In my consulting work, there are a lot of diseases I deal with on a daily basis that have infected the church, but one of the most serious is shallow thinking. When pastors and Christian leaders don’t have a deep intellectual bench, the options they offer end up being shallow, simplistic, and weak. When I grew up in the South, pastors actually made jokes about those who attended seminary. They felt that the intellectual study of the Bible kept people away from the authentic experience of the Holy Spirit. Of course today we know that’s bunk.
The hard and brutal truth is that even today, intellectually, too many pastors are creampuffs. If we’re going to engage the culture in a significant way, we need to raise up more intellectuals within the church. Men and women who have wrestled with the big questions, and have a deeper understanding of the challenges facing the next generation.
What do you think? Too harsh?
