Archive for the ‘Theology’ Category

Posted on January 27, 2011 - by Stephen Murray

A Look Around the Web

A couple of theological items on the web in the last few days that I thought were worth a look:

1. I don’t know if you’ve picked up on the theological ‘saga’ of the last week involving John MacArthur’s ‘misunderstanding’ (you decide what it was) of Darrin Patrick’s book new book Church Planter. Well Darrin has written a truly gracious reply to MacArthur’s concerns. I got to hang out with Darrin a little bit two years ago when I visited the Journey Church and he came across as a superb guy with a ton to offer the church. His response just enhances my admiration for him and the work God is doing through him at the Journey. Well done Darrin.

2. David Fitch has some thoughts on the growth of neo-reformed churches in the vein of Mars Hill and Redeemer Presbyterian. His basic premise is that the models of these churches (and others like them) are ultimately growing through transfer growth by gathering large numbers of already-churched folk through excellent attractional meetings. The comments suggest that not everyone agrees – including Tim Keller. I found it particularly interesting that Keller seems to think that it need not be the case that the only people who will ever walk into a church service are basically traditional, conservative folk. I’ve often wondered about this. There is so much missional writing out there that says secular, completely-unchurched people don’t ever go to corporate worship services – I have my doubts about this rhetoric.

3. I enjoyed this interview with Michael Horton about his new systematic theology, ‘The Christian Faith‘. I particularly enjoyed this quote:

I agree wholeheartedly that we need a renewed conviction of God’s personal address in command and promise. I would only add, with Abraham Kuyper, that our confidence in Scripture rises and falls with our confidence in the gospel. We can be distracted by all sorts of good and worthy enterprises, but the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation.” The Spirit gives us faith, uniting us to Christ, through that word of redemption in Christ. Of course, Scripture also exhorts, commands, reproves, and directs. However, until we are convinced that God is actually addressing us here and now through his Word, convicting us along with the world of sin and forgiving and renewing us in his Son, the Bible will remain a closed and irrelevant book.

Posted on December 3, 2010 - by Stephen Murray

Theological Education and the Local Church

This is a fairly belated fourth thought with regards to theological education it was prompted by a friend who commented on the first three. So how do I see theological education and the local church coming together? Well for starters I think that at a very base level the task of the local church is theological education. I take it that when Jesus gave the Great Commission about making disciples in his name from all over the world he envisioned people being theologically educated. I don’t think he envisioned seminaries and degree programmes but I do think that he envisioned people coming to know God, his character and his working in this world, in an ever deepening way – that’s theological education.

So at a base level everyone is being educated in the church through the teaching of the Scriptures in various contexts (preaching, small groups, one on one, formally, informally). At the same time I think the church is to be on the lookout for people with particular teaching gifts and provide some sort of pipeline system whereby they can be theologically educated appropriately. Christ says we’re supposed to be praying constantly for God to send out workers to gather in the harvest – I take it that means we’ll have some sort of thought through approach to nurturing, developing and training gospel workers.

It’s here that I think a lot of churches, through being a little bit creative, can develop some really good in-house training that ensures the next generation of gospel workers are in the pipeline. I was privileged to be involved in a kind of pre-seminary apprenticeship which, from my point of view, was even more valuable to me than my time at Bible College. That apprenticeship system has now gone on to become a fully fledged training programme in KwaZulu-Natal called ENTRUST, training many young prospective gospel-workers.

The beauty of something like ENTRUST is that the little church with minimal resources can get involved in it. Basically a bunch of like minded churches got together a few years a go in Durban with a commitment to seeing young Bible teachers nurtured and equipped for the ministry. Because it was a team of local churches it allowed the churches with less resources to benefit from the larger body. Another great thing is the way in which it allows people to explore their gifts and calling within the context of other trained and gifted leaders. I remember more than one occasion where one of the students, after doing two years of apprenticeship, went back to his/her previous job just because the process had helped him/her see that they were better placed there for kingdom work.

I’m completely committed to this sort of semi-formal training amongst local churches and I hope to be involved in this sort of work for as long as I’m able because I’ve seen and experienced the value first hand and it is immense.

Posted on November 11, 2010 - by Stephen Murray

3 Thoughts on Theological Education

Tomorrow morning I’ll be giving the final lecture in my first ever semester of lecturing at a tertiary education institution. I’ve been teaching an introductory course to the discipline of Biblical Theology/Redemptive Historical Theology at the Bible Institute of South Africa. It has been a joy to study, teach and interact with the students over these last 6 months. Below are 3 thoughts that I have coming out of this new experience (for me at least):

• Formal theological education is crucial: I’ve come out of this experience more convinced than ever that we need to raise the bar in theological education (especially in this country). I’m not one of those voices lauding the death of the institution. To the contrary I think movements of the gospel in the west (and other areas that have both religious freedom and already-existing secular institutions) are integrally tied to the health of various Christian institutions in their midst – one of the most important being the seminary/Bible college/Theological college. Some of the literature I read just seems to give me the impression that gospel movements lose their legs without the institution.
• Alternatives to formal theological education are crucial: Not everyone has the time or resources to take up full-time formal theological education – especially in Southern Africa. I’ve taught and studied with many students who came from rural backgrounds and almost every step of the way I kept wondering if there were better approaches available to them that would suit their context better. Cultural and language barriers are enormous and the diversity is too great for any one seminary or college to adequately deal with. We need more forms of grassroots, contextualized education that doesn’t always pluck workers out of the vineyard and place them in an alien environment with alien language and teaching methods.
• Theology must end in worship: I was acutely aware almost every class this semester that it would have been so easy to teach some of the material without making a conscious effort to move from head to heart to hands. Evangelical institutions must be different from all other academic institutions in this regard. Equipping/education that does not lead people to have a deeper experience of the gospel, and be spurred on to worship out of that experience, must be rejected as sub-Christian education. If we don’t maintain this paradigm in the seminary the workers will never maintain it in the vineyard and our people will never maintain it in our churches.

Posted on October 8, 2009 - by Stephen Murray

Blogging Embarrassment

So the blog has revived a bit with this trip to New York – I haven’t really written about much else lately. I do feel a little bit of reluctance in some ways to make this blog, as it stands, a priority. Not because I don’t think blogging is valuable and not because I’ve got too much other important work (and I do) but rather because I’m not sure I’d stand 100% behind everything I’ve ever written here in the past 3 years – I’m maybe even a little embarrassed by the odd post.

There are posts I wrote from which I think I’ve now shifted theologically, there are statements that I think I’ve shifted culturally away from and there are tones I took that I now think are inappropriate. So what do you do? Do I leave it up there as a kind of testimony to my journey as gospel minister? Do I strip down the blog so that I’m never incriminated for something I might not actually adhere to? Do I start over? Is this a significant question for future ministry? I’m not sure I know.