The Pastor Theologians Podcast
A theology podcast for the church. The pastor theologians podcast consists of conversations and teaching resources at the intersection of theological scholarship and life and ministry in the local church. The vision for this show is to help equip pastors to be theologians for today’s complex world.
The Pastor Theologians Podcast
The Sermon, Discipleship, and the Life of the Church | Jonathan Bailes (Preaching and the Pastor Theologian Episode 4)
Joel Lawrence and Matt Kim speak with Anglican priest and theologian Jonathan Bailes about the deep connection between preaching, discipleship, and the daily life of the church. Bailes reflects on the formative role of preaching within a liturgical tradition, emphasizing that the sermon is not commentary on current events but an encounter with the living voice of God that continually calls the church to remembrance amid spiritual forgetfulness. Drawing on Scripture, church history, and pastoral experience, he argues that discipleship is shaped less by novelty and more by steady saturation in God’s Word—through preaching, liturgy, and practices that help Christians hear, understand, and be formed by Scripture. The conversation ultimately invites pastors to reclaim confidence in the simple, repeated proclamation of the gospel as the heart of Christian formation.
When we do want to preach prophetically and powerfully to our moment, and that's needed, then we often do it by preaching prophetically to power that's outside of the room. The unintended effect of sometimes our prophetic preaching is it just reinforces the kind of self-righteous feeling that, you know, well, good, the wicked out there, they're they're out there, and we're on the side of the righteous.
SPEAKER_03:Matt, good to see you again. How are you doing? Hey, Joel. Doing great. How about yourself? Doing well, doing well, thank you. So we're continuing on with our uh uh uh preaching in the pastor theologian series that we're doing. Uh, we're to episode four today, which is uh called The Sermon, Discipleship and the Life of the Church. And our special guest that folks will be hearing from here in just a second is Jonathan Bales, who uh serves as the senior associate rector and canon theologian of Christ Church Cathedral in Plano, Texas. I've always envied that title of canon theologian, I must confess. So Jonathan has an Mdiv from Beeson Divinity School, a PhD from Boston College. We'll hear a little bit about his journey uh at the beginning of the podcast here. But we wanted to talk to him as we're doing this series on theology of preaching and thinking about preaching more embedded in the in theology and in the life of the church. We wanted to bring Jonathan on to talk about the relationship between preaching and discipleship, to think about how these ministries are connected to each other in the life of the church. And given his role, uh, we think he's uniquely suited for uh this conversation. But before we hear from Jonathan, Matt, I'd love just to ask you to kind of reflect on your own pastoral ministry, how how you understand the relationship between preaching and discipleship, how that shaped you as a pastor, and now how that's shaping you as one who is discipling preachers, who is who is training preachers.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's that's really good. I think uh it's shifted a little bit over the years when I was a pastor versus now as a teacher of preachers. Uh I go really back to uh the Great Commission and where Jesus uh telling us that we are to baptize and teach uh all disciples to uh obey everything I have commanded you. And I think in our culture of uh people being wary of authority, uh we're a little bit timid of telling people that this is what holiness looks like, this is what a righteous life looks like, this is what obedience to Christ looks like. And that part of the formation process, I think, in some circles has been let go of. And I think we need to reclaim that, that sense of we are called to look like Jesus in every part of our lives. And so part of the formation of teaching preachers these days is to remember that uh my phrase is basically we need to preach with backbones, that we're not capitulating to culture, and that the word of God is central to all that we do. And part of that means, uh, as Jonathan talks about uh in in the podcast, uh the sense of moral delivery of what God has called us to be and to do as his disciples. Uh this moral sense of agency that we can live a Christ-like existence. So those are some things that come to my mind, Joel. How about you?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think for for me, um in pastoring, it was kind of the the way in which at least my tradition can make Sunday morning to be disconnected from the rest of the life of the church. And and me thinking through in a in a low church kind of Baptist world where I've pastored, we we we don't tend to think deeply about the relationship of the sermon to the rest of the rhythm of the life of the church. And I think that for me became kind of a recognition that that I we we are losing something in the discipleship ministry if if we're putting so much on Sunday morning, but not really embedding the total life, the the sermon in the in the total life of the church. And so I think for me, thinking about what would that really look like for me in my context, and one of the reasons we wanted Jonathan for this is he's in a liturgical tradition. And I think there's some things there that we can learn from that. So uh looking forward to to the having folks hear the conversation, and uh so we'll roll it now. This is Jonathan Bales thinking about the sermon, discipleship, and the life of the church. Jonathan, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on. Thanks. It's an honor to be here. Yeah, good. So why don't we begin? We we we we have you on to talk about uh kind of preaching and discipleship, the idea of how the sermon kind of can be embedded in the in the larger life of the church. Um, but before we dive into that, would love to just uh have you introduce yourself to the folks who are listening. Tell us a little bit about your journey, where you're from, um, educational journey and and what you're doing today.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. So um I am originally from Spartanburg, South Carolina, and uh grew up in the church. My uh couple different denominations, but um evangelical church. My parents started a church when I was young, and that's where I was discipled. It's where I was raised.
SPEAKER_03:Um were they like lay lay people starting a church, or were they church planters pastoring a church?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, lay people. Uh my father's a medical doctor, but um always been very involved. And uh so it was interesting for for years. Uh it was a fairly small church, and many years we didn't really even have an employed pastor. It was led by by lay people. Um, and then uh sometimes we did. Um, so uh, you know, my experience was very much church was you were there every week, you were there early, uh, you were there to help, um, but you didn't have like real high expectations of like the quality of of music or preaching or something like that. But it was a really wonderful experience. I I was discipled very well there. And then um uh I went to uh seminary, um, had a kind of sense of a call to ministry from a fairly young age, but it what exactly that meant, I think, was a little ambiguous. For a long time, I thought it probably meant some sort of foreign missions. I think because I met some missionaries when I was young, and I I was just uh deeply compelled by them and I admired them, I wanted to be like them. And then in college, you know, I kind of discovered a love of learning, and I had professors who really inspired me and I wanted to be like them. So, you know, I thought, well, maybe I'll do some sort of missions with um, you know, some form of teaching intellectual history. But uh for seminary, I went to to Beeson Divinity School, which is a very uh reformational seminary, and uh it's a great introduction, I think, to to the theology and spirit spirit of the Protestant tradition.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And uh and Beeson also has a does a really wonderful job at for Protestant students helping us to see how uh the early and the medieval church is also very much a part of our heritage. And uh and so the sort of broader Catholic tradition, and I became very, very influenced there again by some professors, but also by some uh almost all the professors there were ordained ministers in their own denominations. And I was in an Anglican church at the time, but uh but I really think it was at Beeson that I began to have models that inspired me to want to be a pastor. So looking back on my life, it's it's always sort of people I meet uh that I want to become like. And and that's how, at least for me, God has sort of helped me to discern. And um, and then and then after Beson, I ended up going on to Boston College, uh, sort of got to kind of experience the Catholic intellectual tradition, more focused, especially on early Christian theology, and did some teaching there for undergrads, which I really loved, and then had a at an Anglican church. I was ordained Anglican minister, had an Anglican church. There's a large Anglican church in Texas, which I'd never thought about living in Texas at all. Contacted me and said, Hey, we we we would love for you to essentially do what you're doing at BC, focusing on teaching, but do it in the context of the church, which is sort of everything at that point I had wanted to do. I really wanted to do pastoral ministry. Um, I love teaching, but I didn't see myself as an academic. And so to be able to have a church.
SPEAKER_03:Sorry, did you have a connection to the church, or is it was this just kind of a an out-of-the-blue kind of a contact?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it was a little out of the blue. At that point in my diocese, there were a couple churches that had tried to sort of create positions for me, but but a lot of those churches were smaller, they were a little under-resourced, great churches, seemed to make more sense, like in university towns and stuff, but just didn't have the funds. Right. And but it's, you know, I'm I'm a part of a pretty small denomination, so everybody knows everybody. Um, and typically, you know, if you want to hire somebody, it's a lot of word of mouth. And so this this is a very prominent church in our denomination. And it was, you know, a mentor of mine who was connected to uh the senior pastor there who texted me and said, Hey, do you want to go to this church? So you've been there for how long now? So uh right about seven years I've been there now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And to just describe your role a little bit, because that has impact or or or import to what we're talking about here today.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, right. So my my um I do you know wide variety of things there, helping to oversee pastoral care. I do a lot of pastoral care um as as a priest, um, help obviously serve liturgically in a number of ways, help to um work with and oversee some of the clergy. But my main role there is that I focus on uh adult formation, mostly through um adult education. So I do a lot, I oversee, but but really I do a large majority of the teaching for adults at the church. Preaching, I I preach on a pretty regular basis. Um we have we I think we have somewhere around six or seven hundred of our adults that are in small groups. And so every week for them, I I create a 15 to 20 minute video of teaching um and you know, and sort of guides for discussion and things like that. So I I do uh thankfully I get an opportunity to teach a lot of people, but in a strange way where I'm kind of doing it in a film studio and then they're they're actually watching and and discussing it um in their own time.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Asynchronous teaching. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Thanks for sharing that uh background, Jonathan. Uh as you've studied patristic and the medieval uh traditions, what themes do you think have emerged for you in your uh thinking and calling as a pastor?
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question. Um I think it was about my maybe my fourth year at BC. So I was finished my comps, working on my dissertation, and my uh advisor, who's also um ordained, he's ordained in the Melkite Catholic Church, um, who was an Egyptian uh man. And I uh I was telling him, you know, kind of confessing to him, hey, I I don't actually plan on pursuing a career in academia. I want to go into the church, you know, which a normal university department doesn't really know what to do with you, if that's if that's your goal. But he was really wonderful and he said, you know, you should you should think of your dissertation. I wrote my dissertation on Gregory of Nyssa and how Gregory thinks about his sort of his nicene formal theology of the perfection of God and um and and how that relates to the narrative of Christ. And I wrote about how that ends up influencing his conception of human nature, of of virtue in the in in the human life, and of the spiritual life. So kind of how his spirituality and his ethics and his theology all interrelate. And Khalid said, you really need to think about this as a as you know, helping you prepare to be a pastor. And so I think one of that's one of the big things I I took away and and I think is a real strength in a lot of patristic and medieval theology. This was an observation that Hans Ers von Balthazar had made about patristic and medieval theology, but especially patristic theology, that there is this deep interrelationship between uh between theological reflection and the spiritual life and the moral life. That these things are inextricable in a sense. Um, Greg Ribnaziantis very much talks about that in his you think about these we read these orations that he writes, which we call the theological orations, and we read them in seminary classrooms or in seminars, and we analyze them, but but they're actually sermons that were all preached in a church. And and there's sermons because Gregory thinks that that sort of formal deep reflection on the nature of God revealed in the person of Christ is at the heart of the spiritual life.
SPEAKER_03:So I I yeah, I think those are such important themes. I I I did a my one of my uh my emphil was on Saint Bonaventure and uh his his work, The The Journey of the Mind to God. And and I read it as a as a formation of pastors text. When normally in the academy it would be read as a philosophy text, and it was just really fascinating interacting around um you know, reading it more pastorally than we tend to in the academy. And and but that was the original intent. That was the original purpose of it was to form pastors, to form priests, and to form.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, you you you even think about, you know, bot Bonaventure has his his Summa, but you think about his contemporary Thomas, uh, you know, who wrote the most famous Summa from the Middle Ages. Yeah and it's overwhelming when you read it, but it it was written to help Dominican uh friars who were gonna preach.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. Yes, and I think this is part of the the movement that we're all a part of in different ways of of repositioning theology in the church. And it and it's just different when it's repositioned in the life of the church in in some very good ways. So, all right. So, so kind of now, great to hear your story. Uh, super helpful to kind of fill in that background. Transitioning to the conversation we want to have here for the next little while around preaching and discipleship, and it's kind of at a high-level starting point. One of the comments that I hear often from pastors uh is something to the effect of I only have 35 minutes a week to teach my congregation through the sermon. The world kind of gets them the rest of the time. And there's kind of this idea of there's just massive input imbalance, right? I get them 35 minutes. Maybe if they're in a small group, we get a little bit more time than that. Mostly like Sunday nights and Wednesday nights have dropped off. So the rest of the world, the rest of the time, they're looking at uh cable news, they're looking at billboards, they're going to malls, they're going all kinds of places. I just would be curious, as we're, you know, kind of leaning in to think about preaching and discipleship and the life of the church. What are your thoughts on that kind of framing of thinking about this? Of we get this amount of time, the rest of the world gets way more time. There seems uh I I've just kind of heard a bit of a defeatist kind of a mindset coming through that. And I would just be curious your your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I so first I think it's very understandable the the that feeling. And I think that um I think that scripture itself, you know, affirms this, that there's a there's a great danger in the spiritual life, which is not primarily, it seems to me, one of the amount, you know, how how do you judge the amount of information that you're receiving from one source to another? But the but the great spiritual danger to me seems to be forgetfulness. That we are profoundly forgetful creatures. And you see it, of course, the entire book of Deuteronomy, um, you know, is the longest sermon ever. Uh, but but it's this this whole call to remembrance of things that you already know, yeah, but but that you're inclined to forget, and then this admonishment to think about them all the time, take really practical steps to think about them all the time. And it seems to me that you know, I was I was thinking about this um with a with a group that I participated with. We were having a discussional preaching kind of uh ecumenical pastors group. But what Paul says in in Philippians 3 when he says that to write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it's a safeguard. And if you think about it, Paul um, I mean, of course, he has to address new things that arise. You know, when he writes to the Corinthians, he is addressing some really specific things that have arisen since his time there with them, since he's left. But also he's really just repeating himself a lot. I mean, Paul just kind of says the same thing over and over again. And to sometimes he's writing to communities where he doesn't really know them, but sometimes he's writing to communities where he spent a long time with them and presumably said these same things to them multiple times in person. And I think sometimes that that defeatist feeling that we can get maybe sometimes it arises from a genuine concern about how much people are being formed by listening to voices other than the voice of God. But I think sometimes maybe it arises from a misplaced concern that what we need to do is we need to sort of have equal time weighing in on all these other things that people might be thinking about. When in reality, a lot of what we do in preaching is not trying to address every new thing that's come about, or you know, trying to give some informed opinion about things. It's just reminding people in different ways of the same thing over and over and over and over again. And historically, of course, like the in past times, you know, issues of technology and distraction and the amount of information with which we're confronted are all unique in our time. Yeah. But if you think about the amount of time that people went to church, it's not that different. So it so this isn't a a radically new situation that we're facing.
SPEAKER_02:The importance of reminding uh brings me to a book that one of my colleagues in the past had written. Jeff Arthur's wrote a book called Preaching as Reminding. And basically the premise is the same that we are forgetful creatures and and we're always needing uh reminder from the pastor. So that's really helpful uh to bring that image to mind, Jonathan. Uh let's let's shift to your role as a pastor. Some of the things that you do uh and you focus on concern adult formation. So tell us about that and and what have been some of the joys and challenges of working with the church and forming them as disciples.
SPEAKER_00:I have a uh unique role, I think, um, at least among people I know in my own denomination, and um one that that a lot of friends uh who have a similar background have told me that they're very envious of, and I understand that's a real blessing. But you know, I have a role where uh a majority uh or at least a large part of what I do uh uh week to week is I do a lot of teaching uh and and preaching, but a lot of teaching for adults. And uh, and so I I create weekly studies where I teach uh a lot of the adults in our church, and I go through um, you know, studies of biblical books, of topics sometime. I always I think of a lot of what I do in terms of catechesis. So there's formal catechesis, of course, you know, teaching the essentials of faith, and that's one thing I do. I teach an eight-week course twice a year to people who are new to our church that everyone's required to go through. And that goes over, you know, the kind of essentials and focuses on the creed, what we believe and the Ten Commandments, the moral life and the Lord's prayer, the spiritual life. But I think of those three categories of of uh Christian belief, of ethics, of the life of prayer and worship. And I try to think about those with all of my studies and how am I doing that? I kind of go back and forth from New Testament to Old Testament, occasionally topics. Um, but a lot of my formation is not really one-on-one discipleship. I mean, I do meet with people a lot one-on-one, but a lot of the way I do formation is not really one-on-one discipleship. It is through teaching and preaching. And that doesn't do, you know, there that that doesn't do everything. Um, there's a lot of strength to kind of relational discipleship. But I was, you know, I I think that when I I remember back in seminary, especially, a couple early books that were really influential for me in thinking about theology, and I think helped me when I ended up going on and pursuing further education. Like, what is it that's so valuable about this? One of them was uh Kevin Van Hooser's book, The Drama of Doctrine. Remember the big orange book, I think.
SPEAKER_03:The Great Pumpkin, he calls it.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Um and and then and another book which was somewhat similar uh by Ellen Cherry was by The Renewing of Your Minds, the pastoral Christian of Christian Doctrine. That's a great book. Yeah. And both of them did an excellent job at giving me a vision for how is it that people are formed as disciples through theology and doctrine, and and as you know, Ellen Cherry says, drawing on Romans 12, by by the renewal of your minds. Um in the way that teaching and preaching this ministry that I have, it's it's not it's not simply for information, it's not to satisfy curiosity or or speculation. Um it is to to it is in some way to change people's entire imagination about the way they understand themselves, their place in the world, the time in which they live, um, you know, and that uh in in order to enable them to act. Um so yeah, I don't I I don't know if that's I I think I started with some practical things and ended up very abstract at the end there. We love it. We love it.
SPEAKER_03:Hey, we're we're we're pastor theologians, right? This is this is how this works. Well, I l let's dig into this a little bit more. Uh um particularly, you know, you talked about the your your work of teaching and preaching. How do you distinguish those? Well, a question that often has come up in our conversations is what like theologically, what's the difference between, say, teaching a Sunday school class and preaching from the pulpit? Um, so talk to us about how you kind of understand that. And then how do those, if you do differentiate them, if you don't, how are those working together in discipleship, in your in your vision of what discipleship is, how are those feeding into that work? I think you you started on some themes there, but I like to dig in a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:No, I think that's very helpful. So I don't know how well I can articulate this distinction, teaching and preaching. I think that they feel very different to me. Um so so in teaching, um, I think I have a I think in when I think of teaching, first off, my my sense of what I'm doing is much broader. Um, that, like I said, I'm kind of thinking about um catechesis. I'm thinking about everything from ethics to the life of prayer to understanding of God. Um, another thing I do is I I have a monthly group where we read classic. Well, we did for a long time. It was called Reading with the Saints because we were reading sort of patristic, medieval, early modern spiritual theological classics. This uh semester it's been all 20th century fiction. Um, you know, so one of my participants the other day said, What happened to the saints that we were reading? Um but but in in in thinking of that, of teaching, um, in that sense, you know, I'm kind of thinking about the whole of the Christian life and uh and and how is it that that that um scripture helps us to understand the world around us. But preaching, I think I have a just a narrower sense of what that is, and probably part of it is because of my own the tradition in which I minister. So so preaching for me comes in the context of a liturgy. Um it can be a morning prayer or evening prayer service, um, or most often it's it's a service of holy communion. Um and so within that I think of so I so experientially when I stand up to preach, there's a different feeling that's unlike any other. There's a feeling of confidence and authority, not because I think I've put so much more effort into this and my content is so excellent, but because I really do have some kind of sense that I am the mouthpiece for the voice of God in this moment. So for me, preaching is very much when we together are listening to and encountering the living voice of God.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh the preaching of the word of God is the word of God. And I also think for that sense that when I think about preaching, I think of it as, you know, this kind of preaching as reminding, preaching as remembering, it is once again encountering the gospel. Um uh the the people of God are once again sort of encountering, um, encountering Christ, encountering the gospel. And in the same way that the liturgy forms us by having us once again sort of um become aware of and acknowledge our deep need for mercy and our failures, once again hear the promises of God to us, and then respond with faith and hope and love. That's, I think, what I think of when I think of preaching, that it's not an opportunity of me to sort of give commentary on any number of things, that I'm not there really to just sort of, you know, speculate or think about what scripture might have to say about this or that, that preaching is more, the the preaching is more focused than that. And that preaching is this serious matter of coming again into the presence of the living God and recognizing who we are, our deep need for his mercy and grace, and then hearing his word of promise.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I I'll have Matt jump in here in a second with another question, but just a thought on that, then maybe Matt hear your thoughts as well. Because I think this is a really rich place to camp out a little bit. Because um this kind of subjective feeling that you've talked about, as you said that I could see the the folks listening can't see us, but Matt's head was shaking vigorously, and my head was was shaking vigorously. I I think we all know that kind of sense of something different is happening in this moment that that was different than the Sunday school class I just taught, right? 30 minutes ago with the adult Sunday school class, which and what the what you said there was, and especially in your liturgical tradition, it's structured in that liturgy. I think even like for me in a low church tradition, kind of that sense of what I did in the Sunday school class, I felt a little freer to, you know, some subjective flights of fancy, maybe some I'm picking the topics, this is kind of a thing. I can I can like we can open it up and have some discussion. What do you think about this or that? And then the sermon is Thus says the Lord. Yes. That's a very different thing that's happening there. And I like how you. Articulated that. I think that was very helpful. Matt, what are your thoughts on that? I'd be curious, your experience.
SPEAKER_02:I I think that's one of the biggest questions that, at least in the seminary context, people are always asking is what's the difference between preaching and teaching? And uh there's there are a lot of overlaps, uh, obviously, but uh one of the things I think separates the two or uh distinguishes the the two would be that I I just came from a uh a lectureship at a university context where I had to preach in chapel twice, but then also taught two lectures. Uh in the environments, the I think the attitude of the listener is different, especially in the in when you're preaching a sermon. You know, obviously some people are always sleeping, but uh you you think about um just just the the fact that you are God's representative, like you were saying, Jonathan, that you're you're the mouthpiece of God. Uh teaching seems to have a little bit more of a lax attitude of the recipient. The recipient is not as attuned to the moment. Um so yeah, I think um that could be an entire different podcast feel.
SPEAKER_03:I think if we get that maybe we'll throw that in season two, and uh we'll have Jonathan back and dig into that one because yeah, that's that'd be fun. That'd be fun.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Let's uh Jonathan, that was really helpful. Let's talk a little bit more specifically about liturgy. Um as a pastor who is from a liturgical tradition, how has that helped your uh sense of forming disciples? Uh how has liturgy, uh in your perspective uh as someone who practices the liturgy uh regularly, maybe some of our listeners don't come from that background. What would be an advertisement in in some ways for the liturgical tradition? How has that um shaped uh disciples in your church?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, this this is my pitch moment, right? All right, here we go. You're gonna try to convert us all. Yeah, yeah, right. It's funny because um sometimes in liturgical churches, I sometimes I've encountered this unfortunate attitude um from some of my um fellow liturgical Christians that that we we downplay the sermon. Um that you know, well, what's really important is the liturgy, or what's really important is uh is the Eucharist. And um, and you know, sometimes you'll even hear Anglicans say things like, well, you know, um the sermon wasn't very good at all, but that's okay because, you know, we have the we have the Eucharist or we have the liturgy. And I always hate that. I hate it when people say that. Um because you know, sometimes I think Anglicans, we ourselves can be forgetful of our own history and the the intention behind the creation of the book of common prayer. Um so so let me talk about that. I think that's a helpful way to think about the role of liturgy and discipleship.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:First off, some people forget that before the first English Book of Common Prayer was uh published and and uh affirmed by Parliament in 1549, two years prior to that, right at the beginning of King Edward's reign, um, the very first thing that Archbishop Cranmer published in English, in in English churches throughout the entire country was called the Book of Homilies. It was sermons. Um so I think for Anglicans to say, oh, well, it's the Baptists who really take preaching seriously, and you know, um we don't we don't you know put that much on it seems to me historically to be very forgetful. Um actually, Anglicans began by preaching, by publishing a bunch of sermons that were required to be read in every parish church throughout the whole of the country sequentially. And the very first sermon that was to be read in this collection was called a fruitful exhortation to the reading of holy scripture. That's where Thomas Cranmer begins. And also, if you read the fifth, the preface that he writes to the 1549 prayer book when it comes out, explaining why is it that we're publishing this sort of this book of daily offices of morning and evening prayer, and then this schedule of readings and we're, you know, um, and the the liturgical service. His argument for it is he says, Well, in times past, the the church has found ways to constantly attend to the word of God and to scripture. Because as he begins his first homily, fruitful exhortation, there is nothing more necessary unto man than the reading of holy scripture. And so I think that for him, his sense of how do you form a nation as disciples? Because that was really what Cranmer was thinking was how do you disciple an entire nation of people, and it was that you saturate them with the living voice of God through his word. And so so he published the so he publishes homilies uh to preach the um sort of reformation doctrine and to preach scripture, and then he publishes these liturgies, and the primary purpose of the liturgies is for people to encounter the voice of God in scripture every single day, to to listen to it, to hear it, to read it, to pray it. That's what the liturgy is doing, um, is it's forming us. And, you know, when we get back to that thing of sort of forgetfulness and the need for remembrance, I think what liturgical the strength of a liturgical tradition is it thinks of the process of a discipleship as a constant, sort of a constant need to remember the things that we forget. You know, I I think some people who are new to liturgical churches, it's it's um maybe disappointing to them, or it's it's it's it's hard to understand why we say the same things every week. You know, if if what you if you're if your exposure is um Sunday service and a Eucharistic service, it's the same liturgy every week, you know, we'll change some collects. Well, you know, depending on the season of the church calendar, we might change some prayers, but basically we're saying the same thing. And evening, morning, and evening prayer, I mean, a lot of Anglicans have all of morning and evening prayer memorized because it's just the same thing.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, except for the Psalms and the scriptures that you change every day and the canticles. Um But the the reason that we do that is because um is because it's this conviction, I think, that the life of discipleship is not a life of needing to constantly learn new things, but that being a follower of Jesus is just about constantly returning to the same things um and coming to God and then being formed by his voice and his word.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That that takes us to a theme that has been emerging as we've been having these conversations and kind of has emerged through the the work we've been doing to CPT with our fellows, which is thinking about the God who preaches, right? The God who gives his word, but there is a congregation who are called to be hearers of that word. And I think one of the things that has come up is what's our role as shepherds to help the church grow as hearers of the word, right? We can put a lot of energy into our work to become better preachers, to become better vessels of the word. But but what's our role in helping shepherd the listening capacity of the church? And and in what way should we maybe think of that as an act of of discipleship, discipling the church as hearers of the word?
SPEAKER_00:That's a really good question. I you know, I think of I I guess I could think of a couple things. One is I think one of the things that makes that makes it difficult for people to hear or really even to read or understand scripture, is that I think that a lot of people they they don't have a sense of of how it all fits together. You know, you think of like um uh the the famous metaphor that Irenaeus used when he was talking about the the Gnostic heresy and how is it that you help people to to interpret scripture rightly? And he used this metaphor of a um you know an artistic image where you know you've got all these pieces and you need to, there's the this image of a of a king, but if you don't know how the pieces fit together, you know, then you just rearrange it in a random way and you end up with the image of a fox instead of a king. And so so interestingly, you know, Irenaeus um from the second century to help people, I think to equip people, he actually wrote, he has the very long work, which is against heresies, but he also has this smaller work called Apostolic Preaching. Um, the the which is the sort of like, here's the gospel, his presentation of it. And uh, and he he you kind of walks through the whole of uh the storyline of scripture and then how it all fits together into Christ. Sometimes I think that people really struggle because they don't they don't have a sense of that. And they and we just kind of throw them into the middle of scripture. And for those of us who are trained, most of us who are pastors were probably fairly well catechized, either as young Christians or we were mentored. Then we went to seminary, and then it's been years, and the longer and longer it's been since you were away from learning something. I think sometimes the harder it is to really imagine what it's like not to be formed in the way that you are, and to be trying to hear scripture when you didn't receive all this training that we have. So, like, you know, one really simple example is um sometimes when we have people who come to our church who, you know, have very little experience in church, or maybe they're new to church, or they've been a part of it for a while, but I can just tell that there's been very little formation. Um, I've actually directed people to uh to children's Bibles. Um like not to be, you know, I'm not um trying to be condescending, but uh like Kevin DeYoung has produced like a much larger version of the Jesus Storybook Bible. I mean, that's a that's a kind of bigger, but something where people can read and they can kind of get a sense of the whole. And and so they don't feel just lost um when they listen to scripture. I do think another way of helping to equip people um is by helping them understand like what is it that you're doing when when you come to scripture and why is this important? Why is this necessary? I mean, we've already we've already been talking about it in this conversation. Well, I think sometimes like when we talk about the spiritual life, for instance, today, we we we often talk about what are rituals or habit forming practices that are really helpful, and then how can we utilize those in our own lives? And I think that's all very valuable psychological insight, anthropological insight into how is it that people are formed, and therefore like what's helpful for us. But it strikes me that for the Protestant reformers, when they emphasized word and sacrament, and and sacrament is kind of just another form of the word, right? But when they emphasized the preaching of the word and the reading of scripture and all of that, the reason they did it is not because they had a sort of psychological or anthropological conviction of the power-forming nature of the ritual practice of a text. It was actually because they had a theological conviction that God forms his people by speaking to them. And that this is what you see in the whole Bible. What the God of the Bible, the way he interacts with people, the way he forms people, uh, is that he talks to them, he consoles them, he he rebukes them, he comforts them, he he gives them promises, he gives them command, instructions. This is what he does is he just speaks to people and he forms them. And I think, I think that one of the ways that we can help people to be better hearers is one, equipping them to actually understand scripture by giving them a sense of the whole. So teaching them doctrine. Doctrine does really help. But but I think another thing is simply giving them a higher sense of what it is that they're doing when in their daily lives, not just not just in the Sunday moment, but in their daily lives. Um, what is it that they're doing when they open their Bible or and and they read, or they're memorizing a verse of scripture or meditating on it, or they're hearing somebody, you know, give a Bible study reflection. Why is this so absolutely essential? And it's because we are creatures who have been uh created to live by closely attending to the voice of our Maker. And that's what we're doing. It's not just because like this is a good thing we ought to do, and you you ought to have some kind of like felt obligation to read your Bible because that's what Christians do, or something like that.
SPEAKER_02:Jonathan, this has been uh a really fruitful, helpful conversation. Uh we're gonna draw to a close, but before we do that, any reflections on what God's teaching you these days in in these challenging times. Uh we're we're going through another season of uh disharmony, uh disunity in our nation and in our congregations. What is God teaching you as a shepherd, pastor, teacher, discipler?
SPEAKER_00:You know, I I would say that and this is something I think that maybe he's been teaching me for the last several years, because we've been kind of in a time of turmoil for a little while now. Um It didn't just start. I was like anyone who pastored through the year 2020. That was the peak uh turmoil. But I I think two two things very briefly. One is um I I think I used to have a a feeling more than I do now that I needed to sort of weigh in on all of the I needed to weigh in because I I have a PhD and I'm educated and I'm the theologian of the church. I need to like weigh in on all of these sort of spectacles of the moment, these issues that people are thinking about, you know, from like, you know, what they're reading on some Substack or what they're seeing in the news or something like that. And um and then and then I I came across John Henry Newman, who he he used this word in some of his writings where he talked about the intellectual vice of being viewy. And viewy is is a word that refers to people who have a feeling that they need to take up a view on any sort of controverted question. And uh and Newman thinks this is a vice. This is not this there's this this is not studiousness, just being viewy. And and I started to realize, okay, that's I really don't need to sort of weigh in on the spectacle of the moment. Um I what I need to do is pastor people's anxiety and their fear and their hopes and their sense of of what are the things that are most important by simply returning to the timeless truths of scripture. And I think the second thing is along with that, there is a deep need for prophetic preaching. But but one thing I've realized because I've spent time in both kind of more liberal and progressive uh Christian circles and more conservative Christian circles, I've had experiences of both. And I think one thing that I've noticed that we all have a tendency toward is that when we do want to preach prophetically and powerfully to our moment, and that's needed, that we often do it by by preaching prophetically to power that's outside of the room. So I, you know, I have sat in progressive Christian uh churches and and university discussions where there is very articulate and really um good preaching that's calling out the sort of hypocrisy and um and moral failures of the right. Um but and I've sat through the same thing on conservative sides, right? But the unintended effect is the moment of preaching is meant to be like the people in front of you encountering what God is saying to them, which ought to like bring us, it ought to convict us, lead us to confession, to recognize our own need for mercy, and then to move forward in in faith. And the the unintended effect of sometimes our prophetic preaching is it just reinforces the kind of self-righteous feeling that, you know, well, good, the wicked out there, they're they're out there and we're on the side of the righteous. Um, and so I think I've just become, I've I've tried to become more cautious about when I do preach, am I preaching to the people right in front of me?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Or am I preaching to like to, you know, to to the people and saying, yeah, you and I, we we both agree on this. Uh the problem is out there.
SPEAKER_03:I I I I love that uh viewy. I think he was speaking to the social media world as well, right? I mean, I hadn't heard that before. That's that's uh that's a great kind of way to frame it about what it's a fun word too. It is, it is. It's fun to say. Yeah, it's really fun to say. Well, Jonathan, thanks so much. Uh, this really has been an uh encouraging and a rich conversation and grateful for the work that you're doing and uh blessings to you as you continue to shepherd God's people in these times.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thank you very much. It's good to see you both.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, take care.
SPEAKER_00:All right.
SPEAKER_03:Well, that was a really helpful conversation, I thought. I I I love the way Jonathan thinks, kind of his his understanding of history and the tradition. He I think he's really helpful at putting us kind of into that context. Matt, I'm curious if there are parts of the conversation that really jumped out at you as uh something that was encouraging you in your thinking.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, there were many things that Jonathan said that were sparking my thinking process in different ways. Uh one of the things that I think uh was a running theme throughout was his understanding of the importance of reminding of the listeners of God's truths. And sometimes, you know, I don't know if it was Tim Keller. I feel like uh every good uh phrase was coined by Keller, but uh just thinking wrong assigning assigning a good phrase to Keller. That's right. So uh just thinking about preaching the gospel to ourselves, um, and and that's that sense of uh we we are always needing to be reminded of who we are, where we were, and how God has delivered us. And so that seemed to be a running theme and uh uh was pervasive throughout, which was very helpful for me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah, I I agree. And I think my my kind of observation follows on from that. I I loved at the end of the conversation when you asked him things that he's learning as a Pastor Shepherd discipler. And it was uh, I need to, I don't need to weigh in on all the issues of the moment, right? This he talked about this John Henry Newman line of being viewy, feeling like we need to take a view on everything. And I think what comes across is in teaching and preaching and discipling, really what our role is, is to proclaim the word, is to stand up and say, thus says the Lord, not because we have divine authority in us, but because God's authority works through his word and his spirit and the preacher and the congregation in the the midst of all of that. And so I think that kind of sense, uh what I felt talking to Jonathan was there's almost a call just to return to basics, simple. We're here to preach the gospel. We're here to articulate the counsel of God's word. What people need from us is not our two cents on whatever the thing of the day is. What people need is faithful shepherds who are faithfully proclaiming the word. And that just felt like a very good, in a sense, kind of a resetting and a social media moment and a fraught moment where everyone's commenting on everything. And I'm inclined to do that myself. And so just to kind of relax into, nope, our role is to preach the preach the word and uh let the Spirit of God do what the Spirit of God needs to do. So I really, really appreciated the conversation. All right. Well, uh, we'll we'll jump on next time and look forward to the next episode uh as we as we are moving through the series. But uh again, thanks, Matt, so much. Grateful to have you on uh as my as my my co-partner in this endeavor.
SPEAKER_02:I'm really enjoying this series. Thanks for inviting me to do this, Bill. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:Very good. All right, we'll talk to you soon.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for listening to today's episode of the CPT Podcast, a theology podcast for the church. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider subscribing if you haven't already? You can also help us out by leaving a rating and especially a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. We love hearing from listeners in this way, and it helps others find out about the show. The Pastor Theologians Podcast is a production of the Center for Pastor Theologians. You can learn more about the CPT at our website, Pastor Theologians.com. You can also find us on Facebook, YouTube, and follow us on YouTube. This show is produced by Seth Korch and Sophia Luke. The show is recorded and edited in partnership with Glowfire Creative, and editing is done by Seth Frequ. Hosting duties are shared by Joel Lawrence, Ray Paul, and me, Zach Wagner. Thanks for listening.