Toward a Theologically Minded Church

Ligon Duncan

So one thing we all need to do is ask ourselves, What is my study of theology resulting in in me? How is how is this changing me? How is it affecting me? Am I growing and is that demonstrated by the way I’m relating to my brothers and sisters in Christ, by the way I’m listening to sermons, by the way, I’m relating to other people in my vocation, or am I just learning stuff and then feeling really proud of myself that I know stuff that other people don’t know?

Matt Smethurst

Welcome back to the everyday pastor a podcast from the gospel Coalition on the nuts and bolts of ministry. My name is Matt smitherst and I’m LIG Duncan, and we’re going to be thinking in this episode about developing a theologically minded church. So let’s just start LIG with that very basic idea of theology. What is it and why does it matter? Not just for professional ministers, but for every Christian, theology

Ligon Duncan

is literally the study of God. And when we when we talk about theology in the context of church ministry, we especially mean knowing who God reveals Himself to be, so that we can know Him savingly and personally. So it’s not just we’re wanting a bunch of people that are eggheads and they have lots of opinions about things. We want them to know God. We want them to fellowship with God. We want them to love God, that we want them to experience the love of God in Christ for them. And one of the things that you have to do to do that fully is you have to know God as He has revealed Himself. If I could just use the relational illustration of of a husband and a wife, you can only know a person to the degree that they allow themselves to be known and in in a marriage, you may start off with a perfectly good relationship and a fine marriage, and there may be things that a husband or a wife find it very, very hard to disclose, even to their closest partner on Earth. And over time, in a good marriage, they’re able to do that, and this, when that happens, the spouse realizes I could not have known that about her unless she had disclosed it to me, and knowing that about her gives me a fuller understanding of her. It helps me love her better. It helps me communicate with her better, and it will thus facilitate our relationship well, God, we can’t know God unless God discloses himself to us, and he does in his wonderful kindness, he discloses himself to us in His Word, but that word takes some work to listen to and understand, and doing that will help us know him better know what he loves, nobody hates, nobody wants, nobody nobody don’t wants what he doesn’t want.

Matt Smethurst

And this is the everyday pastor. You can really don’t want it, that’s

Ligon Duncan

right. So you know that we want a congregation that cares about that you know they want to know God, and therefore they want to know what God has revealed about Himself to them in the world

Matt Smethurst

I love that you brought up the marriage illustration because sometimes I’ve described it as you know, if you were to hear me gushing about my wife, Megan, absolutely gushing effusive praise, maybe I’m tearing up because of how much I love her, and I’m grateful to be married to her, and I tell you that she’s a, you know, a red, beautiful redhead from Oregon who hates chocolate. Would that honor my brunette wife, who hails from Virginia and loves chocolate? Well, no, we it would not honor her. It would actually insult her. Or you think about, you know, I grew up loving to study Michael Jordan statistics, and I have an embarrassing number of scoring averages and all the rest rattling around my brain even this moment. LIG, now, why is Mike Jordan the goat absolutely correct hands? You know, we’re gonna do an episode on this. A good everyday, everyday pastors need to not be insane. Did you ever get to see him play for Chicago two times? Yeah, wow. Well, once for Chicago, once, once for the wizards, but, yeah, amazing experience. But I did not study those Michael Jordan stats just because I loved numbers or was a math guy. No, it’s because i i I loved Jordan, and the more I got to know about him, the more I felt like I was getting to experience who he was. Now, here’s here’s the thing that I think we can tell our people. Why is it that when it comes to our lovers and our heroes, we are so. So intentional about being accurate, but when it comes to the living God, we’re lackadaisical, and so we want to hold out to our people that, yes, we study God in order to know Him, and we know want to know Him in order to praise Him and enjoy him. But I think it’s common for ordinary Christians not to think of themselves as theologians. After all, they don’t have formal theological training. That’s what they’re paying their pastors to do, is the theology. So how did you teach your ordinary people in the pew at first pres Jackson to think of themselves as theologians in

Ligon Duncan

my life in ministry, first of all, it started with people investing in me, Matt, my youth pastor, my pastors growing up, both really invested in me theologically and I was interested in what they had to say. So when I became a youth minister, all I knew to do was what they had done with me. And so I’m a, I’m a first year seminary student. I’ve just been hired to be the youth director at a church. All I knew to do was teach them the Bible and teach them about God. And I, you know, that was back back in those days, I was still fun and, you know, so I, I love the relational side of youth ministry. But I did not want it to be cokes and jokes. I wanted it to be substantial. And let me say, the young people that I got to work with, they wanted that too. They wanted serious Bible study. They wanted to know about God. They wanted to study theology. On one occasion, they asked me if I would teach them through Calvin’s institutes, and I said, you are going to get me in so much trouble with your parents, because they’re going to this seminary. Egghead is coming in here and making our kids study Calvin’s Institute. They were the ones that asked me so that’s all I needed to do, Matt and and I think they knew that I was not doing that because I wanted them to cultivate intellectual pride or be overly scrupulous in the way they listened to sermons that I wanted them to know the Bible and know theology because I wanted them to know God, and I knew that it would change the way that they lived, the way that they trusted in hard times, the way they dealt with typical teenage problems that you deal with and boy, they had a lot of challenges. Some of them lost their parents while they were in high school. Some of them had parents with cancer diagnoses. Some of them had parents that split up. And so theology mattered in all of those cases, to those young people and and so I was being edified in seminary. I was learning so much, and it was helping me. I knew that if I could pass some of this on to those young people, that that that would help them. So I’ve just kept that attitude in the rest of my ministry, Matt, I’ve just, I’ve wanted to edify people with the Bible and with theology, because I know it’s going to make a difference in their lives. And I

Matt Smethurst

try not to just tell people over and over, care about theology, care about theology, but to actually show how this arises from the pages of God’s word itself, meaning when I’m preaching. So for example, in a recent sermon in First Peter, I noted how in the very first couple of verses of the letter, Peter doesn’t waste time going into the deep end of the theological pool. In in first Peter one one, he refers to the doctrine of election, and in first Peter one two, he refers to the doctrine of the Trinity, of course, without using that that name and what do those two towering doctrines lead him to say next, praise be to God, the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. In other words, his theology is exploding like fireworks into doxology. And of course, the most well known place for this is at the end of Romans nine to 11, three of the weightiest chapters in all the Bible. But Paul can’t help himself, and he can’t help but say, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God and so forth. So I think when we when we show our people that the point of it, of theology, is not just to make you feel smarter. It’s certainly not to make you feel superior, right? It’s meant to make you more holy and happy in the God who made you and has revealed Himself to you, who has forfeited his personal privacy, as you were kind of alluding to earlier. It’s like he’s forfeited his personal privacy to reveal Himself to us. By the way, it’s also worth, I think, reminding people that we’re doubly undeserving of, that we’re undeserving of of having any first hand knowledge of God, because we’re His creatures. How much less do we deserve to know him, given that we’re rebels against us, and yet he has come to. Us in lavish unmerited grace. And I think that it’s helpful to also teach people theology. And on another episode, we’ll discuss preparing your people to suffer. But it’s really important, I think, to teach theology in the light, so that we can stand on it in the dark, teach people theology week in and week out, again, not as a mere tool for winning arguments, much less, you know, a weapon for fighting, but at the end of the day, as a pillow to rest our head on, knowing that God is God, and we are not, in fact, going to sleep, is our nightly declaration that we are not. God. That’s

Ligon Duncan

right. That’s right. And I you know you mentioned the first Peter illustration, which is so good because he goes right into a doxology when you remember those people are going to go through the neronian persecution soon. And yet he’s got them oriented towards giving praise to God. Same thing with the book of Revelation. John is writing to people that are under duress in the empire, Paul. You think of Paul in Romans eight, that exalted passage, but he gets at the end, and you can tell, okay, he’s writing to people that are, you know, for thy sake, we are being killed all the day long. And so he can hear the sword being ungi it just happens over and over that Daniel, the book of Daniel, is about that, or even think of Jesus in John 14, you’re on the night before his crucifixion. He knows his disciples hearts are troubled, and he says to them, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. And so he basically says the answer to your troubled Hearts is theology. It’s knowing who your God is, knowing who I am, that’s what’s going to comfort you when you face trouble. Yeah.

Matt Smethurst

And how beautiful is it. Not only does he know they’re going to be afraid, he also knows that in a matter of hours, they’re going to abandon him and flee. So when it comes to life in the local church and and pastoring our people to think wisely and well about about theology, what are various ways to do that. We’ve already touched on sermons, and feel free to add anything there. But what other avenues in the life of the church should we be taking advantage of?

Ligon Duncan

Well, one thing that that Christian ministers have done for 1600 years now is teach through the apostles creed, which which allows you to get through the various articles of faith. So even if your church is not a church that says the Apostles Creed out loud, the Apostles Creed is a good standard Christian formulation of basic important doctrines, and teaching through it can orient people to not only what those doctrines are, why those affirmations are important, but how they relate to their lives and so teaching doctrinally is an important thing. Now, preaching doctrinally is also important. I’m a great advocate for preaching Bible books, but when you’re preaching Bible books, you’re preaching theology. So many of the books that we teach, especially when we’re working in the New Testament, are organized theologically. Many of Paul’s letters are organized around theological themes, especially in the first half of those letters. And so when you’re preaching through those books, don’t hesitate to be theological in your preaching, because Paul is certainly not hesitating to be theological. He’s got big ideas that he wants to have a controlling, comforting, encouraging influence on the lives of these people. And so make sure that some of your exposition and some of your application is teaching those theological points and then bringing them to bear on the hearts of people. So in our preaching, we want to do this. I think pastors ought to find other places and other times where they can also do so. If you’re in a church that has a confession of faith, teach your people through the confession of faith, maybe, if it’s never been done before, start with your officers, you know, start with your elders and teach them through your some people have the New Hampshire confession of faith, or the London confession of faith of 1689, or in my case, the Westminster Confession of Faith. Teach them through those documents. That has been a standard way that Protestants have edified and instructed their churches. It’ll be good for you as a pastor. It’ll be good for them as the people of God. So be theological in your preaching. Find places where you can teach through specific doctrinal systems for your people, creeds and confessions are a great role. Source in that regard, especially if your church has one that it subscribes to, and then encourage everybody, everybody in the church that doctrine is not just for old people with no hair or gray hair. It’s for all of us. It’s for children. It’s for the women in the congregation. You want it, you want to make sure that the women are being edified theologically, and especially in if there’s a women’s ministry in the church, that there’s some good theological teaching at first Pres. When I went there, I found that the first people that were the most receptive to theological teaching were the women, and they wanted robust theology in the women’s Bible studies. And you know, people like Nancy Guthrie and others have sounded that that that sort of emphasis, that boy, we need good theological teaching for women, but as pastor, make sure that everybody in the church is getting good theology. We all need it. Well,

Matt Smethurst

women buy far more Christian books than men. It’s just a reality. And if you look at the best selling Christian books every year, it is a wasteland in terms of what is being offered to most of our sisters out there. Or think of it as almost a theological famine. And we want to engage in famine relief by providing rich resources, not only for our sisters, but for all people you know, you mentioned teenagers, we would want to say to youth ministers who are tuning in, don’t undersell your students. They’re already learning algebra and biology and trigonometry. They can handle a little theology. I’m sure there are so many resources you and I could commend, but one that I think would be certainly accessible for all the adults in your church. It’s designed for lay people, people who don’t have formal theological training. As the new book by our friend Kevin DeYoung, daily

Ligon Duncan

doctor, oh yeah, I’m using that now and find it so edify. He

Matt Smethurst

put more I mean, Kevin has written a lot of stuff, but he put more work into that project than anything else he’s ever done. And what he’s done is he’s he’s for five days a week, 52 weeks a year. He has distilled a historic Christian doctrine into 500 or so words, and it’s just a wonderful thing to read through in addition to Scripture and to not do alone. Encourage your people to get a copy of daily doctrine and work through it with a friend in the church. Just imagine the potential that could have for growing our churches theologically, if we worked through resources like that and

Ligon Duncan

even picking root when I went to first prayers in 1996 one of the things I wanted to identify were who are some of the young men that are going to be the leaders of this church in a few years? And I picked out five guys, and I said, Would you do a week? I love five Bibles,

Speaker 1

by the way. Oh, sorry I got distracted. Not

Ligon Duncan

that kind of five guys, but these and we read the scriptures, but we also studied books together, and we read theological books so that that was something that was very edifying. And a pastor can do that, pick out a few people and say, let’s read a book together. And for some people, they’ve never read a theological book before, you know. And I was always surprised at how people in my congregation that were a part of professions that require a lot of cognitive engagement will will read in their area of discipline, and they’ll never read theology, you know. So doctors that had to read scores of professional articles about the medical field that they were in, wouldn’t read any theology. And so just to be able to help people in the congregation who’ve never done that before read good books, that’s a that’s a great way to engage. Yeah,

Matt Smethurst

absolutely. And we also have to be aware of the fact, though, that there are some people who it’s not that they love theology too much, but they are mishandling, misusing something, if sometimes it’s referred to, kind of the cage stage. I think Martin Lloyd Jones once said, I feel like he said, I spend half my time telling people to study doctrine, and the other half of my time telling people that doctrine is not enough. Yeah, what words of wisdom would you commend to a pastor who has people under his charge that might not be using theology as a means to enjoy God and love others,

Ligon Duncan

if, if our doctrine is not leading us to have great thoughts of God and humble thoughts towards ourselves and an attitude of loving and serving our brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as loving our neighbors, our theology is going bad on us because God did not intend theology. Be something that puffs us up, but rather humbles us. So one thing we all need to do is ask ourselves, What is my study of theology resulting in in me? How is how is this changing me? How is it affecting me? Am I growing and is that demonstrated by the way I’m relating to my brothers and sisters in Christ, by the way, I’m listening to sermons, by the way, I’m relating to other people in my vocation. Or am I just learning stuff and then feeling really proud of myself that I know stuff that other people don’t know, or that I’m right about things and they’re wrong about things, and I have all these convictions, but it’s not expressing itself in any kind of real, growing Christian maturity. That’s one thing Jim packer is so good about addressing this issue, by the way, in knowing God, he talks early on in that book, you and I’ve talked off camera about how that’s a daunting book today for many people. But early on in that book, he addresses the issue of theology gone wrong, theology that just becomes basically a study of notions rather than a study of God. And Christian theology is so glorious. It has so many glorious notions, it is possible to fall in love with those notions and not fall in love with the living God. And so we just have to constantly say, am I loving God more? Am I humbler? Am I more loving to others? Am I wanting to serve other people? Is that what my study of theology is doing in my life? And I, you know, I can just I can say, personally, I have had to learn that lesson myself, and that’s not uncommon. And I think in our churches, the kind of churches of the pastors that listen to this podcast, we live in the more theological end of evangelicalism, our churches tend to care about theology more than some other churches, and so you are right. We do have to care about the person who doesn’t care about theology and trying to convince them that they should, but we also need to recognize there are going to be people that get very excited about theology and the entailments of it are not working out in their lives the way we want it to, and we’ve got to attend to that as pastors.

Matt Smethurst

Yeah, I think it was Charles Hodge who said something like the doctrines of grace, humble a man without degrading him, and exalt a man without inflating him. Yes, and rightly experienced, our theology really ought to make us humbler, Meeker, kinder, more gentle, and and it come it becomes very relevant when conflict arises, which in a fallen world is going to happen when sinners are rubbing up against one another, there’s going to be sparks, there’s going to be friction, there’s going to be misunderstanding. So in your years of pastoring LIG, how did you see theology make a difference when it came to conflict.

Ligon Duncan

Well, in in the context of conflict, theology can actually move someone to repentance. So I, I did not see this happen myself, but I had this story. Told me my boyhood pastor, Gordon Reed, had two elders that were in a moment of conflict, and they had just not been able to get right. And so they were in his office, talking with him, and he finally, after talking with them for a while, he wasn’t getting anywhere, and he said, We need to get down on our knees and ask God for help, because I don’t have any human wisdom that’s going to get us past this conflict. And I think their realization of his dependence on God helped frame the conflict between the two of them, and they realized there’s more going on here than just interpersonal disagreement or difference or whatever. There’s a spiritual dimension to this, and so his very theological and pastoral approach, let’s get down on our knees and go to God for help in this. Actually, those two men got up from that prayer as friends, and they remain friends for the rest of their life. But it started with a pastor that brought in the reality of God to the dimension of their conflict. I don’t think they’d ever thought about that before. And so in really, in every area of life, whether we’re dealing with conflict, whether we’re dealing with the joy, what, you know, what one of the struggles that our young people go through with joy is finding joy in some earthly thing that is going to pass away, and enjoying that more than the living God, right? Well, even in our joys, we need to know there is a greater joy. You know that sitting there with your best friend the week before you graduate, looking out at the beach, that’s That’s amazing. It’s not sitting with the everlasting God forever. For praising him for all his works and for his redemption, and so even learning how to translate earthly joys into thinking about heavenly, unending, eternal joys, conflict, putting them in light of God, troubles, putting them in light of God’s providence. Everything in life needs to be put in light of God, and the more we can help our people think that way, the more we’re going to help them in every part of their lives. Yeah,

Matt Smethurst

that’s so good. And helping our people to, as you’re talking about, kind of follow that sunbeam back up to the source to see that even if, or I guess, to change the metaphor, even if one of the earthly tributaries runs dry, meaning something that we’ve we’ve from which we’ve derived life and pleasure and joy, and it’s taken from us. The headwaters is God Himself, right? And we will experience Him forevermore. And that’s, that’s one final thing I just want to say, like, remind your people that here, here’s a staggering thought. We will still, in a sense, be doing theology for all of eternity, because we, even when we enter glory, we will still be finite, right? Which means it’s going to take all of eternity for us to explore the depth and the riches of God. It’s going to take all of eternity to figure out what happened when he saved us, yeah, all the dimensions of His glory and His grace, and in light of that day, why not get to work in the meantime, understanding this God who made us for himself

Ligon Duncan

and the veil of sin will have been taken away, and that in the In the very best of us that clouds our view of God and to see him, we know what it’s like to see something in Foggy air and then clear. We see dimmer, and we’re gonna see clearly for the first time in our lives. And as you said, because we’re finite, we’re going to learn and learn and learn and learn and again. To go back to the marriage illustration, you know the things that you learn about one another over the course of time you couldn’t have known when you were 25 years old and just married. And you know the way that a person’s character shines through over the course of time. Well, because of our finitude, we’re going to learn and learn and learn, and we’ll never see to the bottom of God. Another one of, one of the wonderful things about his infinity is we can never be bored of him. You know, it finite things you can eventually get bored of, even if you love them. Because there’s a there’s a point at which there’s not much more you’re going to know about those things, not with God that we will we will learn more and more and more of him will never see to the bio.

Matt Smethurst

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