Must Ordinary People Know Theology?

The Christian army is the only one that trains just its chaplains and band directors

Few schools of theology have ever taken the laity seriously. Certainly the one I was studying at 20 years ago didn’t. There, one of my senior professors complained that some of his students were not planning to go into the ministry after graduation, and suggested they should be charged a higher rate of tuition. Still another professor objected to the fact that the school had women students (all of whom were laypersons in those days), and refused to acknowledge their presence in his classroom.

And so it went. A few crumbs were allowed to fall from the seminarian’s table for the occasional benefit of the laity—but then only rarely.

Today, the situation is radically different. Nearly every seminary in America offers special courses and degree programs for those not planning to go into the ordained ministry. But generally speaking, these are little more than appendices to programs developed for the clergy. Their focus is seldom on the distinctive needs of the laity; and few schools have developed programs that aim to equip the laity for the ministry. In fact, the majority of laymen and women have not yet had the opportunity of serious theological education.

Although the church generally seems to agree that “the ministry” belongs to the whole people of God and not just a special caste of professional Christian workers, it is apparent we still have a long way to go in the implementation of this essential theological conviction.

Lay Theology: Its Importance

The profound need for a vital theology in the life of today’s church is reflected in the following comment by William Diehl, recently retired from a top management position with Bethlehem Steel and a committed Christian layperson:

“As long as I can remember, my church has been proclaiming that all believers—as a holy priesthood—are called to be ministers; that if the congregation of believers comes together for worship, study, and fellowship, then the laity will go into the world to minister to others with the love and acceptance which God has given them.

“But what has my church been doing to support me in this ministry? Very little.

“In the almost 30 years of my professional career, my church has never once offered to improve those skills which could make me a better minister; nor has it ever bothered to ask if I needed any kind of support in what I was doing. There has never been an inquiry into the types of ethical decisions I must face; or whether I am even seeking to communicate the faith to my co-workers.

“In short, I must conclude that my church really doesn’t have the least interest in whether—or how—I minister in my daily work.”

I am sure Mr. Diehl’s frustration is more the rule than the exception. As someone once said, the Christian army is the one army in the world that trains only its chaplains and band directors. And yet God has called all of his people, the laos of God, to serve as his ministers in the world. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the leadership of the church to equip the laity for ministry

What, for example, does it mean to be a Christian in the Monday through Friday workaday world of Bethlehem Steel? What does it mean to be a business person? A doctor or nurse? A lawyer? An educator? A banker? A journalist? An actor? A homemaker?

What does it mean to be “salt” and “light”? One of the distressing aspects of the “born-again boom” is that it makes so little impact on American society. Crime is up. Marriages are breaking down at an ever-increasing rate. Secularism is growing. Yet, with each passing day, more and more people profess to be born again.

We Christians tend to blame others for the problems of our society. We blame the pornographers, the corrupt politicians, the multinational corporations, the secular humanists, and so on. But if the world in which we live is getting morally darker, maybe we who profess Christ are failing to carry out our divinely mandated roles. Perhaps we are the major source of this deterioration with our inadequate theology, our superficial Christianity, our withdrawal from society, our conforming to the spirit of this age.

Lay Theology: Its Practice

Part of the church’s ambivalence over implementing a lay-oriented theology has been the persistent school of thought suggesting that theology is irrelevant to the life of the church. The argument goes something like this: “Don’t talk to me about theology; talk to me about something practical. I’m interested in action—in what works. I don’t need to know more about God, I need to know God better.”

This commonly held view has an initial appearance of piety until you begin to reflect upon its implications. As C. S. Lewis points out, the assumption that one can be a Christian without theology is both arrogant and dangerous. It may be possible to get to heaven without much theology, just as it may be possible to cross the Pacific Ocean without a map—but in both cases it is a lot more difficult.

A good map represents the experience of others. You are not the first person to sail the Pacific; neither are you the first person to experience Christ. A good map also enables you to travel the safest route, and lets you know there are dangers to be avoided along the way. So it is with good theology.

Today, it is not a question of theology versus experience, but good theology versus bad theology. And if the church is to be healthy, it must have good, biblical theology. Good theology and authentic Christian experience go hand in hand.

A passage like 1 Peter 2:4–12 makes it clear that both priesthood and ministry belong to the whole church, not merely the clergy. All God’s people have a churchly calling; and we are called to worship God. (This is what is meant by the doctrine of “priesthood of all believers.”) And all God’s people have a worldly calling; we are called to serve the world. (This is what is meant by the New Testament doctrines of “ministry” and “vocation.”)

I think we are doing a great job with the churchly aspect of our calling. In contrast to the situation of even a generation ago, lay people are vitally involved in worship. However, the old view that some Christians are “called” to “ministry” or “full-time Christian service” dies hard. And it is here where we still have room for considerable growth.

In my view, if we are to fulfill our mission as God’s people in today’s world, we need to rediscover three important Christian doctrines: the doctrine of Creation (telling us that God has a plan for the world as well as the church); the doctrine of Covenant (opposing the extreme individualism of our society); and the doctrine of Service (giving a positive value to our work).

Lay Theology: Its Study

What, then, does all of this have to say to our theological seminaries? How should lay education shape—perhaps reshape—the structures and curricula of these institutions?

My primary concern here is the theological seminary and not the Bible school or Christian liberal arts college. Different situations regarding the laity exist in each of these academic settings. The Bible school/college movement, for example, began as an educational venture for the laity. It was a natural outgrowth of the calling and ministry of the whole people of God by nineteenth-century evangelicalism, particularly as it was practiced in the United States. Thus, the Bible school movement developed its curriculum around the task of training lay men and women to serve the Lord in such nonprofessional ministries as Sunday school teachers, youth workers, inner-city missioners, and the like. It took a generation or more for these particular institutions to develop into lower-level seminaries.

Perhaps ironically, both Bible colleges and seminaries find themselves in the same position, educationally speaking, today. That is, they orient their curricula primarily toward the training of future clergy, the one percent of God’s people who are able to devote themselves full-time to the work of the ministry and be supported by the rest of the church.

On the other hand, Christian liberal arts colleges have, in my opinion, probably contributed the most to lay leadership in the life of the church. Here, lay men and women are given a broad-based education and, consequently, the ability to see all of life in the context of a vital Christian faith. The “great gulf fixed” between Sunday and Monday is not really so great for graduates of Christian liberal arts colleges.

It is still, however, a sizable chasm in today’s burgeoning seminaries. Evangelical seminaries are booming and are frequently inhabited by lay people not planning to be ordained. But precious little has been changed in the curriculum to accommodate this new clientele.

What, then, should happen here if we really began to take the importance of educating a lay witness seriously? (I am indebted to Mark Gibbs for many of the suggestions that follow, and I recommend his essay, “The Signs that They Take the Laity Seriously: Seminaries and Theological Colleges and the Laity,” Audenshaw Documents 102, May 1982, for further consideration.)

First, a fundamental commitment to a biblical theology of the laity should be included in the seminary’s mission statement; and all fundamental institutional documents, beginning with the course catalog, should be rewritten in light of what we now believe about the ministry of the whole people of God. It should be made clear that not only are lay people welcome to study, but that the seminary is committed to equipping them for the high calling of life and witness in the world. Moreover, it should be made clear from the start that those who are not called to be “professional” Christian workers will not be regarded as second-class citizens.

Second, a biblical theology of the laity should be emphasized from the beginning of any introductory course or orientation program designed to initiate new students into the study of theology. Furthermore, all courses should be reexamined in light of the need to: (1) equip pastors and missionaries to work hand in hand with lay men and women; and (2) equip the laity for service in the world as well as the church.

Third, biblical studies should be taught in a manner that excites people about the Bible itself, and equips them to be teachers of the Word. They should be concerned with what the text means as well as what it meant two or three thousand years ago. Exegesis should focus on texts that have to do with the church’s witness in the world. And the professor of Old or New Testament should not be embarrassed to pause and answer questions about how the teaching of Scripture is applied to life in the world today.

Fourth, a theological seminary committed to the laity should place a strong emphasis on the teaching of Christian ethics. When I was in seminary, there was only one course on ethics listed in the catalog. There was no professor of Christian ethics, nor was there anything approaching a discussion of the crucial ethical issues facing most lay people in their discipleship in the world. There should be several people teaching Christian ethics in all but the smallest of theological seminaries; and courses in Christian professional and social ethics, as well as theological ethics, should be offered.

Today the great issues facing the church are ethical ones. I was in Edmonton recently and had a challenging conversation with a Christian friend of mine who is a doctor. “What,” he asked, “are you doing at Regent College to help people in the health care professions deal with the urgent ethical issues facing them today?” He had been appointed chairman of a committee by the medical society to draw up guidelines concerning children who are born with severe birth defects. What steps, if any, should be taken in the interest of keeping them alive? Where do you draw the line? Or do you? Who makes those decisions? What ethical guidelines do they follow?

Are we training pastors to help lay people deal with these issues? Are we providing adequate training for the laity who are studying in our schools to deal with these pressing concerns—concerns that touch the sciences and technology, politics and government, business, and the arts? We may be avoiding them in our curriculum, but I assure you that the dedicated Christian lay person in the health care professions cannot. Whether or not someone is spiritually or theologically equipped, he or she is making decisions every day that assume certain ethical conclusions. How wonderful it would be if they were doing so on the basis of an adequate Christian foundation.

Fifth, all the disciplines of the theological curriculum should be revised with a view to incorporating insights from the recovery of a more biblical view of the laity. Church history, for example, should become the history of the whole people of God, laity and clergy alike, and not just a history of clerical infighting down through the ages. Christian education should focus on the whole enterprise of Christian education rather than solely on Sunday school and youth ministries. Pastoral theology should be brought into the twentieth century and deal with structures that characterize our contemporary society rather than late-nineteenth-century America. Field education should be broadened to include lay ministries as well as church-related ministries. And lay people should always be dominant in any advisory groups for pastoral interns.

Sixth, courses focusing on the theology and ministry of the laity should be added to the curriculum. These should not just be a generic course or two on “the ministry of the laity” or “the theology of the laity,” but “the history of lay ministry” and courses dealing with the ministry of the laity in the world. What I am concerned about here is preparation for “Monday ministries.”

Seventh, a theological school that is dedicated to the implementation of an authentically biblical theology of the laity should have a significant number of lay people on its faculty. When traditional theological educators think of “lay training,” they think of pop lectures on biblical and theological themes formated something like an adult Sunday school class. The only way for this to change radically is for a growing number of bona fide lay men and women to be added to the faculties of theological schools.

Lay Theology: Its Execution

Theology is too important to be left to the professional theologians. It belongs to the whole church and not just the academically inclined.

An ever-present danger facing professional theologians is that they will regard themselves primarily as members of the “Academy” rather than members of the body of Christ. When this happens, they often isolate themselves from the ongoing life of the church. The result is that while what is said and done may be of interest to fellow academic theologians, it is often of little significance or relevance to the life and witness of fellow lay Christians. At worst, what the isolated academic theologian does is positively harmful to the life of the church!

We need to be reminded that the historic creeds and confessions of the church did not come out of the studies and lecture halls of Christendom, but out of the normal life of the Christian community. Theologians and bishops may have been instrumental in having them committed to writing and adopted by church councils, but they did not create them.

If we are to meet the needs of men and women in the twenty-first century, then it is essential that we enlist a host of Christian lay people from every profession to be involved in the theological task of the church. And this task will, in turn, move forward only to the degree that clergy and laity, professional theologian and lay Christian alike, join hands to reflect together upon what it means to confess Christ in the world.

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