuclear weaponry, and infant baptism. But he also depended on friendships and interaction with others to fuel and guide his passion. As a pastor from age 25 to 35, he struggled with preaching–“the depressing ups and downs” (89) and found some relief at being able to talk about it with his lifelong friend and fellow pastor Eduard Thurneysen (73-74). “We tried to learn our theological ABC all over again, beginning by reading and interpreting the writing of the Old and New Testaments, more thoughtfully than before. And lo and behold, they began to speak to us” (97). After Barth was rumored to have spoken up about a political issue “four of the six members of his church committee resigned” (106). Then Barth was denied a pay raise–he had been working at almost the same salary for 7 years (107). Finally, it was increased but “with 99 dissenting votes” (107). He was considered for two other churches but they did not offer him a position (122-123). Eventually, after Barth’s Epistle to the Romans was published, he was offered a professor position–but since he had no dissertation, it was an honorary one in Reformed Theology–to which he admitted he knew little about. “I can now admit that at that time I didn’t even have a copy of the Reformed confessions, and I certainly hadn’t read them” (129). Often he did not get along that well with other faculty at the schools where he taught. Other faculty were hired to “cancel out” his influence and his successors usually had theological views that were polar opposites to him. His completely rewrote his first attempts at the books Epistle to the Romans and Dogmatics because of his unhappiness with them. He had a female theological assistant and close companion Charlotte von Kirschbaum who was by his side for almost his entire career (from 1928 on) yet he remained married and his wife ended up caring for him in his old age (185-186, 472-473). Barth clashed vehemently and publicly (and usually reconciled personally later on) with all of his theological contemporaries. He loved the music of Mozart; was banned from speaking in public in Nazi Germany (259); helped and criticized the Confessing Church; praised and critiqued Roman Catholicism and John Calvin; regularly preached in a prison; saw Martin Luther King, Jr. and Billy Graham preach; corresponded with popes and even had the current pope Joseph Ratzinger sit in and help answer questions in one of his seminars (485); and enjoyed his four children, 15 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.

    If you’ve heard about Karl Barth, read this book–you will then have a much better idea where he is coming from when you read his work.

    I have also enjoyed biographies of other figures:

    Biographies of theologians

  • Book Review: Karl Barth’s God in Action–passionate, short, readable theology

    I highly recommend Karl Barth’s slim volume God in Action as a great introduction to his work.  Here is a review I wrote for Willie Jennings's Theology of Karl Barth course.

  • Karl Barth: God in Action: Theological Addresses

    Karl Barth: God in Action: Theological Addresses

  • Yesterday I asked a pastor whether he liked Karl Barth.  “Yes, with caveats.  The problems in our denomination are partly from the way some people read the early Barth. He needs to be read in light of his social context.”

    The slim volume God in Action[1] contains five addresses Barth gave between April 10 and September 12, 1934. The pressure of the Nazi government on the churches in Germany during this period was fierce. The Barmen Declaration—written mostly by Barth—was adopted during May of 1934.[2] Repeatedly in God in Action Barth refers to the “remarkable apostasy of the Church to nationalism.”[3] Each of the five lectures attempt to pry off Nazi fingers from the Church: (1) Revelation, (2) the Church, (3) Theology, (4) the Ministry and (5) Witness are only rightly conceived as primarily what God has done and does. Barth urges the Church to take its orders from God rather than human authorities. The title of the work comes from his statement, “What is done to us, God in action for us, is a divine miracle.”[4]

    The question for readers of Barth is how to understand his most extreme statements about the dangers of human effort in our cultural contexts which are seemingly not as seriously compromised as his.

    Rowan Williams notes that most Christians do not find themselves in imminent danger of martyrdom—they live in “a post-martyrdom period.”[5] He argues that Nazi Germany was a special case.

    And in the last century or so, it is significant that believers have from time to time had to confront just such pressure when the alliance of political power and a kind of religious mythology recreates something of the atmosphere of the Roman empire. Thus when in 1936 the Confessing Church in Germany, the network of those who resisted the anti-Semitic legislation of the Third Reich, bound itself to the ‘Barmen Declaration,’ affirming the sovereignty of God in Christ over all other claims to authority, the primitive shape of Christian self-definition became visible once more.[6]

    He argues that the Nazi situation constituted “apostasy” whereas in South Africa when apartheid reigned, the church was infected with “heresy.” Williams writes, “The DRC’s acceptance of apartheid was seen as heresy rather than an apostasy; the German Church struggle was more serious, affecting the Church’s liberty to define itself.”[7] Williams is not here referring to Barth. Williams argues that martyrdom is the best way to test the church’s faithfulness. He is simply making the point that martyrdom will look different in different contexts.

    However, Barth is quite adamant that the lessons of Nazi Germany do apply to other settings.

    My dear friends from England and America, I am from Germany. There we have reached the end of the road at whose beginning you are standing. If you begin to take the pious man serious [sic], if you do not care to be one-sided, you will reach the same end before which the official German Church stands today.[8]

    Because of the horrific results of Nazi Germany, no one should dismiss Barth’s comments lightly. But one can also argue that the colossus of Nazi Germany was not solely the result of an emphasis on Pietism or “the Christian life.”[9] Too great a suspicion of Christian human response to the grace of God could encourage a certain Quietism, Gnosticism, Deism, Docetism, or Fatalism that is suspicious of evangelism.

    But those who read Barth this way—even the early Barth such as God in Action and The Epistle to the Romans—read him selectively and wrongly. Take for example, a typical statement by Barth: “A witness does not come with the claim, I have something to say. Surely he has something to say. But what he says can only be a reminder of what God has said and wants to have said.”[10] Does Barth then mean that “one need only read the Bible aloud and people will be converted—the word of God does not come back void” as a professor once told me Barth was saying? I would retort, “Is that what Barth does? No!” Barth tries to compellingly do what he says the preacher should do, “the preacher dares, today, to think the thoughts of the biblical witnesses after them, and, in the name of the present-day Church, to speak them as out of his own knowledge.”[11] If one tries to gather quotes from Barth that seem to imply Quietism—a lack of human action—in each case one can read further and see that Barth affirms appropriate human response to the grace of God—while he is indeed adamant to retain the proper ordering. “Have you been told something before you go and say something to others?”[12]

    Barth’s God in Action then is a beautiful piece of work which introduces English readers to the tension-filled environment of 1934 Germany under the Nazi Reich and to a theology strong enough to resist it. This neglected little volume deserves to be set alongside and distributed with Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship—as faithful 20th century Christian responses to the subtle evils of political rhetoric masked in Christian guise. Those who would take it and use it to promote declining attendance, stifling bureaucracy and criticism of evangelism, misunderstand 1934 Nazi Germany and grossly distort Barth’s own message by pulling quotations out of larger nuanced sections. This is a stirring book which urges the church to be the church, to be attentive to the Scriptures, and to hold to them courageously. I will end this review the way Barth ends the book, “it is necessary that a sanctuary be built in the midst of our world. And this sanctuary must not be a hybrid of Church and world, it must be truly Church, a Church which will remind men of the eternal kingdom of God.”[13]

    [1] Karl Barth, God in Action (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1936).

    [2] “The Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church met in Barmen, May 29-31, 1934.” Karl Barth, “Theological Declaration of Barmen” in The Church's Confession Under Hitler (ed. Arthur C. Cochrane; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 237-242. Online: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/barmen.htm

    [3] Barth, God in Action, 137.

    [4] Barth, God in Action, 122.

    [5] Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 2005), 53.

    [6] Williams, Why, 54. Italics mine.

    [7] Williams, Why, 85.

    [8] Barth, God in Action, 137.

    [9] Barth, God in Action, 136-139.

    [10] Barth, God in Action, 107.

    [11] Barth, God in Action, 53.

    [12] Barth, God in Action, 105.

    [13] Barth, God in Action, 143.

  • Here is my post about the Karl Barth course I am taking.  

  • Books for Theology of Karl Barth course with Willie Jennings

  • I also wrote an Amazon.com review of one of Barth’s other slim volumes.

  • Karl Barth: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life: The Theological Basis of Ethics

    Karl Barth: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life: The Theological Basis of Ethics

    • 4.0 out of 5 stars Read a "book" by Karl Barth in a couple hours, January 31, 2009

    By 
    Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) – See all my reviews

    (REAL NAME)

    This is a short book by Karl Barth. Actually it is a lecture from October 9, 1929. There are some great moments and gives you a look at his theology. It is 70 pages but almost half of that is endnotes which you can skip. I read it for Willie Jennings's Duke Divinity School course on Theology of Karl Barth (Spring 2009). If you want to read a book by Barth is a couple of hours, this might be the one. I would probably recommend God in Action: Theological Addresses as a slightly more accessible but larger slim volume by Barth.

    In the first section, he makes the points: the Holy Spirit is not synonymous with the human spirit (3) and we need to be very cautious before saying "Thus saith the Lord" (10). In the second section, he argues against a view that good works are synonymous with God's grace–only God judges what can be called "Christian" (37). The third section deals with the importance of the eschatological.

    On a theological level, Barth takes on Augustine and a Roman Catholic understanding of works in this book so if that is of interest, this would be a good thing to read.