Lack of scholarship limits a congregation …

In previous discussions about leadership, whenever I raised the issue about how biblical scholarship is lacking among too many of today’s church leaders, I often got a laugh (after all, when was the last time you even heard a church leader discuss the need for biblical scholarship?).

Even though it’s not funny.

In today’s church culture, it’s more important to be cool than scholarly. The problem with that?

The problem can be found in the old adage about leadership of any kind of organization, which states: “The quality of an organization rarely surpasses that of its leadership.”

When you consider the ramifications of that statement within the church, there’s nothing to laugh about.

As much as a good Lead Minister may greatly desire for the members of the church congregation to be active students of the Word beyond their teaching, statistics tell us most Christians rarely open their Bibles outside of a church service. And the greatest interpreter of scripture for them will often be those who teach it at church when they are there.

So, when church leaders settle for a mediocre level of personal scholarship, they’re often setting the bar low for what the majority of the congregation will accomplish. For example, when leaders think understanding Covenant is too much to teach, they leave their students ignorant of a key biblical concept. When leaders think doctrine is too heavy to wade into, they develop a congregation without doctrine. When leaders stay away from the vitality of developing a biblical theology, their congregants go without one. When leaders spoon-feed a congregation, they are faced with a fellowship that then must be spoon-fed.

The ugly result is that leaders keep church members in the shallow end of the learning pool and drown them in their own mediocrity.

If, instead, you want well-equipped men and women of faith who possess a keen biblical understanding, then lead them there!

If churches had to administer biblical aptitude tests to their members like schools have to administer scholastic aptitude tests to students, how would the people in your congregation fare? Where would your church rank among other churches?

Now flow the excuses that Christianity is more than Bible knowledge, that it’s relationship with Jesus Christ, etc. Of course. And the greatest means of our knowing God?

Through His Word.

So how deeply are your people getting to know Him from the resource of biblical scholarship you’re providing?

“Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly,” James 3:1.

Scotty