Response to “Spiritual Formation in the House Church Seminary”

Rebecca Chen’s “Spiritual Formation in the House Church Seminary” presents an insightful, brief agenda for contemporary theological education. Chen is informed by historic Reformed theology while remaining sensitive to historical and cultural dynamics. She writes for the House Church in China specifically, but she models the robust relationship among the normative (God’s Word), situational (our own history and culture), and existential (the formation of the Christian) contexts of theological education. 

I lead a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies program for Reformed Theological Seminary in New York City.  The New York Metro region is the largest and most densely populated metropolitan area in the United States.  It is also the most diverse, with hundreds of languages spoken in Queens alone.  In fact, there are mission organizations that send missionaries to Queens to reach immigrant communities from unreached people groups. The size, density, and diversity of our context for theological education had me eager to learn from our brothers and sisters in China. I was not disappointed. 

One of the first things that strikes me about this piece is that Professor Chen finds it useful to draw from the historic Reformed branch of the Church to speak to the contemporary church in China. Given the history of the West, is Reformed theology serviceable in an increasingly diverse world? Like Chen, we at RTS New York City believe that it is. The Reformation was a call to submit all things embodied in tradition and culture to the normative standard of the Word of God. Done well, this should lead to a recognition that Scripture stands over all cultures, including the culture of the missionaries who first bring the gospel to a people. When this is done naively, however, then the result can be a sort of theological imperialism.

Recently there has been a retrieval of neo-Calvinist theology that is particularly useful to counter the imperialist impulse. Thinkers like Herman Bavinck and J.H. Bavinck have brought forward from Scripture the corporate nature of the image of God.  Rather than using Reformed theology to conform all peoples to the same cultural image, we seek to use it to appreciate a culture’s unique contribution to the image of God. We aim to see the gospel liberate culture where sin is corrupting it, not conform one culture to another. 

New York is perhaps the city most emblematic of both Western liberalism and capitalism.  But it is also an ethnically diverse city. At times our students, faculty and course readings directly reflect the diversity of our students. When they do not, we hope that our posture of learning together welcomes the students’ own voices and experiences into the classroom.  Ultimately, we want our students to experience God’s transcultural norms in their own cultural setting within New York City. We believe that Reformed theology calls for, and aids in the cultivation of, this type of rich cultural expression.  

Professor Chen notes that there is a rich ecosystem of options for ministry, and that there are many who want training. With so many wonderful callings in view, what shall be the focus of the seminary curriculum?  This is a challenge we also feel in NYC given the diversity of our context and the sheer size of the City.  Like our Chinese colleagues, our curriculum focuses on training pastors for local ministry, while also welcoming those with other callings into our program. 

Why do we focus on training the local pastor? We agree with Professor Chen that “today’s House Churches face so many complex challenges, from various heresies to liberal theologies, from worldly temptations to mainstream persecution, it is impossible for preachers to survive this “crisis call” without firmly grounding their faith and ministry in the Word of God.” Further, time is of the essence.  If training is delayed, it will only become “more expensive and more difficult” later in life.

Professor Chen’s words remind me of the posture of our current Chancellor Dr. Ligon Duncan, and our past beloved colleague Dr. Timothy Keller, who was a founding lecturer at RTS New York City.  Tim and Ligon shared the conviction that the more post-Christian society becomes, the more training in Bible, Theology, Apologetics, and History pastors need. If pastors are not well trained to preach and teach the congregation, then every other calling will suffer.

As we think about the increasingly complex environment for ministry in both the United States and China, we do well to mix patience into our urgency. God gave the Apostle Paul a period of preparation before sending him on missionary journeys, and there will be no “quick fixes” to the leadership crisis.

A final place of resonance for me came with Chen’s specific recommendations for the House Church Seminary in China.  She calls for a focus on learning community, interdisciplinary learning, and critical thinking for lifelong learning. 

Let’s begin with her call for critical thinking and lifelong learning. For most of our students, our program will be their last formal degree.  This is appropriate as our degree is a rigorous 66 credit hour Master of Arts.  The intellectual habits they cultivate with us, and their disposition toward learning and critique, will shape them for their rest of their lives.  We hope to instill rigorous thinking and a thirst for lifelong learning. But, we also hope to model through our faculty and fellowship what it is to be winsome and charitable. Winsomeness is even a learning outcome on our syllabi.

An appropriately winsome posture is best cultivated in learning community, which is Chen’s second point of emphasis. Noting luminaries past such as Luther and Bonhoeffer, Chen laments the pressures modern life and economics have brought to many seminary programs.  Community is traded for convenience and efficiency.  We feel this in New York City!  Our goal is to provide excellent in-person theological education so that students don’t have to leave New York. Our students always wish for more community. This desire is in keeping with the yearnings of the city itself.  New York is rich with opportunity and energy, but the size, speed, and glory of the city don’t naturally serve deep human connection. It takes intentionality and tremendous effort. 

So far, we have found that community is best fostered around the times when classes meet.  That includes the class itself, and adjacent times for meals or fellowship gatherings. Unless one can provide housing for students to live together—something very expensive to do in NYC—then we think building time around the classes themselves gives us the best chance at community in our context.  Additionally, many of our students are finding rich, formative community in their churches. 

I close this brief engagement with Chen’s call for the House Church Seminaries to be interdisciplinary and contextual:

“To open their minds and broaden their horizons from the traditional content of Western theological education, that is from theology itself, to the application of contextual expressions of theology, thinking on how the Christian worldview interacts with different times and cultures.” 

Our MABS curriculum has a history sequence.  However, I think we could likely do more to employ reflection on cultural artifacts and music in our courses as Chen suggests.  She wisely notes that one does not need to offer entire courses in music and art to provide more concrete modes of application and cultural engagement. Rather, these elements can be woven into existing courses without diminishing their core content. In a city as rich with cultural institutions as NYC, we have undoubtedly not leveraged our context to the full in this regard.

This short reflection is, I hope, only the beginning of a continual exchange of ideas between myself and colleagues like Professor Chen in China. I have long admired the House Church, but I am blessed of late to be exposed to theological literature of its leaders. I am inspired to see how the Holy Spirit is at work in the church in China, and it is instructive to lay out context alongside our Chinese brothers and sisters to see what points for growth and reformation emerge.