February 5 was the start of the new teaching year at Youthworks College. New and returning students kicked off the year with elective intensive units in the theology and practice of children’s and youth ministry. You most likely know someone in your church who is either embarking on or returning to a year of theological study for ministry training. So what will you pray for them as the new academic year gets underway?
I’m praying that my students will grow in their character, conviction and competence. The familiar three-Cs: that they would develop the basic skills necessary for foundational ministry among children and young people, that they’d deepen their knowledge of the gospel and their conviction of its truth, and that they’d be formed as the people that God is shaping them to be.
Part of my prayers may sound far more problematic: in some way I’m also praying that they’d know less, grow in uncertainty, and give up. Perhaps I should explain. It’s all got to do with mental buckets.
Most students arrive at College with two clear mental buckets; that is, two categories of thinking that most, if not all of their beliefs and ideas fit into. There’s a bucket for things that are true or right, and a bucket for things that are not-true or wrong. The Bible is true, the Twilight series is not true. Evangelism, prayer and reading your Bible are right; taking drugs, worshipping demons and astrology are wrong.
Often there’s a third bucket as well; the, questions-needing-answers bucket. It’s a sort-of holding bin for unprocessed thoughts that are waiting to be sorted into being true/right or not-true/wrong buckets. ‘What should I say about the Trinity?’ is in that bucket. ‘How do I grow our youth ministry?’ is probably there as well. And that of course is why they’re so looking forward to a theological education, since here they are at the place with answers. And once their questions bucket is emptied they’ll be ready to go out and help empty other peoples’ questions buckets as well.
It’s a caricature to be sure. But it leads to the first point of my prayer – the reason I pray that my students will come to know less is because I hope that they will come to see that their questions bucket is far too small. I expect that my students will come to class with a list of questions about the Trinity. And I hope that I’ll be able to help lead them in reflection on Scripture and theological history and contemporary ministry that will leave them with even more questions than when they started. I expect that there’ll be some answers to questions that they’ll discover along the way as well. But though the quantity of their knowledge may increase my aim is also that the proportion of their knowledge would decrease.
The more we come to know, the more we come to realise what we don’t know. I want my students to become life-long learners, and life-long explorers of God’s word and world. That’s my prayer for my students: Lord God, please may my students grow in their knowledge of you so that as know less as you open their minds to see how much there is to discover, understand and explore in the riches of your word and the vast complexity of your world.
I also want to add a few more mental buckets for my students to organise their thoughts into. Alongside the true/right and not-true/wrong buckets I want to provide them with an I-don’t-know bucket. Black-and-white thinking is necessary on black-and-white issues; but given the complexity of the world and the limitations of my intelligence, there are a number of things that will need to stay ‘grey’, at least until I have time and ability to deal with them more closely. If you like we could add some sub-sections to the grey bucket: the I’ve-got-a-strong-hunch-about-but-can’t-yet-prove-it section, an I’ve-always-thought-this-was-true-but-am-now-beginning-to-wonder section, an I’m-convicted-about-this-but-am-willing-to-accept-your-different-conclusion section, and a I’m-convicted-about-this-and-reckon-it’s-important-enough-to-patiently-seek-to-persuade-you-to-my-point-of-view section.
I want my students to grow in uncertainty because I want them to come to the humility that recognises the limitations of their understanding. There’s nothing like a little bit of theological education to make someone think they can rule the world, or at least the youth group.
A theological education for ministry ought to introduce students to a large and long conversation. I hope they will come to recognise that there are clear and potent reasons to hold points of view that are different to what they have always held to be true. That many debates about Christian practice may be far more complex than a ‘plain reading of Scripture’ might suggest. I’m not intending to shatter their confidence in ever being able to reach a conclusion on difficult issues. But as newcomers, at least to the technical level of the discussions, a stance of humble exploration is appropriate. From there they’ll be well-placed to do the work of wrestling with questions and searching for answers as with the humility that comes from a sober view of themselves. Lord, please may my students grow in uncertainty as they come to recognise the limitations of their knowledge, so that they would be ready to learn and grow as you lead them in knowledge of your truth.
It is fitting to be humble in the face of the depth and complexity of human learning. Even more so it is fitting to be humble in the presence of the living God. The third part of my prayer for my students is that they would recognise when to give up the search for answers and be content to sit in awe and wonder before the everlasting God.
It doesn’t take long for my students to become familiar with Deuteronomy 29:29 – ‘the secret things belong to God, but the things revealed belong to us and children forever, that we may obey all the words of this law.’ It is indeed a great kindness that God would reveal something of himself, his nature, his character, his works, his will. That kindness is of course the only reason we can have any confidence that our theologising would be at all worthwhile: God has made himself known and he has given us the capacity to know him.
These things that God has revealed belong to us and it would be foolish, even blasphemous to not pay close attention to what has been revealed. But these things are not given to us just to become objects of speculation, but that they might be the doorway to our obedience, to our worship. (Note also that these things belong also to our children underscoring again the significance of children’s and youth ministry in the life of the people of God!). Proverbs 25:2 tells us that ‘It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to search out a matter.’ I pray that our students would give themselves to searching out the things of God.
Yet though God has revealed so much he has not revealed everything. There are secret things; things that God knows but that he has chosen not to reveal to us. The fourth mental bucket that is fitting for creatures of the living God is a bucket for secret things. And when we find something that ought to go in there, then it’s time to give up searching for an answer or an explanation, and do what Paul did in Romans 11:33-36, and sit back in awe of God. Lord God, please show my students our limits as creatures and lead them in awe of you, our creator. May they search out your word and savour every morsel of what you have made known, but may they give up the clamour to know when they reach the limits of your revelation.
Would you join me in my prayer? Pray that our ministry trainees would know less, grow in uncertainty and give up. Pray also that they would deepen their convictions about central things, develop the grace to continue as life-long learners, and grow in humility as they live and study as servants of the living God.
