Reconnecting theology with local churches: why we all need a lifetime of theological education
Dr Freddy Headley, Dean of Studies at Westminster Theological Centre, joined us at NextGen East 2023 to share about the college’s innovative approach is helping reconnect theological education with local churches.
‘What is the Bible like?’
I asked this question before giving a talk at Intense, a Christian youth festival in Norfolk.
I wonder what you would say?
That summer, the teenagers’ answers were telling:
‘boring’
‘difficult’
‘out of date’
‘irrelevant’.
Their answers reflect a British church culture that has detached itself from treasuring the Bible and treasuring rich, rigorous theological thought.
Asking the wrong questions
Unfortunately in the last few decades, there has been a growing suspicion of academic theology. It is to some degree earned. There has been a trend over the years to inflate some questions at the expense of others.
So for example, in my area of Old Testament study, we've inflated questions of context, because we recognize how important they are to the point where we're only asking questions of context.
And it draws us into questions about who wrote it, when did they write it? While forgetting why did they write it? Or forgetting who are they speaking on behalf? Or why are they talking about what they're talking about?
It is an objectively fascinating study, for a certain mindset, but it is not theologically useful for most of the church.
We can get consumed with the question of how much can I pinpoint down to the day, when it was written, and what the weather was like on that day. It is an objectively fascinating study, for a certain mindset, but it is not theologically useful for most of the church.
So you end up with a situation where the people for whom that question suits sit over here, because no one else wants to listen to that. And they don't really want to talk to them about it anyway. And they talk to each other about it. And they now carry the keys to theological insight that the Church no longer has access to. And they don't want those keys, because they don't trust the theologians that are carrying them.
Now, that is a gross oversimplification of the situation. But it is one that many of us will recognize to be true, to some degree, and in some cases, to a very great degree. So the question is, and we've been teasing this out all the way through today, how do we overcome those obstacles? How do we reconnect the church with a treasuring of rich theology?
The gift of deeper relationship
Theology is a gift from God, to the church and to the people of God. But it is fundamentally about God's relational desire to know you, and to be known by you. And for you to tease out what that means. Every day of your life. There is no situation walking with God, where theology should be held away from you.
So the notion that we can separate our ideas of studying theology and doing church life is really unhealthy. WTC, emerged, first of all, from a church leader and a biblical scholar, both of whom were experiencing opposite sides of that coin.
the notion that we can separate our ideas of studying theology and doing church life is really unhealthy
The Bible scholar was a New Testament Bible scholar teaching in a university where he was not allowed to pray. Because it's not welcome in the secular classroom, it's not appropriate. And he was not allowed to teach about the life-giving qualities of the Word and the Spirit. And so he felt restricted and limited. He was talking to a friend of his who was a church leader, who felt desperately sorry that his church just had no resources available to him to think rigorously about theological ideas.
Together, they teased out this idea of putting together a college that would meet people where they are and not expect them to come to where we are. Now, we're not unique as a college and having that sense of urgency. together, they teased out this idea of putting together a college that would meet people where they are and not expect them to come to where we are.
Worshipful study
WTC isn’t unique in that, but has a distinctive value on seeing the life of the Spirit infused through every level of our study and our worship life. So that you can't tell the difference between worship and study. So we talk all the time to our students about essays not being about success, but being about worship, and trying to translate for students a way that they can find essays to be a form of worship.
We expect that theology should lead to ministry, and it shouldn't train us for ministry, it should just result in it. Because theological life is just transformational life. And it is something that God wants for all.
Why study part-time?
In wanting to work with the local church and put theology where the church was, the first thing we decided was that all of our courses needed to be part-time and couldn't afford to be full-time. That is not to diminish in any way, the value of full-time study. It is a wonderful privilege. But we want to be a part of extending that experience, so that the church has more easy access to it.
And we use a blend of in-person teaching and online teaching because we live in a world that is being potentially harmed by online life. And the church is called to respond both theologically and in ministry to that situation. But also, we live in an opportunity where God suddenly has opened new rooms that we didn't know existed before. With the pandemic we were amazed how present God was in the virtual room – so there’s a whole new environment for the Spirit to fill.
Four benefits of part-time study:
1. Theological study is owned by the church
Firstly, part-time study redistributes the ownership of theological study, from the few to the many. And this really is at the very heart of the reason why we do part-time at all, is that we want the ownership of theological study to be predominantly in the church and not in the college.
2. Study should not have to interrupt calling.
At the moment, too much study probably is calibrated to interrupt some calling. Now is entirely appropriate that one of the steps of discerning calling and beginning to exercise calling to mission and to ministry is to interrupt it. But for the majority of the church, it is not for the majority of the church, they are called to minister. And they are called to be in mission where they are. And God is not calling them away from that context, but does want them to know him more. So the solution to that is that part-time study enables those students to stay where they are, to continue living in their homes, with their family, to minister in their churches, to go to their workplaces, to serve their communities, to love their neighbours, and to study theology.
most of them come because they want to know God better and have the tools to influence the communities they are already in
Only a few of our students have a sense of calling to a specific area of church leadership, most of them come because they want to know God better and have the tools to influence the communities they are already in. So they make space for study despite their busy lives.
3. Theology is grounded in and deeply connected to mission and ministry
Part-time study keeps that connection. We want there to be an immediate connection to ministry, not just a theoretical one, where you're learning theory, and then you go and express it.
We want our students to be able to come into the classroom one evening, on Monday evening and learn something, reflect together about pray together about it, talk to their tutor or process it, and then go home and the following morning, put it into practice, figure out if it works, what does it actually look like on the ministry field?
What does it look like on the mission field, and then come back to the classroom and reflect back so that it isn't only a one-way dialogue so that the lecturers themselves are receiving from their students as much as they are giving, because their insights and their experience feeds into their assignments and their assignments get received by the Academy.
We want our students to be able to come into the classroom one evening, on Monday evening… and the following morning, put it into practice….
Practically, we have two residential study weeks together a year, plus weekly classes in local centres, where students come together to they study their classes through a combination of pre-recorded lectures, and then online seminars with the lecturer who recorded that and with other centres. It has enabled us to preserve both community and online study and part-time study and keeping theology in the local church. And we really hope that what we do continues to grow
4. Part-time study prepares students for a lifetime of learning
It establishes a pattern that doesn’t end. Students have to reorganise their lives around theological study to make best use of the time and money in the course. When they finish, we do not want any of our students to stop studying, they may start coming into the classroom, but we hope to have equipped them to be able to continue to study for themselves. We want to be able to give them the tools so that when they open God's word, they have new questions to ask.
We want part time study, an online study for us, to be a part of students building habits in their lives that continue beyond study. Habits that are not difficult habits to pick up, because study has given them those habits already.
So, how might engaging in theological study help you know God better and grow in ministry?
Explore study opportunities at WTC
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