Introducing Practical Theology

Mission, Ministry, and the Life of the Church

Ward, Pete

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781493410835
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This introduction to the field of practical theology reclaims a theological vision for the life and work of the church. Pete Ward dispels the myth that practical theology is a distraction from the "real" tasks of ministry or from serious academic theological work. He argues that practical theology is part of the everyday life of the church and that there are a variety of possible approaches, helping readers evaluate the approach that is most appropriate to their ministerial context and theological tradition. This reliable, accessible resource will work well for those in training or in ministry.

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Practical Theology as the Ordinary Life of the Church

“So what kind of theologian are you?” asked the US immigration officer with my passport in his hand.

“A practical theologian,” I said.

“I didn’t think any theology was practical,” he replied.

I was not sure if this had to do strictly with security, but I spoke my mind. “I like to think that all theology can be practical.”

He smiled in a way that seemed to imply I was clearly deluded, and he let me into the country.

Whatever the immigration officer thought, there is such a thing as practical theology—with its own distinctive theories, methods, and literature. This book is a guide to this field. In the 1950s one of the key figures in the contemporary development of practical theology in the United States, Seward Hiltner, talked about a “pastoral perspective” in theology. What he meant was that there was a way of seeing that came from pastoral practice.1 The pastoral perspective, he argued, gives a distinctive shape to theological study. So while there are the traditional theological disciplines of biblical studies, church history, Christian ethics, and systematic theology, there is also a way of doing theology that arises from and seeks to inform the pastoral practice of the church. Those who adopt this pastoral perspective do biblical studies and systematic theology and so on, but they do them in a distinctive way. They foreground the questions and issues that come out of their ministry. So the pastoral perspective involves a kind of theology that tries to critique and inform the pastoral practice of the church.

In more recent times, there has been a tendency to downplay the link to pastoral ministry. Practical theology, it has been argued, should never be the sole preserve of clergy, but Hiltner’s suggestion that there is a pastoral perspective makes a great deal of sense. This perspective is not limited to professional clergy or to pastoral ministry; it is much broader than that. It is a perspective that comes from the practice of faith in all its forms and with all its questions and challenges.

Theology and Practice

Saying that all theology can be pastorally oriented or practical is one thing; working through what this actually means is another thing entirely. It is, for instance, quite possible to turn this assertion on its head and say that Christian practice itself is inherently and profoundly theological. If theology can be practical, then practice is also theological. Practical theology is situated in this web of interrelated possibilities and issues. The truth is that the word “theology” itself is complex. When we try to combine theology with practice, things become even more complicated. Complexity is not necessarily a problem to be solved; it is just the way things are. Rowan Williams says that the theologian always starts “in the middle of things.”2 Being in the middle means that there is no defined starting point or clear methodology for theology. We are simply where we are. Most significantly, every believer is situated in the life, thought, and practices of a community. Theologians learn to think about God by sharing in a communal conversation that characterizes church. So while practical theology may be complex and at times hard to pin down, a clue to making any sense of it lies in what it means to be in the middle of the Christian community.

American practical theologian Bonnie Miller-McLemore identifies four uses of the term practical theology. Practical theology, she says, is an academic discipline among scholars, and it is an activity of faith undertaken by believers. Practical theology is also a method for thinking and a subject area in a curriculum. These different “enterprises,” as she calls them, are distinct. They have different audiences and ways of operating, but they are also interconnected. So while practical theology refers to the activity in the church in which believers “sustain a life of reflective faith in the everyday,” it is also a specific method or a way of understanding theology in practice.3 This method shapes the way that practical theology is taught as part of the curriculum in theological education.

Each of these ways of understanding practical theology suggests a different location, from congregation and community to daily life, and from the library to fieldwork and the classroom. These four understandings, says Miller-McLemore, are not to be seen as mutually exclusive. They are connected and interdependent. Together they show the range and complexity of practical theology. “Practical theology is multivalent. It appears in a broad array of spaces and places.” Yet although it is clearly a discipline within the academy with related methods and curriculum, the ultimate purpose of practical theology, she says, lies in the pursuit of an “embodied Christian faith.”4 Practical theology in its different shapes and forms finds its basic orientation in the life of the church. It is never an end in itself. So while it may have the usual kinds of academic expectations and ways of working, it is always operating in relation to the ongoing life of the Christian community. Practical theology has an ecclesial perspective and purpose.

Rowan Williams’s sense that theology always starts “in the middle” supports the idea that church is a key starting point for practical theology. Theological thought, he suggests, operates in three different ways: celebration, communication, and critique. Theology begins as celebration. To celebrate, says Williams, is to make use of language to express, in the deepest and most profound way, the richness of God. Celebration is seen in liturgy, in hymn writing, and in preaching, but it is also present in theological writing. Celebration is seen in the writing of Dante or the poetry of the fourteenth-century English peasant William Langland. It is in conventions of Byzantine iconography, and it can also be seen in some contemporary worship songs.5 Orthodox theology, says Williams, operates primarily as celebration.

Celebration, however, has a tendency to become locked in its own expression. So while there is a rigor and discipline to this work, theology as celebration can become absorbed or frozen in the cross-referencing of symbols and images. When this happens, there is a need for talk of God that attempts to persuade and commend. This is theology as communication.

Communicative theology attempts to “witness to the gospel’s capacity for being at home in more than one cultural environment.” It is a theology that sets out to show how this gospel can emerge from a sustained engagement with complex areas of thought with confidence. Communicative theology can be seen throughout Christian history. It is there in the work of the apologists Clement and Origen as they sought to “colonize” Stoic and Platonic philosophy with the Christian faith. It is there in the early English poetry of the “Dream of the Rood,” which connects a theology of the cross to Germanic themes of the hero, and it is there in more recent times in the work of liberation theologians. Communicative theology, for Williams, “involves a considerable act of trust in the theological tradition, a confidence that the fundamental categories of belief are robust enough to survive the drastic experience of immersion in other ways of constructing and construing the world.”6

Complexity and clarity have their respective problems. Communication can oversimplify or get lost in the terms and frameworks that have been borrowed from the surrounding culture. Celebration can become a closed and self-congratulatory system. Critical theology operates as a corrective to these tendencies. In the early church, Williams says, alongside the generation of doctrine was the apophatic tradition, also known as negative theology, which is an approach to theology that emphasizes the mystery of God. Negative theology, says Williams, plays a significant role simply by offering a warning note alongside the elaboration of doctrine.7 Theology in a critical mode can be either conservative or liberal. It can advocate a reevaluation of doctrine or the abandonment of long-held positions. Critical theology is not necessarily an end in itself; its purpose is, for instance, to generate a better or more nuanced kind of celebratory theological expression.

The suggestion that practical theology is evident in the life of the church as celebration, communication, and critique is significant. It introduces the idea that practical theology can be detected and undertaken in a wide range of expressions. So for instance, communicative theology might be seen in sermons and doctrines but is also evident in academic writing, hymn writing, and theater. Celebratory theology is evident in the visual arts, poetry, abstract theological writing, and many other places. Critical theology similarly exists in academic writing, but it can also be found in spiritual practices and contemplative prayer. So Williams does not limit theology to an academic discipline alone but sees it as part of the everyday conversation and communal life of the church.8

Williams’s understanding of theology offers a nuanced and creative new perspective on practical theology. It expands Miller-McLemore’s idea that practical theology exists as four enterprises. So the practical theology that can be seen in the ongoing life of the church might be at times celebration or communication, but it can also be critique. The methods that characterize practical theology might, in turn, be expanded to make room for the ways in which poets, artists, and hymn writers construct visions of God. Practical theology should never be reduced to a topic for an assignment or a thesis for examination. The academic curriculum needs to start by exploring how believers are already and always practical theologians because they are in the “middle.” So, while there is a discipline that we call practical theology, with teachers, conferences, and academic journals, these only make sense as they are seen in relation to the church. This basically is Hiltner’s point. There is a perspective that comes from being engaged in the life of the church. This perspective for Hiltner is “pastoral”; we might add “missional” or “political,” but the point is that these are derived from a location within the Christian community. This is what makes practical theology practical, and, more crucially, it is what makes practical theology theological.

Practical Theology in the Life of the Church

Most people, even if they have been part of the church for some time, have never heard that there is such a thing as practical theology. So the first encounter they have with the term comes when they sign up for some kind of theological study. This experience of practical theology as part of formal theological education actually gives a false impression because, as we have been exploring, Christians are already practical theologians simply because they are “in the middle” of the celebration, communication, and critical conversation that are characteristic of the Christian community. Church life makes each of us into wise, skilled, and highly accomplished theologians. This is what American practical theologian Craig Dykstra calls “ecclesial imagination.”9 Communities and individuals, says Dykstra, have a wisdom that comes from a shared life and history. This wisdom means that before they ever encounter the academic discipline of practical theology, believers are theologians.

At its heart, there is something ordinary and everyday about practical theology. One of the leading practical theologians in the United Kingdom, Jeff Astley, speaks about the “ordinary theology” of believers.10 From the writing of Bonnie Miller-McLemore and Rowan Williams it is clear that theology operates as a natural and everyday part of the life of the Christian community. Theology at the level of practice is “ordinary.” It is the basic way of speaking and living in the Christian community. Being a part of a church inevitably means that we share in an ongoing conversation about God. By being a disciple, believers are always engaged in trying to make sense of what it means to live the Christian life. So just by being active in the life of the church and by seeking to express a faithful Christian life in communities and the wider society, Christians are doing practical theology. There are a number of practices that can be used to further explore ordinary practical theology in the everyday life of the church. In the next section we examine five of these practices: remembering, absorbing, noticing, selecting/editing, and expressing.

Remembering

Week in and week out, through Bible reading, preaching, singing, praying, and celebrating the Eucharist, Christians remember. Remembering expresses how the church is shaped and formed by the gospel. In worship, the doctrinal and biblical ways of speaking are embodied and lifted up in performance. Worship is a practical theology, but it challenges any clear divide between practice and theology. A good example of this is the way that many churches sing contemporary worship songs. The lyrics of a particular song may be what Williams calls a “celebratory theology”; in other words, they may be a profound and moving expression of the being of God. They may also be a deliberately communicative kind of theologizing designed to convict and convince.

John Wesley, for instance, saw his hymns as a means to teach the faith. Yet what are obviously doctrinal or theological expressions in song lyrics are transformed in the act of singing. Singing animates and brings doctrine alive. It is not simply that music connects theological ideas to emotions. Something physical happens as we sing. We draw the words into ourselves and we form them with our own bodies. We feel them vibrating in the air as they are made sound by the bodies around us.

Songs and singing build communities in mysterious ways. Community itself exists as a cohabitation with those in the church, but we are also indwelt by the presence of God. Singing celebrates and enacts community. As the community sings, it remembers, and as it remembers, Jesus becomes present by the power of the Spirit. Singing as a form of remembering, therefore, is more than simply a cognitive recollection.

Singing is one of many forms of ordinary practical theology. Australian practical theologian Terry Veling says that theology only becomes comprehensible when we see it as something that indwells practice. “As the Christian community engages in the practices of prayer, study, hospitality, forgiveness,” says Veling, “we begin to deepen our understanding of what the kingdom of God is all about, and what it means to be a people of God.”11 Veling is talking about the ways in which communities collectively and individually engage in practices of remembering. Remembering is fundamentally about the gospel story. Through prayer, singing, and other kinds of practice, Christians do not simply recall what has happened in the past. The story rises up, envelops us, and takes us into itself. The presence of Christ through the Spirit lifts us and carries us in the story. As this happens, the believer is opened up to the future, transformed by the hope of the kingdom. This kind of practical theology is fundamental and basic to the life of the church. In fact, without it there would be no church at all.

Absorbing

One of the most influential figures in practical theology, Don Browning, describes the practice of the church as being “theory laden.” “By using the phrase theory-laden,” he says, “I mean to rule out in advance the widely held assumption that theory is distinct from practice. ...