Where's Waldo?

The careful reader has perhaps noticed something that has been bothering the author. Any mention of theology has been markedly absent as the saga of my ministry in The United Methodist Church has progressed. It was Dad that taught me that church and theology are—or at least should be—intertwined. One’s hermeneutic, ecclesiology, Christology, eschatology and general philosophy are all grounded in one’s theology/worldview, and yet little to no emphasis was being placed by the institutional church on the development of what Claremont’s Jack Verheyden called “a rational discourse about God.” Biblicism was the practical focus of both the general and local church which made any theological inference accidental at best. What good does it do to profess Jesus of Nazareth to be the Son of God if the only rationale is that the Bible says so? How can one claim to be a follower of Jesus the Christ without attempting to explore and understand the Nazarene’s own theology? Interestingly enough, I discovered that these were topics that laypersons hungered to address; it was the church to which they turned for their spiritual development that relegated theology to the exclusive realm of scholasticism while feeding them biblical pabulum with the expectation that it be unquestioningly swallowed.