I spent a hot July week teaching a doctor of ministry course at Bethel Theological Seminary. Since I was both educated in the classrooms and married in the chapel of Bethel, it was a nostalgic week. It was also pedagogically satisfying. I came away with a couple of impressions.
For one, I was impressed with the process of continuing education for pastors. Some gainsay the four-day seminar approach, questioning whether twenty hours of concentrated class time allows in-depth examination of a topic broad enough to be considered a class. From my summer’s experience, though, I disagree. The concentrated time allows some things to happen that the more traditional format of three fifty-minute classes per week doesn’t allow. The problem of lack of carryover and continuity from one class to another is avoided. Interpersonal dynamics are heightened; one can see the we’re-all-in-this-together attitude, normally associated with crisis, develop from almost the first three-hour class session.
Of course, a great deal still depends on student motivation. Format means nothing if students are not impassioned to learn. But even here I was pleasantly surprised. Pastors who have been out in the field for several years, and decide they want more education, approach their scholarly tasks with a focus and determination foreign to first-time students. They know what they need and will work to get it. Woe to the teacher, however, who has nothing to offer.
What I offered was a course in religious pluralism in America. We focused attention on the growth of Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic temples and mosques in the United States. Because of our constitutional mandate for religious freedom, these traditional world religions and other non-Christian religions, sects, and cults are flourishing, a growth made especially dramatic because of the influx of large immigrant populations from the Middle East and Asia.
My students were receptive. I also found them ambivalent about what the church should be doing in the face of this growing pluralism. They were convinced of the reality. Pure demographics satisfy that question. And it took only a thirty-minute tour of church history to see that the situation we find ourselves in today is unique, mainly because our governmental policy of freedom of religion is unique.
Part of the ambivalence, I think, was pragmatic: few of them had any firsthand experience with Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims in their communities. So, understandably, it took some imagination to see the long-term implications.
But once that hurdle was crossed (if nothing else the presence of these people is an evangelistic challenge), a second ambivalence surfaced: What to do? Should we be reactive or proactive? Should we wait and see what the presence of these people does in our communities and churches, and then devise strategies to meet individual challenges? Or should we proactively work to devise ways of meeting, helping, loving, understanding, and witnessing to them?
The reactive model has several attractions. It isn’t as if pastors don’t have enough to do already. Why go looking for new ministries if they aren’t in some way an immediate issue? Counterpunching, to borrow a boxing term, is an effective tactic.
But the proactive model has scriptural support also. Jesus went out of his way to meet publicans and sinners, to talk, eat, and discuss spiritual questions with them. Even as a 12-year-old boy, he saw his life’s work typified by a debate with the Jewish theologians in the synagogue-much to his mother and father’s consternation.
As we talked, both models seamed to have important applications. I think it’s safe to say, however, that the proactive model presents the most problems for us all. Engagement with those who don’t agree with us is always a daunting task. How to treat them? What kind of interaction to allow? Who should be involved-everyone or a select, specially trained few?
As I have reflected on these questions, it seems to me this second type of ambivalence has its roots in the basic riskiness of presenting the gospel to anyone. We are not simply walking up to someone, handing him a can of tuna, and saying “Try this.” In a very real sense, we are offering a stick of dynamite. The fuse hasn’t been lit yet, but at some point it must be. Then the question of how it’s used becomes crucial. We could be hurt; so could the other person if either interchange or use is mishandled.
Viewed from this perspective, it is the same challenge that the departing master gave to his servants in the parable of the talents. Here is an investment stake; do what should be done. He rewarded those who risked their talents to make more, not those who buried them in the sand.
The gospel’s integrity must be preserved, but it must also be put to work as the transformer of a fallen world. It must be invested as venture capital in God’s farflung vineyards.
David Bradley, son of a Methodist minister, writes about a youthful experience that first exposed him to the riskiness of the gospel. After listening to his father preach about being rescued from a house fire, an experience that taught him total dependence on God, Bradley remembers, “What I hadn’t understood before was that [trying to move other people] would cost anything . . I thought I could do those things by remaining secure and safe in myself. That night I realized that no matter how good I became at manipulating symbols I could never hope to move anyone without allowing myself to be moved.”
Self-surrender to the hidden power of the gospel is the first step toward effectively communicating that power to others. Only in such surrender can we safely handle the dynamis, the power that God has given us to transform the world.
Terry C. Muck is a senior vice-president of Christianity Today, Inc.
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
