Introduction to Applied Theology Series by Dr. John M. Frame
After serving on the faculty of three theological institutions[1] for forty-nine years, I retired from teaching in May of 2017. It did occur to me that one more year would have brought me to my fiftieth year—not only a round number, but, in biblical terms, a Jubilee. So, I was somewhat on the alert for a future teaching ministry God might open up to me that I could accomplish in that magical fiftieth year.
As it turned out, God did open to me a Jubilee[2] project with Pathway Learning in this Applied Theology series. Typically (for that is the way God works) he had been preparing it through eternal ages, but, in our human lifetimes, for decades. When I first came to Reformed Theological Seminary in 2000, I encountered many colleagues with whom I had had long relationships. Seven members of the RTS faculty had been former students of mine. Then there were others who had read books of mine and found my teachings helpful.
One of those was Steve Childers, an experienced pastor and church planter who was now a professor of Practical Theology at RTS, as well as a trainer of church planters and missionaries around the world. When we chatted at the door before my first faculty meeting, Steve told me that he was trying to reconstruct all the RTS practical theology courses to make them triperspectival[3] and to show the students that the best practical theology was an application of biblical doctrine.[4]
Steve and I became not only colleagues but good friends, with offices next door to each other for the next seventeen years. Steve told me how much my article, “A Proposal for A New Seminary”,[5] written almost fifty years ago, had impacted his thinking about the need to educate church leaders without removing them from their local churches and communities.
In 2001, I wrote a postscript to the article in which I looked back on the nearly thirty years of seminary education that elapsed since I wrote it. The article had not been widely acclaimed, but it had generated enough interest for me to remark occasionally, without any seriousness at all, that it had a “cult following.” In that postscript, I lauded some of the advances I’d seen in seminary education during the previous 30 years. I wrote about how it was fun for me to re-read what I was saying when I was younger, bolder, and more radical.
I’ve mellowed somewhat since that time, but my heart still was, and is, in that Proposal, as reflected in my final words of the postscript:
The economics of theological training is a subject that needs to be explored in this context. I am not the one to do it. But is there some way that the people of God can be moved by a vision for theological education, as they are often moved by appeals for support of missions? Something like that would have to happen, if churches are to become seminaries in the spirit of my Proposal.
Even after much progress in theological education, most church leader training, at home and abroad, is still based on the academic, university model for training scholars rather than practitioners. And the options are often still the same: 1) biblical and theological training without the practical, or 2) practical training without the biblical and theological. Most church leaders still receive their education primarily in residential classrooms and conference seminars without being mentored theologically and practically, including in their spiritual lives, as they serve in their local churches and communities.
In 2016, during my last academic year of teaching, Steve shared with me a new vision for theological education, called Pathway Learning, to provide under-served church leaders access to affordable, practical, seminary-level courses where they live, in their language, and adapted to their culture. For years I’ve been teaching “theology is application.” Steve’s challenge was for the two of us to finish our races well, I as a systematic theologian and he as a practical theologian, by collaborating and converging our decades of teaching and ministry “for the nations,” as his email signature often says.
The Applied Theology series was born out of this vision to use the latest advances in educational technology to help bring all the topics of systematic theology to the millions of church leaders, especially in the developing world, who have no access to or cannot afford high-quality traditional seminary education. So our writing began in weekly meetings in our offices that fall, as we discussed the entire body of systematic theology week in and week out, seeking to apply it to all of life and ministry.
Applied Theology is a very intentional, missional, and practical approach to all the traditional topics of systematic theology. As such, it engages everything we are. It is not only an intellectual accumulation of information, but involves our head, heart, and hands for the sake of Christ and his Kingdom. My hope and prayer is that God will use our collaboration in Applied Theology to help his people apply God’s Word to all areas of their lives, for the sake of the nations and the honor of Jesus Christ.
Dr. John M. Frame
Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy,
Reformed Theological Seminary
Footnotes:
[1] Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.
[2] For Old Testament Israel, the Jubilee ( יובל) is the year at the end of seven cycles of Sabbatical years. It’s sometimes referred to as the Sabbath’s Sabbath. There is some debate whether it was the 49th year, the last of seven sabbatical cycles, or whether it was the following 50th year. So, there is a biblical argument that John may have reached his Jubilee (Steve).
[3] You will learn about this buzzword and many others as you peruse our Applied Theology Series.
[4] Another emphasis of mine (John) has been to define “theology” as “the application of the word of God by persons to all areas of life,” and that definition lies behind the title of our current series.
[5] Proposal for a New Seminary, https://frame-poythress.org/proposal-for-a-new-seminary/