In a recent article for Pastors.com, Brian Jones points out that you don\u2019t have to choose between pragmatism and theological scholarship. He points out four steps his church has taken to protect the theological integrity of his church:<\/p>\n
1. Part of the screening process for paid staff members, as well as potential elders is a questionnaire with an extensive list of theological questions.<\/strong> That sets the tone right from the start, letting any potential team member know we are just as interested in their understanding of the Arminian\/Calvinist question as we are in their ability to cast vision.<\/p>\n 2. Our staff reads books together on a regular basis.<\/strong> From time to time we\u2019ve inserted business books like Good to Great<\/em> or Organizing Genius<\/em> into the mix. Just as frequently, if not more, we\u2019ve read books such as James Dunn\u2019s Jesus\u2019 Call to Discipleship<\/em>. Soon I\u2019m going to have everyone work through Michael Green\u2019s Evangelism in the Early Church<\/em>. His first two chapters should be required reading for any staff.<\/p>\n 3. We\u2019ve laid down the expectation for all ministry staff that furthering their theological education is essential and mandatory.<\/strong> This is particularly important for churches that have a staff such as ours who were all entirely hired from within the church. Of course, because it is mandatory, the church pays for it. However, we think this is an investment that will pay rich dividends for years to come. In 2016, I\u2019m hiring a retired seminary professor to lead one-day intensives for our staff, every other month, on different biblical and theological topics.<\/p>\n 4. We purposely try not to dumb our services down theologically.<\/strong> In yesterday\u2019s sermon I quoted German theologian Martin Niemoller, went into the Greek origins of a word in a passage, and shared a story from the \u201cConfessing Church\u201d of the Nazi resistant movement. A non-churched, irreligious, spiritually blank-slate guy walked out the door, winked at me and said, \u201cBest one yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Brian says, \u201cAs a pragmatist, it\u2019s just been my experience that people far from God, as well as those within the flock love being a part of a church that is focused on going deep as much as it is wide.\u201d (Read the full article here.)<\/p>\n In a recent article for Pastors.com, Brian Jones points out that you don\u2019t have to choose between pragmatism and theological scholarship. He points out four steps his church has taken to protect the theological integrity of his church: 1. Part of the screening process for paid staff members, as well as potential elders is a … Continue reading “4 Steps to Protecting Your Church’s Theological Integrity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}