Learning from the Unlearned: A Mark of Excellence
The academic year is winding down. Final exams, research papers, and dissertations occupy the time and energy of students and teachers. Learning gained through academic research, scholarly lectures, and deep intellectual probing is being assessed and rewarded with grades and degrees.
Newly educated pastoral leaders are graduating from seminaries and assuming responsibilities in congregations and institutions. They enter the world of ministry with newly developed tools of biblical exegesis, historical critique, theological reflection, ethical assessment, social analysis, and homiletical and liturgical skills. Faithful ministry requires that such tools continue to be developed, nurtured, and used in service to the church.
Formal theological education admirably provides pastors with the tools necessary to access the insights of scholars. Pastoral imagination and faithful ministry require the continual mining of the insights and wisdom of scholarship. Otherwise, the wellsprings of insight and passion grow shallow and stale.
But wisdom and insight are not limited to the minds of scholars or confined to books in libraries. Learning to access the wisdom and gifts of the unlearned and the non-academic is equally necessary for faithful and fruitful Christian ministry.
Exegesis of ministry contexts is as crucial as exegesis of biblical texts. The stories of parishioners and parishes contain theological treasures as cherished as the chronicles of history’s saints and events. Intimations of God reside in the experiences of ordinary folks as in the systematic theologies of professional scholars. The everyday struggles and decisions of common people involve value judgments as complex as the abstractions of trained ethicists.
The most incisive social critiques often come from those who suffer from systems and practices. The poor know poverty in ways that escape the sociologists. The victims of racism, sexism, and classism have insights into domination systems that elude academic theoreticians.
Ordinary people have much to teach preachers about homiletics, liturgy, and pastoral care. Listening to people who hear our sermons, worship in our services, and receive our pastoral care is as crucial as developing rhetorical skills and interpretive principles. Entering into the hurts, struggles, sorrows of the suffering, the vulnerable, and the dying is as indispensable for the pastor as knowing the psychological dynamics of personal and communal formation.
While formal education removes blinders and illumines dark places of misunderstanding, it potentially blinds us to the wisdom of the uneducated. Intellectual arrogance severely restricts genuine learning; and rigorous scholarship divorced from humble discipleship does not result in Christian truth that sets us free.
Learning from the unlearned requires a character formed by grace and nurtured in practices that produce:
- Humility before life’s mysteries,
- Compassion for the least and most vulnerable,
- Hospitality to the stranger,
- Respect for the dignity and worth of every person,
- Gratitude for life’s simple gifts,
- Mutuality of relationships, and
- Openness to God’s presence in the other.
A formidable Christian scholar wrote these words to a congregation concerned about leadership and divisions:
“…God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise: God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God….” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29)
Learning doesn’t end with formal education and academic scholarship. Recognizing and sharing the wisdom and strength of those whom the world deems as foolish and weak is a sign of grace-formed character and a mark of excellence in ministry.
Kenneth L. Carder is professor of the practice of pastoral formation at Duke Divinity School and a senior fellow with Pulpit & Pew: The Duke Center for Excellence in Ministry. He was bishop of the Mississippi Area of the United Methodist Church from 2000 to 2004 and the Nashville Area of the UMC from 1992 to 2000.
