by Matthew Pinson | May 21, 2014
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m worried about the over-emphasis in our culture on experience at the expense of deep, hard thinking about the things of God. If we’re going to sustain the faith in all its enduring wonder and vibrancy into the next generation, then we must produce a generation of thinking Christians, steeped in ancient Christian wisdom.
Yet I have another concern about a behavior I feel characterizes not just the egg-heads in our churches—those Sunday school teachers who like to pore over theology and apologetics blogs. It’s also seen throughout churches in Sunday school classes all over the country. And that’s the lack of engagement and application.
What I’m calling engagement and application here is intimately tied to this connection between wisdom and knowledge. If knowledge is reduced simply to bare facts that do not engage the people we’re teaching, and if those facts have no impact on the everyday lives of the people we are teaching, then we might as well stop trying to teach.
The way the Bible talks about teaching godly wisdom and knowledge ties them together. It’s holistic. Presenting bare facts with little or no application is to leave the Biblical knowledge-wisdom circle incomplete.
If we don’t actively engage our students in thinking about the material we’re teaching, and then help them to apply the teaching to their everyday lives on Monday through Saturday, then we have an incomplete circle. We have knowledge with no wisdom. We have intellect with no emotions and no will. And this is an unbiblical approach to Christian education.
My urging to engage students is not new. It’s ancient. It goes all the way back to the Bible. It’s so ancient to engage students by questioning them and drawing out their assumptions and learning where they are and challenging them to go someplace else that it’s sometimes called the Socratic method, after the Greek philosopher Socrates.
Socrates didn’t allow his students to get off easy. He asked them tough questions. He engaged them. He found out what was on their minds. He found out what knowledge base they already had and built bridges from their current knowledge base to the knowledge base he wanted them to master.
This is not an essay on teaching methods, but I would love to recommend a wonderful old book that has been in print since the late 1800s. Many of you will recognize it as an old standard. It’s called The Seven Laws of Teaching. I like it because it in part was written by a college president and ordained Christian minister, Dr. John Milton Gregory, who founded the University of Illinois. Dr. Gregory wrote this little book as a general primer on teaching, but it eventually became especially useful for Sunday school teachers. Dr. Gregory was concerned that we engage our students with useful methods that enhance their learning of the content we’re teaching them.
I don’t want you to think I’m beating up on lecturing, let alone proclamation—far from it! I am urging you to use Sunday school and other Bible/theological study opportunities to engage your students to dig deeper. But let me emphasize that if we do less lecturing and more questioning, only to descend in to the “What does this mean to you?” routine, we’ll be wasting our time.
The point of engaging and questioning and probing our students is to teach them, to move them from their knowledge base to the knowledge base we want them to master, with the ultimate goal of changing their worldview and behavior. Just sitting around in a circle talking about what we already feel about a subject isn’t going to accomplish this.
Now, this whole issue of engaging our students is necessarily going to involve their preparing before they come to class. This is why curriculum publishers have magazines and booklets for students to take home. It’s time we re-incentivized students’ taking their books home and reading and studying their lessons during the week. After all, we call it Sunday School, not Sunday Fun Time. Schooling is ineffective without out-of-class preparation. So It’s imperative that we find ways, that we create a culture, that we give incentives for people to take their books home and prepare for next week’s lesson.
And the earlier in a person’s life we do this, the more the habit is going to take hold. To reiterate, we need to re-emphasize, for all age groups, the importance of preparation—because it’s hard to engage a student on Sunday morning when he hasn’t thought about the material since the week before.
I’m not Keith Kenemer nor the son of Keith Kenemer, but I’ve got to agree with him that, in letting some of those old Sunday school record keeping systems go by the wayside in our rush to modernize, we’ve abandoned a good method for emphasizing student engagement, not just on Sunday morning, but throughout the week. And, let me repeat, the more students engage in the material throughout the week, the more you will be able to engage them in class.
But, while I’m riding hobby horses, let me add just one more thing. We’ve got to wed exposition and application, theory and practice. So many Sunday school teachers take the easy way out and disregard application, maybe because they think it’s easier just to dispense facts. Other Sunday school teachers skip to the application without a thorough grounding in context and knowledge and truth, maybe because they think it’s easier to talk about the familiar and the experiential.
I fear that many churches are filled with Sunday school teachers who love to be at one extreme or the other—either dispensing facts for an hour and then having prayer, or reading the text and cutting straight to the “What does this mean to you?” question.
The Biblical balance is to root practical application in the solid exposition of the principles of Scripture. This wedding of wisdom and knowledge can’t be done in a shallow way. So I would challenge people from both extremes. Let’s bring together solid content from Scripture with practical application to our students’ daily lives. Let’s put knowledge and wisdom back together again.
We need to be serious about imparting godly wisdom and knowledge, and we still need to see that as being at the heart of Christian education ministry in the twenty-first century.
by Matthew Pinson | May 19, 2014
In my view, Christian education in the local church is about imparting divine wisdom and knowledge in the context of rich relationships and community. I was recently reading Proverbs 4:1-13 and was struck by how much the culture we live and minister in discourages the church’s mission of passing on the heritage of godly wisdom and knowledge intact to the next generation.
Yet I think this passage gives us a lot to think about as we engage in the work of Christian education in the local church. And it’s interesting to me that many scholars think that this passage is using “father and son” language as a euphemism for teacher and student. I believe this passage has a wonderful application to the ministry of the Sunday school and other Christian education ministries in the local church.
1 Hear, my children, the instruction of a father, And give attention to know understanding; 2 For I give you good doctrine: Do not forsake my law. 3 When I was my father’s son, Tender and the only one in the sight of my mother, 4 He also taught me, and said to me: “Let your heart retain my words; Keep my commands, and live. 5 Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth. 6 Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you; Love her, and she will keep you. 7 Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding. 8 Exalt her, and she will promote you; She will bring you honor, when you embrace her. 9 She will place on your head an ornament of grace; A crown of glory she will deliver to you.” 10 Hear, my son, and receive my sayings, And the years of your life will be many. 11 I have taught you in the way of wisdom; I have led you in right paths. 12 When you walk, your steps will not be hindered, And when you run, you will not stumble. 13 Take firm hold of instruction, do not let go; Keep her, for she is your life.
For the next several posts, I want my readers to think about two principles from this passage that need to be at the heart of our congregations’ Christian education ministries: that we need to be (1) serious and (2) intentional about imparting divine wisdom and knowledge in the context of the church’s educational ministry.
Being Serious about Wisdom and Knowledge
In Proverbs 4, the author is telling us to seek wisdom and knowledge diligently with our minds, to treasure it deeply with our hearts, and to live it out vibrantly in our lives.
This is talking about getting to know God, and what he values, and how his kingdom rule extends over our world. When we apply our minds to this task, it will transform our hearts and change the way we live.
All throughout the Proverbs, divine knowledge and wisdom are seen not just as knowable facts that are separated from human experience. We see this dynamic in verse 1: The “father’s instruction” is all about teaching. And teaching and learning is about knowledge—things we learn with our minds. But the word implies loving direction, even correction or chastisement. It’s not just a lecturer giving out facts. It’s the image of a father who cares deeply about how this knowledge lodges itself in his children.
But then, in that same verse, the father tells his sons to “know understanding.” This is talking about knowledge—the intellectual dimension of our lives. It’s talking about what we perceive with our minds.
The most recurrent theme in Proverbs, as it is in this passage, is that wisdom and knowledge are intricately intertwined. Knowledge without wisdom can be reduced to bare facts that have no impact on how we feel or how we live our lives moment-by-moment.
But wisdom is never divorced from knowledge. Wisdom—for each of us at various levels and in different ways of understanding—must be wed with knowledge. That’s why, as John Stott reminds us in his wonderful little book: Your Mind Matters.
We’ve got to strive to engage in the discipleship of the mind, especially in this complex age we live in. We must let people know—believers and non-believers alike—that we do not check our minds at the door when we enter the church. Yet we’ve got to keep reminding ourselves that discipleship of the mind is a spiritual discipline that radically affects our heart and our behavior.
I agree with Stott! We need more knowledge. We’ve been very successful in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century at forging a “Christianity-lite” that’s very satisfied not to go deep, not to engage in the intellectual side of spiritual disciplines, not to engage in the discipleship of the mind. Yet as Stott, and the Apostle Paul, reminded us over and over again, if we don’t attend to the mind on a deeper level, we will deprive future generations of the ability to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, and churches will ultimately fail in their mission to perpetuate the gospel.
I’m worried about the over-emphasis in our culture on experience at the expense of deep, hard thinking about the things of God. If we’re going to sustain the faith in all its enduring wonder and vibrancy into the next generation, then we must produce a generation of thinking Christians, steeped in ancient Christian wisdom.
by Matthew Pinson | May 14, 2014
The 2013-14 academic year at Welch College has come to a close, and what an outstanding year it was. The year ended with a shout last Friday when we conferred degrees on 34 students from ten states and two foreign countries. Students completed degrees in multiple programs ranging from two-year associate’s degrees to four-year bachelor’s degrees. Thirty-five percent of the class graduated with honors.
We heard a stirring baccalaureate sermon from Tim Campbell, Executive Director of Arkansas Free Will Baptists. He challenged graduates to surrender their dreams and aspirations to the will of God and inspired them with the example of Free Will Baptist missionary Dr. LaVerne Miley.
Dr. David Dockery, outgoing president of Union University who will become president of Trinity International University in June, gave an excellent commencement address. He urged the Class of 2014 to stand firm, not grow weary in doing good, and to stay true to the truths they learned during their time at Welch.
In April we had the largest Welcome Days in a number of years, with high school students and their sponsors from all over the country converging on the campus. Welcome Days guests joined other guests from Middle Tennessee and several other places to enjoy a presentation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, under the direction of drama director AnnaGee Harris and choral union director Mark Lancaster. This production is evidence of a new level of excellence we have reached in the drama and music departments at Welch.
This has been a very good year for Welch College. We are definitely turning the corner in terms of enrollment and finances. After the difficult challenges of a recessionary economy and its aftermath, which has negatively affected so many small Christian colleges, we are experiencing a new day. We have seen the highest enrollment increase in at least 33 years (a 24% increase in the dorms), the highest increase in income in at least 33 years, and the highest net tuition, room, and board income since 2006-07. While co-op giving and estate gifts (bequests) have sharply decreased, individual and church gifts have remained at similar levels.
But what has been notable about this year has been the spirit on campus. We are experiencing a wonderful spirit of campus unity that symbolizes a growing denominational unity and a growing commitment to ministry and spiritual and intellectual formation on the part of our students. Chapel attendance, participation in Christian service, Wednesday evening Campus Church, and SpirituaLife groups has increased markedly. There is a strong emphasis on spiritual formation and ministry. The percentage of male students who are preachers is extremely high: 52% of men on campus are preachers and 62% of total men (on-campus, online, adult degree) are preachers. Student morale is high, and society participation and society sponsorship of social events on campus is the highest in my twelve years as president.
This wonderful spirit has been complemented by the presence of 12 students from Gateway Christian College who are on our campus this year. In the spring of 2013, we were saddened to hear of the planned closure of Gateway Christian College, a Free Will Baptist school in Virginia Beach, Virginia. We reached out to their remaining students with a special teach-out agreement to allow them to complete their degrees at Welch College. We now have 12 students from Gateway and are expecting more next year. We are fulfilling the vision of denominational unity in our student body that we have been praying for and working toward. And that unity in our student body is symbolic of what I think will be more and more unity in our denomination, especially in the younger millennial generation.
Not everything this year was positive. We experienced a setback in our relocation plans when Aquinas College withdrew its offer to purchase our West End campus after neighbors opposed the deal. However, our realtors are back aggressively marketing the campus to residential developers in a real estate market that is improving somewhat from where it has been. We are waiting on the Lord to provide us with the right buyer in His timing.
Other notable events this year included the Constitution Day Lecture by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the Leroy Forlines Lectures with Professor Eric L. Johnson of Southern Baptist Seminary, and the ten-year visit by the Board of Examiners from the Tennessee Department of Education reaffirming our teacher education programs.
We saw numerous other signs of qualitative growth and excellence this year: Class attendance, chapel attendance, overall GPAs, and freshman-to-sophomore retention are all the highest they have been in many years. Students on academic probation and students experiencing disciplinary problems are the lowest they have been in my tenure here. We continue to rank higher in U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges than many larger colleges and universities that have many times over the financial resources we have. For the second time in a row, we were named a Certified Best Christian Workplace by the Best Christian Workplaces Institute. Our students also gave us high marks in the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory, in which 88% of students said the college met their expectations (compared with a national average of 84%) and 67% said the college exceeded their expectations (compared with a national average of 53%).
God is doing tremendous things on the campus of Welch College. I urge you to pray for continued growth as we fulfill the mission to which He has called us.
by Matthew Pinson | May 9, 2014
I recently came across a great quotation from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, in which the head demon is instructing other demons on how best to tempt human beings. Note that “the Enemy” he refers to in the quotation is God. This is probably more true in our own day than in the 1940s when Lewis first penned these words.
“Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. . . . The search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.”
by Matthew Pinson | May 1, 2014
In February I wrote a blog post entitled “Are Arminians Necessarily Synergists?” It was later posted on the Society of Evangelical Arminians site (http://evangelicalarminians.org/j-matthew-pinson-are-arminians-necessarily-synergists/). My friend Jim Leonard was telling me about some of the discussions (controversy?) on it on the SEA members discussion board.
A few weeks ago SEA president Brian Abasciano, whom I appreciate and with whom I have had many beneficial interchanges, wrote a blog post critiquing the article. Even though I disagree with his perspective, I enjoyed reading his post and think it would be of interest to those of my readers who follow these online Arminianism/Calvinism discussions.
Some Informal Comments on Matthew Pinson’s Denial that Arminianism is Synergistic
April 4, 2014, posted by Brian Abasciano
Here are some (now) edited and expanded comments I made in SEA’s private discussion group on Dr. J. Matthew Pinson’s article, “Are Arminians Necessarily Synergists?”, which argues that Arminianism is not really synergistic, but should be thought of as articulating conditional monergism:
Dr. Pinson wants to speak about conditional monergism. I can see the point, but it seems a little too technical of a distinction. He seems to be defining synergism as involving meritorious work or at least God and man working together for salvation. But it seems like it is quite reasonable to use the term of cooperative action. And certainly faith is an action and the means by which we are saved by God. But faith itself is not monergistic. It is not the action of God alone. And it is not the action of man alone in that man needs God’s supernatural enabling power to believe. But man is the main actor with respect to faith. God does not believe for man. And faith is a human act. God enables, but man actually does the believing. But faith is also not actually part of salvation itself, but the means by which salvation is given/received. Salvation is monergistic in that God alone accomplishes it in response to man’s faith. But faith is synergistic in that it involves both the action of God and man. But it is not synergistic in the sense that man’s action in it is meritorious. So it seems to me that there is some sort of synergism involved in the process of salvation insofar as faith is part of the process of salvation even though it is not part of salvation (i.e., not something salvation bestows on us once saved). So I agree with Dr. Pinson to a degree and believe that Arminianism can be thought of in terms of conditional monergism. But if so, it must also be kept in mind that faith is synergistic and that the monergistic work of God is conditional on the synergistic action of faith.
Let me add that I am also a bit skeptical of the approach that characterizes our response to God as merely not resisting. While that sounds noble and God glorifying because it seems to minimize our role and exalt God’s role, it does not seem to match the biblical picture of faith in my opinion. Biblical faith is not merely not resisting God but it is actively trusting in him. Faith itself is not meritorious for various reasons. Just one of those reasons is that it cannot be exercised without God’s help (grace). But I don’t think it can be characterized as mere non-resistance. But one might argue that the idea is that not resisting God’s draw to faith is what the idea is about, and so our active faith/trust in God will happen unless we resist God. But I don’t particularly see that in the Bible. At the very least, the Bible does not make a point of that idea. It seems to involve more of an influence and response model more than an action and non-resistance model.
In my opinion, this type of distinction gets away from biblical categories and delves too deeply into philosophical consideration. Let me quickly say that getting away from biblical categories is not necessarily bad. We live in a different context and often operate with different categories, and it is not necessarily bad to attempt to translate biblical truth into our categories. In fact, it is very often good and important to do. I also do not denigrate philosophy. It is the handmaiden of theology and regularly used and even necessary in formulating theology. It is also a fine and good thing to discuss philosophical matters in and of themselves. What I am saying here is that it seems to me that a particular desired conclusion—minimizing human effort as much as possible in the salvation process—is being addressed philosophically without taking much account of the biblical data. I suppose that it could be said that the reasoning is taking its lead from the Bible’s stress on God’s activity in our salvation and human inability apart from grace. But to me, it seems too general and abstract away from the particulars of the biblical data to warrant insisting on this type of formulation (human response as mere non-resistance) in the process of salvation.
But I think a number of Arminians like this type of approach. I understand it and see the impulse. I just don’t think it necessary or the most accurate perspective.
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The above post originally appeared at http://evangelicalarminians.org/some-informal-comments-on-matthew-pinsons-denial-that-arminianism-is-synergistic/.
by Matthew Pinson | Apr 24, 2014
“You, O Lord, are a shield for me, My glory and the One who lifts up my head”—Psalm 3:3, NKJV
What Does Psalm 3 Mean
What a profound encouragement this verse is to me! I can only imagine how much distress David was experiencing when he wrote Psalm 3. He had fled from his wicked son Absalom, who had conspired against both David’s kingdom and his life. The backdrop of this confession in verse 3 is found in verses 1-2, where David laments the increase in numbers of those who have joined Absalom and risen up against him. Not only does it seem as if the whole world is standing against David at this point, but he also feels the taunts of his enemies saying, “There is no help for him in God.”
David responds to this lament in verse 3 with a strong confession of his safety, peace, and hope in the Lord. “You, O Lord, are a shield for me, My glory and the One who lifts up my head.”
One day a few years ago, after our college choir sang a setting of this text, I began meditating on it and have done so quite a bit over the past few years. It has become one of my favorite passages, and I want to share some of my meditation with you today.
We’re in a War
The first thing we need to understand about this verse, in its context, is that just like David, we’re in a war. Our lives as Christians are spiritual warfare.
You’re in a war. Right now. You’re in a battle for your life. The devil is your chief enemy, and there are going to be times in your life—maybe you’re in the middle of it now—when he will marshal everything he can against you. This is surely how David felt when so many people he thought were his friends and allies had gone over to the side of Absalom.
In the Midst of the Battle, God is There for Us
David mentions three important areas in this passage in which he’s relying on God. He says that God is his shield, his glory, and the lifter of his head.
What do these three things mean?
“Shield” is a symbol of God’s protection, of security found in the Lord.
“Glory”—this is about honor, dignity, reputation, what we take pride in. Even though David’s outward honor and glory as king was gone, even though he had had to flee in his own kingdom, he knew God was his true glory.
“Lifter of my head”—This is about the emotional effects of God’s presence in our lives in the midst of our battle. Even when our head is hanging low in despair, God is there to lift it up and give us joy.
For Us
One other thing—In the midst of the battle, God is there for us. The text says, “Thou O Lord art a shield for me.”
I’ll never forget when my old professor at Yale Robert Johnson told us about Luther’s teaching that Christ is “pro me” and “pro nobis”—“for me” and “for us.” Yes!
Yahweh is a shield for me. He’s a shield for you. He’s glory for you. He’s the lifter up of your head. He cares deeply about you, and he will protect you and comfort you and give you joy and be your glory if you will trust in him.
Only God
My third, and main, thought is this: Only God can be your shield, your glory, and the lifter of your head. This is the hard part. This is what makes it so tough to rely on God in the middle of life’s battles—because we can’t bring ourselves to rely solely on him to be our security, glory, joy and peace.
We tend to rely on the “not-God,” as Carl Henry used to say, to provide our security, our glory, and our joy and peace. Think with me—what might some of these be in your life? I think most of the time the things that we tend to rely on for security, glory, and joy and peace revolve around these things:
- Circumstances
- People
- Ourselves
For our security, we too often rely on circumstances (happiness—things going our way—a good example is the economy), people’s approval [1] (even people who have power over us or who might threaten us in some way, like Absalom and his co-conspirators did David), or our own strength and self-sufficiency.
For our glory (what we take pride in), we’re tempted to rely on possessions or wealth (circumstances), popularity, status, or the esteem of others (people), or success (ourselves)—fulfillment of our hopes and dreams—even ministry success!
For the lifting of our heads, too often we tend to let our joy and peace come from those false gods that we rely on for security and glory.
- Things going our way, having what we want, financial security (circumstances)
- People approving of us and liking us, not feeling threatened by them (people)
- feeling strong and self-sufficient and successful, fulfilling our personal goals, hopes, and dreams (ourself).
We need to repent of this, because when we allow circumstances, people, and our personal success and happiness to be what gives us security, glory, or joy and peace, we’re making idols out of those things and taking glory away from the only One who can ultimately provide us with security, glory, and joy and peace.
My prayer for you and me today is that we will put away our idols, those things we’ve come to rely on for security, glory, and joy and peace, and make the Lord the center of our world, realizing that he and he alone is a shield for us, our glory, and the lifter of our heads.
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[1] The best book on fear of others is Ed Welch’s When People are Big and God is Small (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1997).
