I’m towards the end (he says, hopefully) of a research degree. It’s Masters level rather than a terminal degree, but nevertheless requires true academic research.
I’ve found adapting to it an uphill struggle. Most of the forms of writing I’ve trained myself in—the sermon, the blog post, and the article—are foreign to the academic world. I was told early on by my supervisor that ‘I write like a Pastor.’ He should know, I used to be his Pastor, a large part of the reason I ended up doing this programme with him. I wanted to reply, ‘good!’ because I don’t really want to sound like anyone else.
Early on I was concerned by whether or not I would be able to adopt what felt like a foreign form of writing in order to get through my thesis. I was acutely aware that a form of writing is really a form of thinking. I was unsure if I wanted the formalised structures of academia to overtake my thinking because they would harm my communication. I also think in circles, much to my supervisor’s annoyance.
I still think there are large sections of the nature of academic writing that are entirely foreign to the way I think. Particularly the need to move in stately procession from one idea to the next rather than throw five things in the pot and then shout ‘abracabra! they’re all connected.’
Of course, I’m right, they are all connected. It’s dull to write in a stately way and justify moving from one to the other when I have little idea why I should go from a to b, but I do know that a + b + c = d. It’s a dull way of thinking.
However, it’s much clearer. That’s the thing that surprised me. Academic writing is, largely, terrible writing lacking in verve due to the constraints of the medium. Those constraints should not be followed. However, what those constraints do is force you to be clear. Lots of people might think academic writing is verbose and confusing, which is true, but its also clear. Yes, you need an understanding of all those terms to engage with it, but ultimately if you do understand it there’s a precision that wasn’t there without it.
The problem comes when we forget how to talk with normal people.
I’ve noticed my research shaping my thinking. In one sense that’s because the frames I use in my thesis are being applied all over the place in my life, they’re a set of lenses that I can now use to look at the world. Attentive blog readers will have noticed some of them a lot recently. I haven’t yet declared ‘this is a social imaginary problem’ in an elders meeting—and rightly I’d just get confused expressions as it probably wouldn’t be helpful—but it may well nevertheless be true.
The other sense in which my research is shaping my thinking is that I noticed in a setting in my network in which someone was presenting a piece of thinking on a particular passage that was going to shape our collective life together, I sat there asking the sort of questions (in my head) that my supervisor asks me. ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘What methodology are you applying and why?’ ‘Why did you start there and not here?’ In other words, state and justify your theological method before you go and have fun with what you want to say. It’s dull to do, but as a listener who instinctively disagreed some clarity on what this person thought they were doing would have helped me to know how best to engage with it.
Theological method is not particularly exciting. It’s very important. Our disagreements often come down to the method we are adopting in either our hermeneutics or our theology. If we read the texts differently, and if we then derive theology from those texts differently, we are going to disagree.
Research for Pastors
I was concerned that academic research would make me sound less like a Pastor. In other words, I was concerned that it would mean I communicated less well with people in my preaching and teaching. I don’t think that’s become true as yet, but I’ve had to be very active about thinking about the moulding effects of institutions on me and I’ve had this outlet to attempt to express some of my academic ideas in less pompous prose.
What I hadn’t realised was that I’d spend so long thinking about method. While doing so I realised that I’ve been thinking about method for years, but maybe not in quite the same terms. I’ve always enjoyed a book or article I disagreed with but was well argued—or more accurately, argued from a method I respected or shared—much more than something poorly argued whose conclusions I agreed with. The well-argued book is much more helpful to shape my own thinking, even if in opposition to it, as well as to the world at large. It doesn’t help people to learn the ‘right answers’ (let’s assume for the sake of argument that I am right, even though that cannot always be true) from the ‘wrong arguments.’ It doesn’t make strong disciples. It’s how doctrine shifts over the generations.
What research has helped me with is in thinking about my theological method. Yes, imaginaries (stories, as I first called them back in 2021) play a key role in how I think. So do symbols, or figures. I’d started instinctively playing in these waters years before I knew the terms, or the debates, that might be relevant. I do believe these are premodern methods expressed in modern terms, I’m thinking with Augustine and Calvin in my thesis as much as with James K A Smith and Charles Taylor.
Does that matter for everyday pastoring? Yes. You answer theological questions every day. You preach the Bible week in, week out. You sit with people and offer them hope in despair. All of these are activities where your theological method changes where you end up in what you say.
You don’t need research degrees. You don’t academic language or categories. You do need a clear theological method.
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash
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