Why Pastors Need Theology and Church History

At Tennent, we are passionate about helping believers connect the dots between theology and doxology (worship), between the intricacies of biblical study and the feet-on-the-pavement way we live out our faith. Can you find connections between Leviticus and, say, youth ministry? Between Moses and missions? If you would like to learn more about integrating your understanding of the Bible with your personal worship or your ongoing ministry, check out Tennent’s philosophy of education. We would love to help you worship God with all of your heart and soul, mind and strength.

There’s an age-old tension in education between theory and praxis. Which one is more important? Many students have sensed that practical skills are the better thing to gain from school. “What am I actually going to do with this?” they ask their teacher when abstract theory is under discussion. Learning algebra or fractions seems redundant in this age of calculators and spreadsheets. Knowing that “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” won’t help you balance your checkbook, much less land you a high-paying job. Shouldn’t education focus instead on skills transmission—on the techniques that can get you somewhere in the real world?

To think this way would be short-sighted. The most skillful person doesn’t just know what to do, he understands why to do it. A true artisan appreciates the immediate application of his skill as well as how it all fits together into a whole. The best education aims to transmit theoretical understanding along with—and as the foundation of—practical skills.

Take medicine, for instance. A nurse or a physician’s assistant can learn to insert a needle, draw blood, suture a wound, even do some pretty advanced procedures. Yet quite often, the illness that brought you to the doctor isn’t an isolated injury or a localized pain. Many presenting problems have systemic causes behind them. That’s why you need a doctor who is fully trained in biology, anatomy, chemistry, and the total theory of medicine. Whole body healing requires whole body understanding.

The same would be true for auto repair. Any Joe Schmo can refill the wiper fluid, put air in the tires, or check the dipstick. Heck, even I can do that. Crawling under the car to drain the oil pan and change the oil . . . well, maybe I could do it if absolutely necessary. But isn’t that what Jiffy Lube is for? As for the carburetor, the clutch, the catalytic converter—forget about it. I’m out of my depth. And if it involves hooking up the car to the computer and checking codes, it’s time for the total understanding of an automobile that only a mechanic has.

Seminary students, of course, ask similar questions about theory vs. practice. They often wonder if their coursework will be useful in real church ministry. One could imagine a seminary curriculum focused solely on the day-to-day skills that a pastor needs. In the freshman year, the seminarian would take Baptism 101 and Communion 102. Conducting Funerals would be a 200-level course because, you know, emotions are running high in a time like that. As for Conducting Weddings, only an upperclassman could take that course. The syllabus would have units like “Comforting the Weeping Dad,” “Flower Girl Etiquette,” and “Defanging Bridezilla.” The final exam would require the seminarian to actually perform a wedding. A passing grade would be possible only if the mother-in-law never made the bride cry and the crazy uncle didn’t get drunk at any point during the festivities.

The seminarian who graduates from such a practical curriculum would know a lot of useful things. But would he be educated enough for the totality of his job? Or would he be more like the Jiffy Lube technician who’s great at oil changes, but would have to watch DIY YouTube videos to attempt anything beyond preventative maintenance?

My contention is that knowing the full gamut of biblical, systematic, and historical theology—and how all this fits into the framework of church history—is essential for every seminary student. It is not enough just to gain proficiency in pastoral skills. The truly educated pastor needs the full equipping that a theological education can provide. Here are three reasons why I believe pastors need to study theology and church history.

Everything is theological.

The day-to-day obligations of a pastor are never isolated “skills” that can be separated from theology. Are you setting up your church’s budget? That isn’t simply about spreadsheets and accounting and paying the electric bill. You immediately find yourself in the territory of wise stewardship, ethical financial integrity, and biblical generosity. What has the Christian church had to say (hint: it’s a lot!) about the tension between a theology of beauty (spending money on aesthetics) vs. a theology of social justice (spending money on the vast human needs around us)? Or take the examples I gave above of baptism, communion, weddings, or funerals. Each of these rites is making a theological statement of some kind. The pastor had better know how to address these issues from a theoretical viewpoint that fits with the Bible. These aren’t kid games here; they are profoundly theological moments with eternal ramifications on the line.

Christians stand within a larger story.

It is all too easy to view your church as unique. This strokes our ego, letting us believe the fiction that we’ve found a new way to do church that no one else has discovered. But it isn’t true. You are part of a trajectory.

Just like modern doctors are connected to Hippocrates, or modern writers are connected to Shakespeare—each standing within a medical or literary tradition—so modern pastors stand in the tradition of churchmen like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Edwards. You are part of a historic community whether you acknowledge it or not. The only question is whether you will participate in your tradition like a relay racer getting your turn with the baton, or ignore it with the willful arrogance that only pride can produce. Wiser men than you have grappled with the pastoral issues you now face. Do they have nothing to teach you? And beyond your own pastoral vocation, remember that all Christians are part of the saga of church history. Every believer participates in “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Do you see it as part of your ministry to pass on the sound doctrines of the faith to the next generation? You should! The apostle Paul says that a pastor “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). But you can’t do this if you’ve never learned sound theology yourself!

Pastors guard the boundaries.

One of the most important aspects of Christianity—all too often forgotten today—is its insistence on making firm truth claims. The truth is often hard to find, while error runs rampant. This means a lot of ideas in the culture are sheer garbage, and some of them are downright devilish. The apostle Paul is very forceful in 1 Timothy 4 when he urges his protégé, and all subsequent pastors after him, to avoid the “doctrine of demons” (v. 1). “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths,” Paul urges (v. 7). Instead, the pastor is to be “trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed” and to “put these things before the brothers” (v. 6). This role of guardianship is at the core of a pastor’s responsibilities. The word pastor simply means shepherd, and one of the primary biblical motifs is protection of the flock from wolves (Ezek. 34:8; Acts 20:28–29). These wolves usually prey on Christians not by causing them physical harm—though that can happen in persecution contexts—but through doctrinal attacks.

The people in a church are rarely going to be as theologically educated as their pastor. It is your job to know true doctrines from false, like the expert in money printing who can easily spot the marks of a counterfeit. Then, knowing sound doctrine, you should banish heresy from the sheepfold that God has entrusted to you. Part of being a godly pastor is to be the Theologian-in-Chief for your sheep.

Is gaining this expertise going to be easy? Hardly. The theological disciplines, along with the original languages, are usually the hardest part of a seminary curriculum. Believe me, I understand that theology and church history can be hard to study. I was the guy giving out those exams for many years. I’ve seen the abundance of tears that a grade of F can produce! (Some go-getters will even cry over a B+.) But arduous though it may be, studying theology in the context of church history will pay long-lasting dividends in the life of a pastor. It gives him a total education so that he understands how all the parts are connected.

You wouldn’t expect mere pragmatic knowledge from the mechanic who repairs your car, much less from the surgeon who cracks opens your rib cage and operates on your heart. You demand holistic understanding from them: an integrated knowledge of how the whole car works, or how the entire human body is put together. If we require comprehensive expertise from the practitioners of these human techniques, how much more should we demand the highest level of education from our pastors? After all, every other occupation deals with transient affairs that last only the length of a lifetime. But pastors care for eternal souls that will one day give an account to God!

Dr. Bryan Litfin, author of Getting to Know the Church Fathers, was Professor of Theology at Moody Bible Institute for sixteen years, and now works as an acquisition editor at Moody Publishers. His writing ranges from scholarly works in patristics to historical fiction. Bryan has a Th.M. from Dallas Seminary and a Ph.D. in ancient Christianity from the University of Virginia. He and his wife Carolyn live in Wheaton, Illinois. His website is www.bryanlitfin.com.