photo credit: ercwttmn

I live in a small town, and of course I go to a small church, attendence being about 50 or 60 every Sunday.  It’s a good church, the gospel taught and the people friendly.  However my current pastor has an opinion, rather widespread in the congregation, that education and formal classes are not needed for the spiritual leaders of a church, that the pastor who is called by God with very little education can do a better job than one who’s been in seminary and Bible college by virtue of his lack of training.

As much as I respect that sort of opinion, it has a kernel of merit if you look hard enough, I feel that it’s the wrong way to approach something as important and critical as the spiritual health and wellbeing of a community.

Can a doctor practice without the proper credentials? No.
Would you trust a lawyer who hadn’t passed his bar exam?  Probably not.

So why can anyone with a charismatic bravado, an emotional calling to preach but with a very weak foundation in the Scriptures and Christian history and theology be allowed to watch over the spiritual lives of a church?

In Bible study this past week,  we had this one person (he’s in his 80s) who brought up the notion that there are two races of “humanity”: the ones from Genesis 1 (they have no souls but have dominion over the earth), and Adam and Eve from Genesis 2 (who do have souls but are spiritual people with no real physical connection).

Basically he gave the classical “reasoning” used to justify the ideas that black people don’t have souls and are meant to be slaves.  Now while this had been large belief in the past, it’s not an orthodox belief: in other words, you cannot arrive at that conclusion through a consistent, Bible-based, community-tempered way of looking at God’s Word.

While I was disappointed that someone who could be so mature and wise in the Lord could just plainly not be, I was more disappointed that no one else at the Bible study picked up on the slavery connection or even bothered to question the conclusions he was reaching.

My fellow parishioner’s ideas were instead the result of years of what I’ve heard called the “School of the Holy Spirit.” Essentially, and this is evident from attempts to correct him, all he needs is his Bible, his brain and he can discover truth, no matter how off the wall it seems.  This is how cults are started: no accountability, no humility, no respect for the Christian community at large.

Even though Jesus did promise us that the Holy Spirit would be another Helper, it’s clear in the New Testament that the Father uses the community of Believers; the history, culture and yes, even the traditions that spring up in the context of a Jesus-centered, Bible-honoring community, to communicate truth.  That’s why we can’t carte blanche reject the church fathers, like Augustine or Polycarp, the Reformers (including Calvin!) and even the Catholic theologians of the past.  If we do so we cut ourselves from a good dose of God’s provision for true Holy Spirit learning.

If all your spiritual and religious learning comes from individuals who’ve lived during your lifetime generation alone, then you’re really putting a stranglehold on your growth and maturity.