Theologically Thinking

Excerpt from Dan Kimball post:  Theology and Doctrine Series at Vintage Faith Church

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The more I am engaging in conversations in particular with college age and younger adults, I am finding that for one - there is a general lack of understanding of basic historical doctrines of the faith. But also, they are greatly eager to learn them. I first ran this idea by our 8 interns at our church who are in their 20's and they overwhelmingly were very excited about the idea of this and believed that others would be as well. I do believe more than ever today, we need to be teacher of theology and apologetics in addition to whatever else we may be covering. But without fail, in any friendship or discussion I have with those who aren't Christians, theological questions and topics come up. So if we are truly missional, then we must be theologically thinking. For some of you reading this, you may be "Of course, that is elementary and of course you should." I respect that but I do wonder how well we actually do this in many of our churches? I know some of the more hard-core Reformed churches are better at this than the rest of us. But in mainstream evangelicalism, I think we need to ramp up our theological teaching, apologetics and especially with new generations.

So for this Fall, we are kicking off a 13 week series about doctrine and theology and then in all our Community Groups that meet mid-week, they will be studying through the book of Romans. Our mid-week community groups generally all study books of the Bible and Romans felt appropriate for this season.

We are teaching the Sunday series more as a systematic theology class. When I approach systematic theology, I will be teaching with the understanding that systems on their own can be confusing. Also the various streams of Christianity that exist out there as to what "historical" doctrines are believed as "core". It is important to teach this beyond just the systematic breakdown of doctrines. You can dissect an automobile to its parts and study each part. But without understand how they all fit together...and what kind of car is it that they even fit within.... and even backing out further to what kind of person or family and what reasons did they choose that car... and what is their socio-economic situation for how they chose that car....  You can study a part or system, yes. But it needs to be placed within the whole - especially for theology which is the study of God, not an automobile.

But organically, our bodies have systems. We have a respiratory system, a circulatory system, nervous system, musculoskeletal system etc. So systems are important to break down and study but also need to see how they fit in the whole. For this study, it is the whole story of God revealed in the Scriptures which the systems of theology fit within.

Here is the week to week breakdown of what we will be studying/teaching. It is dificult to only look at breaking it into 13 weeks. But it is my best attempt at doing it. I was trying to come up with catchy names for each week too, but then gave up and simply put the basic title of the topic or doctrine.

September 18 - Why Theology and Doctrine Matters
September 25 - God: The Trinity
October 2 - Jesus
October 9 - The Holy Spirit
October 16 - The Bible
October 23 - Creation
October 30 - Angels, Satan and Demons
November 6 - Salvation
November 13 - Sanctification
November 20 - Guest Speaker: David Lamb teaching on "Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?”
November 27 - The Church and The Kingdom of God
December 4 - Baptism and The Lord's Supper
December 11 - The Afterlife
December 18 - The Return of Jesus (and we will tie the second coming into the first coming at Christmas to end the series)

We are recommending that everyone gets one of two books to be reading along as we teach through this series. One is a short book and the other a long one, but they both coincide together and also will be able to easily follow along with the Sunday teaching.

Christians Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne Grudem (shorter  book - 137 pages)

Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings Of The Christian Faith by Wayne Grudem (longer book – 471 pages)

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