News
Fagerstrom Releases 14th Book
Oct 23, 2009
Dr. Douglas Fagerstrom, president of Grand Rapids Theological Seminary (GRTS), recently released The …
Cultural Intelligence
Sep 19, 2009
Leading with Cultural Intelligence by Dr. David Livermore NOW AVAILABLE! How do you lead with cultural …
Philosophy of Ministry
The curriculum design and the instructional focus impact the ministry model formed in our graduates. This model for ministry is expressed by three central ideas.
- Discernment – The minister, whether in a home-culture or cross-cultural context, must be able to use the text of Scripture for the gracious purpose for which Christ gave it in every act of ministry. The developed capacity to make judgments concerning the text of Scripture in order to communicate the knowledge of God to human experience is essential for theology and ministry.
- Integration – The theological perceptual set from which the minister speaks and acts must be relevant to contemporary culture. This frame of reference is the basis for the ministry of preaching and teaching. The minister must balance the theoretical, technical and historical exegesis of the Word of God with its appropriate application to people today. To overemphasize theoria at the expense of praxis leaves preaching unrelated to people in their lived experience. To emphasize praxis at the expense of theoria is to turn relevance into a pragmatism devoid of the normative speech of God.
- Credibility – The minister must be believable and trustworthy. If one’s preaching and teaching lacks credibility, then discernment and integration are for naught. Theological education must form in its students the character traits, the skills and the learning to make them worthy of belief in every act of ministry.
The local church is responsible to identify believers in their assembly who have been gifted by the Spirit for special office in the church. Such individuals need appropriate knowledge and skills for ministry.
The seminary, on behalf of the church, educates these gifted persons for their ministry in the church. In turn, the church grants ministry credentials to those persons identified by the church and appropriately educated for ministry. This implies that although the seminary is not the church, yet it performs a service to the church by educating gifted persons for ministry in the church. Faith is primarily allegiance to God as He has disclosed Himself in Christ. Faith brings a person to covenant loyalty in the body of Jesus Christ. It is grounded in the grace of redemption and brings one to Christ as a member of His body. Worship, edification and evangelism define the function of the church in the world. In order to fulfill its function the church must do theology as a faith task in the world. Theology is primarily a church task in the world. It is an activity that the church engages in to fulfill its mission. One of the primary purposes for which the church does theology is to enact authentic Christian ministry that is culturally appropriate. Theology is not an end in itself. Whether one does exegetical, biblical, historical or systematic theology, it is always for the sake of the church’s ministry. The practical questions of ministry need to give direction to the task of theology right from the beginning.
This vision of the relationship of faith, church and theology is intended to heal the breach between ministry and theology. Doing theology and doing ministry are two aspects of a common activity. Since faith is primarily the loyalty of the human person to the Divine person as disclosed in Christ, then faith is relevant to all of life. This faith places us in a redemptive community which has the task of doing theology in order to enact authentic Christian ministry that is culturally appropriate.
