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Open Bay Area
“Practical Theology 202 – Finding Understanding for Difficult Ministry Issues”
16 November 2013, Golden Gate Theological Seminary
Inspired by Practical Theology by Richard Osmer
Opening illustration:
79 days ago, I received a phone call around dinnertime from one of my graduating seniors who insisted that I meet him at my office.
He wouldn’t say why, and he wouldn’t let me meet him anywhere else.
So with my wife’s blessing, I went.
He had done this before on another occasion.
I thought he finally got kicked out of his house.
His parents had threatened it numerous times.
I pulled into the driveway of our church offices about 10 minutes later, and there he stood, frail, wrecked by tears.
Dude, what happened?
And without skipping a beat, he said, “My sister just committed suicide.”
He then fell into my arms, and for the next several hours, we cried together and attempted to make sense of his strange, new world.
During those few hours that we spent together, however, I thought to myself repeatedly, what do I do?
What do I say?
How do I respond to him in his moment of total weakness and brokenness?
I scoured my mental Rolodex, searching for some bit of understanding on this issue.
I prayed for words of hope that I could offer him.
What lesson did I ever learn in college or seminary about this issue?
How would you respond – as Student Pastor, as a Christian, as a friend – to his family in regard to this massive tragedy?
In an instant, the world of this 19-year-old kid and his family crashed down.
And I stood somewhere in the middle – somewhere between terror and hope – and doubt and faith.
We walk a precarious line, especially within a context like the Bay Area.
We – pastors, student ministry leaders, and awesome volunteers – live in a tension between the hope of the resurrection and the reality of our sin and brokenness.
It is incomplete and irreconcilable, but it is precisely here in this tension that Jesus meets us, calls us, equips us, and sends us forth into the messiness of life with our people.
I believe that even though we may not get paid much for our work, we participate in some of the most important work in the world – ministry with young people and their families.
Therefore, we must prepare and equip ourselves further for the work of ministry within our context.
Undoubtedly, you have already encountered baffling life events that threw you for loops and challenged your worldview – and perhaps your faith.
These events may seem like insurmountable obstacles and impossible to navigate, sometimes inciting feelings of failure and apathy as a response.
My goal this morning is to offer you a framework by which you may pause, assess, and critically think through a worked out, faithful response to any life event that occurs within your ministry.
As a youth worker, you do practical theology all of the time.
You think about God (theology) and the outworking of faith (practical) within your ministry context on a regular basis.
You know practical theology without even realizing it.
And most likely, you already practice the discipline of practical theology in your preparation for ministry with others as you discuss he implications of faith in God for the everyday life of a teenager and their family.
The discipline of Practical Theology itself consists of 4 driving questions that guide our interpretation and response to life events:
1.
What is going on?
2. Why is this going on?
3. What ought to be going on?
4. How might we respond?
Each one of the aforementioned driving questions corresponds to each one of the four tasks of practical theology:
1.
The Descriptive-Empirical task: Is the process of gathering information that helps us discern patterns and dynamics in particular episodes, situations, or contexts.
a.
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