Course Sequence

The semester begins with 'DNA': foundational skills and priorities for life-long learning that can multiply in others. Then we explore standard doctrinal topics through testimony, discovery, and connecting with 'Chris Chen' (my shorthand for mainstream broadly evangelical) theological tradition.

Vision and Goals

This course centers in the apostles' and prophets' biblical foundation on which Christ's disciples build our shared ground floor of discipleship, on which our second-floor theological reflection rests and which it serves.

The God of Israel plays a long game. What am I hoping you'll have gained from this class ten years out? Here's the intended fruit of a semester's engagement with course materials and concepts, from most important to least:

1. A manifest life change in the direction of new creation, bearing fruit of the active love of fellow disciples, the God who loved us, and God's beloved but lost world.
2. A life-trajectory-altering facility with key resources: the Bible, church practices such as prayer, devotion, discovery, witness, worship, and so on.
3. Experience in spreading these to others through key disciple-making practices in fulfillment of the Great Commission ("go and make disciples") and the Great Commandment ("love one another").
4. Lasting skill acquisition and fruitfulness in thinking, acting, and leading "theologically."
5. Affection towards the discipline, with a resulting enthusiasm for pursuing its learning further (by obedience, sharing, leading, mentoring, and further equipping with helpful resources).
6. A lasting knowledge base in the historic Christian tradition, with more precise memory of a few key centers that will have been reinforced by your study, worship, and service.

How can this little course do that? Simply by staying true to its subject, and by a medium that suits its message. A formidable challenge here is the sheer busyness of modern life. Another, if it applies to you, is academic structures: calendars, curricula, grades, costs, intellectual culture, social pressures, and taboos. Then there's popular culture, the anemic state of many of our churches, a decidedly mixed theological inheritance that has failed to fulfill both the Great Commission and Great Commandment, rival authorities claiming and demanding our loyalty, confusions of the gospel with human traditions and ideologies and idolatries that neglect the Triune God for other gods and lords, and on and on. These forces are stronger than when I started teaching, so the challenge is growing. But the power of the gospel continues to outdo all that and more—even in us, if we receive it with our whole hearts.

I believe God sees this course as a 'way' for participants to travel, preferably together but even then not in lockstep as teams or 'squads,' for a season of transformation, growth, and multiplication through mutual training, challenge, equipping, and discipline in thought and action. God intends to give every participant a new, lasting, and fruitful exposure to the core guidance of the living Church of Jesus Christ and to their divine source and focus, and to give every participating follower of Jesus new, lasting, and fruitful skill and fruitfulness in knowing God and serving God's mission and movement.

Our course is (re)structured so that its form aligns with its academic topic, which is the knowledge of God we perceive through lives of learning from, knowing, remaining in, obeying, and sharing the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit within their inclusive and expanding fellowship of saints. This is not a straightforward task, because of ways academic life and even academic theology have accommodated to other priorities and deficient visions.

Physical education courses would be ridiculous if participants never practiced the sport. Doctrine is spiritual education: it involves practicing the life that Christian doctrine describes and growing in its skills, habits, and instincts. Otherwise it's ridiculous too.

'Doctrine' means 'teaching': not just information, but (as the military uses the term) guidance. And "you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers [and sisters]. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ" (Matthew 23:8–10 ESV). My role is not to be a conventional prof or expert teacher. It's to be a catalytic learner: a coach or a mentor within a chain of them that originates in Jesus Christ and his apostles and includes you and those whose lives you are shaping. I'm a duckling following the line in front of me and with others behind, a mentor of mentors—one of the Lord's TAs. And if you are to learn theology that apprehends the Triune God in spirit and truth, then you must be fellow apprentices of Jesus, for "as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you" (John 20:21 ESV), and "everyone when fully trained will be like his teacher" (Luke 6:40). So honoring Christian doctrine-guidance calls us to learn how to learn and share all along the Lord's chain of duckling disciplemakers.

The challenge really is daunting. A formal education is a costly, demanding jar of clay in which you could find priceless treasure. You need to pay attention to the jar, but stay focused on the treasure. Help others do so, and don't become a hindrance or distraction for them. And don't forget that that treasure is available in other jars too, not just (in fact, not even primarily) academic ones.