Full-time theological education is a costly thing. Costly because it will often mean a geographical switch, including moving house and saying goodbye to much-loved friends and family. Costly because it will probably mean leaving behind the particular church you were involved with and at least pressing pause on the ministry opportunities you were part of there. Costly because it literally costs money, and at the end of the day someone’s got to foot that bill, whether it be a church organisation, supporters, or the individual concerned.

So, is it worth those costs?

As has been noted here, it seems there’s a bit of a trend at the moment for answering ‘no’. For a start, part-time, non-residential training is a whole lot cheaper. That means this issue is something the Church of England is particularly weighing up. But such ‘mixed-mode’ training also allows you to be part-time, perhaps working with a church for 3 or 4 days a week, which can seem like a benefit. It also allows you to remain in the same place, again, something that has plus-points. And obviously different people will have different circumstances, meaning that for some ‘mixed-mode’ forms are the only reasonable option. But does the mode of training impact upon its effectiveness? And as this helpful post on the CofE’s latest workings asks, how are we defining effectiveness anyway?

There’s also a trend of seeing one’s ‘time at college’ as not really about the training itself, and more just an opportunity to be involved in the ministry opportunities of the particular town or city the college happens to be in. I guess this is rooted in a scepticism or distrust of ‘theology’, but it also seems to smack a bit of arrogance and short-sightedness. Certainly I couldn’t imagine being ‘ready’ without the training I’m being given.

So given all this, why bother really investing in theological education?

Being about 80% of the way through a three year full-time spell at theological college, I’m already so glad this has been part of my training. I’m so glad that the Church of England generously funded me for two years, and I’m so glad that a bunch of friends and Trusts backed me from their own pockets so that I could stay for this third year.

Why? Well, I think the video below goes some way to explain and, in short, it’s because the end goal isn’t about me.

I’d spent two years on a church-based ministry training scheme (which was excellent) and three years working in a junior staff role for another church (again, a great experience and learning curve), but I’d still not swap these past three years, full-time at Oak Hill, for anything else. Being able to set time aside to think, to learn, to grow… to be formed, it has been a massive privilege.

But ultimately this privilege is not for my sake, there’s a much more worthy matter at heart: stewardship – seeking to be the best possible gift for the sake of the church…

You can read the accompanying document, featuring Don Carson, Tim Keller and others, here.

A few mates have been asking me how my MA dissertation has been going so far. This is a fair question given some of them have kindly given their well-earned dosh to support this final year of my training at theological college. To give a brief taster of some of the issues, I thought I’d point you to an interview Christianity magazine have published in their latest edition, with singer-songwriter-turned-media-commentator Vicky Beeching.

Vicky made national headlines in August when she came out as gay in an interview with The Independent, although she’d been vocally supportive of same-sex marriage for a while before that. Despite not reaching the same conclusions as Vicky on what the Bible reveals about sexual practice (I land with these guys here), I was struck by how her initial interview indicated she’d had some pretty ugly experiences of Christianity, including some expressions of orthodox Christian teaching that had seemingly been distorted and presented insensitively.

Since August Vicky has gone on to speak on a number of other national media programmes, which has underlined for me how hard it is to have genuine debate over matters of Christian teaching on a secular platform. It’s just not a neutral zone, and so it’s hardly the best place to do it. However, because Premier is a Christian outlet, their interview with Beeching (carried out by Justin Brierley) allows for a closer look at the presuppositions and framework behind her thinking, as well as some of the trajectories that run from her arguments. Have a look at this selection from the interview:

JB: A lot of theologians would say that the biblical pattern from Genesis through to Revelation is of marriage between a man and a woman. What is your response to that view?

VB: We need to take a similar approach to the one that many of us in the evangelical charismatic Church have taken towards women. If you look superficially at what Paul said about women in the New Testament, women should be silent, remain at home, ask their husbands and abstain from teaching.

We owe the verses about women as well as the relevant verses in Leviticus [18:22 and 20:13] and Romans [1:26-27], and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah [Genesis 19] a deeper look… In Matthew 22:30 it says there is no marriage in heaven.

Gender may also play a different, lesser role in our heavenly bodies. So we need to look at things eschatologically. I always come back to Galatians 3:28: “There is no Jew or gentile, slave or free, male or female for all are one in Christ Jesus”. The resurrection of Christ has impacted those old, dividing lines, so we need to look at what that means for sexuality from an AD rather than just a BC paradigm.

It’s that last paragraph that is particularly striking. Vicky suggests we need to look at things “eschatologically,” that is to say in light of our futures. We know Jesus said there would be no marriage in heaven, as she cites. But does that really mean there will be a “lesser” role for gender in the new heavens and earth? She then puts forward Galatians 3:28, seemingly as a basis for this.

Obviously this is just one small paragraph of a fairly varied spoken interview, so I don’t want to unfairly treat it like it’s a finely put-together thesis. But it’s hard to imagine how gender could have such a ‘lesser’ role whilst still maintaining some role. Either there is gender or there isn’t. We know God created humanity as male and female, and that this was good. And we also know that Jesus, after his resurrection, was a man. Is it too much to presume he was also male? Although we’re told resurrection bodies are transformed, there is also a clear continuity with who we are.

A large part of my dissertation is set to focus on how we are to view our bodies now, in light of their resurrection significance. This is something the apostle Paul particularly addresses in 1 Corinthians. So it’s interesting to me that this question has now come into the spotlight in terms of its relevance for the subject of gender. As we’re seeing, this in turn has consequences for debates about marriage and sexuality, as Beeching’s answer reveals.

And so I’m looking forward to giving time to thinking through how the Bible informs us in an area of real relevance. Our bodies matter. We don’t just ‘have’ bodies. We are our bodies, and part of why and how they matter today is the fact that one day God will raise us up from death in them.

Who said theology was merely academic?

You may also want to read this post I wrote: 3 Examples of Christianity’s Radical Community-Centred Approach to Marriage, Sexuality & Dating.

God loves his church. Well that’s an understatement if ever there was one.

But lately I’ve had the chance to see that afresh in 1 Corinthians. We’ve been going through it over the course of the last year in our Growth Groups at church. We do this because we believe the Bible is God’s word and so we want to hear him speak and change us, and just recently we’ve been looking at ch12-14. It’s a section infamous for provoking controversy about spiritual gifts. It also includes a passage that would have made Paul a billionaire if he’d just thought to copyright before the wedding industry got their mitts on it.

The Giving God gives to His church

But before this section is about gifts, it’s about God and his church. And in chapter 12, as Paul lays down the foundations for his pastoral panacea, he gives us a beautiful picture of our God at work, lavishly giving to his people.

‘Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.’

(1 Corinthians, ch12, v4-7)

Straight-up it’s a simple point about unity despite variety. That phrase can be misused to dress up a mishmash of theological heterodoxy that’s actually got about as much unity as a joint Apple & Android staff team-building day. But in context here it captures the stunning and intentional variety of the one God lovingly manifesting himself in his people through various gifts.

Take your eyes off your ‘spiritual gift’

In fact, like the Corinthians, we get hung up on ‘gifts’, probably because, also like the Corinthians, we focus instinctively on the value we believe they give to us. ‘I’ve got a better gift than them!’; ‘How can I get my gift to be seen?’; ‘Why aren’t my gifts being recognised?’; ‘What can I do to let people see how gifted I am?’ (Questions of my heart no less, all the time forgetting of course that the word gift means… duh… gift.)

When my mindset is all about my gift it quickly descends into me treating some gifts as more spiritual. That seems to have been the Corinthian problem with tongues (see ch14).