Shaped for Service

Ministerial Formation and Virtue Ethics

Goodliff

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498291248
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In the English-speaking Western world alone, thousands of men and women begin formal training for Christian ministry each year, or informally, seek to equip themselves for pastoral ministry. Over the past fifty years, the ancient world of virtue ethics has been reimagined as a means of forming people of character and morality today, and in this book, it is used as the framework to understand what we are doing as we form Christian ministers now, and how we might strengthen that formation by more consciously linking the practices of ministry with the person, spirituality, and wisdom of the practitioner.Writing out of the context of a lifetime of pastoral ministry and the oversight of ministers in the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Paul Goodliff explores what pastors do and who they are called to be, using a mixture of theological and pastoral inquiry, reflections upon art, and personal story. This book will be of interest to those who are charged with forming the next generation of ministers; but anyone starting out on that journey of formation for ministry will also find this vision of ministry challenging and inspiring.

Part One

Formation and Virtue Ethics

1

Formation for Ministry

This is a book about Christian ministry and its formation. Thousands of people each year embark upon this adventure, seeking to prepare themselves, or be prepared by others, to serve the worldwide church as its ministers, and about two thousand of those do so in Britain. What is this role, or rather, vocation, they envisage they will fulfil, and just how can a woman or a man be formed to serve Christ and his church? There are plenty of people who think that a little sanctified common sense will suffice, and in an age where it is assumed that “anybody can” (a common subtext in educational vernacular), the idea of the robust, challenging, and transformative process that ministerial formation should be is often met with mild suspicion or outright hostility. It smacks too much of a professionalized elite, withholding arcane information from others. The French postmodernist philosopher Foucault has popularized the notion that the acquisition of all knowledge is a bid for power, and the clergy are supposed to be no different.

This is especially true when theological educators begin to build the curriculum comprising areas for study considered essential in every ministerial education: learning the biblical languages, studying the Fathers, grasping the breadth of church history (notably that of the tradition to which each belongs), acquiring knowledge of philosophy, pastoral psychology, systematic theology or dogmatics, Christian ethics, biblical studies, and contemporary culture. There is much else besides deemed essential by special interest groups. Those engaged in urban mission think every ministerial student should be taught its principles, while their rural counterparts are equally passionate about their context. Church planters see their calling as the future of the church, so all students must be exposed to pioneer situations, and experience of overseas mission is obviously beneficial in a global world for a church with a global mission. If every aspect were included I guess theological education and ministerial formation would last seven or eight years, not the two to four it currently occupies (Roman Catholics excepted).

Brian Harris, writing of a conversation with theological educators from around the world, gathered at a Lausanne Forum for World Evangelization working group in 2004, describes the various components of an adequate theological education, and concludes,

It highlights the difficult task facing all theological educators. Their training is expected to produce Hebrew, Greek and Patristic scholars who are capable of ensuring that all in leadership positions have police and working-with-children checks while they rapidly plant growing churches filled with new converts eager to be disciples as they worship in contemporary and contextually relevant ways.1

For many Protestants such training seems excessively academic, while Catholics will have their own prejudices about what a good priest needs to know and do, and reading the Old Testament in Hebrew is probably not on the list. One approach to ministerial formation is, therefore, the minimalist approach, and this currency is all-too widespread in its circulation. The emphasis is upon basic skills acquisition for ministry, with a minimum of academic knowledge, just sufficient to preach an interesting sermon liberally laced with humorous stories. All of this could be acquired at the hands of an experienced and effective practitioner, so the necessity of a dedicated theological institution is avoided, with all of its expensive delivery costs and capital investment in buildings and resources, as well as the delay in getting hands-on experience and beginning to “do ministry.”

Another concern is the relationship of the curriculum, be it academic or practical, to the wider church that its products—pastors and ministers—are being called to serve. Such is the pressure upon theological colleges and seminaries from their academic validating bodies (generally in Britain a University generous enough to validate external Higher Education institutes) that sometimes the prime task of forming ministers can become subservient to maintaining the partnership with the academy. So, theological curricula can reflect the concerns of the academy (and those who teach it, who wish to maintain their credibility within the academy) rather than the concerns of the churches that receive the ministers they commend. In addition, all of this can hide the mistake of forming “useful” ministers for a church eager to be seen as contributing to society, rather than truthful ministers with a passion for the church to first of all be itself. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon write (albeit into the North American scene),

When seminaries do not get direction from congregations, they will go their own way—usually the wrong way. Our seminaries still arrange their curricula as if the world had not changed. In imitation of the secular university systems they aspire to be accepted by, our seminaries offer future pastors a mix of a little this, and a little that, psychology here, organizational management there, a little Bible, a little ethics. After all, we don’t want our pastors to be narrow-minded or ignorant; in other words, we want them to be fully conversant in all aspects of modern American culture. Our curriculum is structured to produce people who can help the church continue to “serve the world” by putting a vaguely Christian tint upon the world’s ways of salvation.2

A basic question must be, therefore, what is formation for? I am not arguing for an uneducated ministry, or a poorly trained ministry: far from it. But I am asking the question whether the current strategies of the churches for their survival are working: whether a great deal of our social action, designed to make the churches seem acceptable to a secular and multi-faith society, actually brings people to faith in Christ and deep conformity to his way and image. If the church is a faintly religious voluntary arm of social services, all well and good. And that is how the prevailing political culture wants the church to be: useful to its own agendas, but subservient. Woe betide if it speaks prophetically about the reasons why those services are necessary in the first place. That is “meddling in politics” when it should be “saving souls.” But the church is something else entirely: it is the community of Christ crucified; a “colony of heaven” residing here on earth; a people formed by Scripture and sacrament to worship Jesus Christ as Lord, and reject the pretensions of Caesar to the lordship of human lives, be that Augustus Caesar of the first century, or the many Caesars of our own day. Such are the claims of the nation state for our absolute allegiance, or the gods of the international bond markets and their addiction to economic growth as our masters. If the church is truly to be the church of Jesus Christ, then it needs ministers who have been formed, not just as educated professionals, but as perceptive and courageous prophets and compassionate and confident pastors.

I may seem critical of the current approach to ministerial formation (and indeed, to an extent, I am) but I have been partly the product of such an approach. Having been a schoolmaster for four years following University, I was appointed Full-time Elder at a large charismatic Baptist church in South London. I had no formal theological education, and no senior staff colleagues initially (thank God for the appointment of my senior colleague nine months into the role), and faced major pastoral challenges from day one following a visit by John Wimber to the church during the weekend that preceded my first day in post. To say it was high octane, high-risk ministry is no exaggeration. I am not sure whether I am more impressed by the trust that this church placed in me or appalled by the sheer folly of what they thought they were doing in calling such a young and inexperienced pastor!

By the time, two years later, when I finally started at theological college (which had not really figured in my original plan—my arrogance was breath-taking), I had considerable experience of ministry, but little grounding in knowledge beyond that of a reasonably well-discipled Christian. Four years later I was a probationer Baptist minister, with a voracious appetite for theology, and a rather more “formed” minister. I guess the most one might say was that this was an appropriate pathway for me, but not one that I would entirely endorse for most. The church was large enough to hold a very green and young minister, and most do not have that context in which to learn their craft.

As will become evident, if I am critical of the minimalist approach, I am also critical of the current normal delivery of formation. Where a two to four year course at seminary or theological college is considered sufficient, I believe this is inadequate. There needs to be a recognition that formation begins long before embarking upon a college course, and that it continues long after the course has been completed. Indeed, life-long learning has become de rigueur amongst many professions, and life-long formation is the reality for all ministry. Brian Harris notes,

In an ideal world, those sensing a call to ministry, would, like the early disciples, leave their ne...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Ministerial Formation and Virtue Ethics
• Part One: Formation and Virtue Ethics
• Part Two: Models of Ministerial Formation
• Part Three: Forming the Person
• Part Four: Forming the Practices of Ministry
• Bibliography