ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
REVIEW OF RICHARD OSMER’S “PRACTICAL THEOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION”
SUBMITTED TO DR. TIM SENSING
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF BIBM 629 FIELD EDUCATION
BY KIPP SWINNEY
JUNE 1, 2012
Review of Richard Osmer’sPractical Theology
Richard Osmer’s book, Practical Theology: an Introduction, is a very productive and useful book for the practice of Ministry in a congregational setting. The introduction of the book lays out why Osmer feels that practical ministry is so important for a minister to learn. He discusses this out of his own experience of having gone into ministry without adequate training in practical theology and then experiencing things for which he was not ready. Many of the items that Osmer talks about come out of the biblical tradition for ministry. He revisits many of the expectations and functions that ministers had in the biblical texts. Some of the positions that he discusses were not originally overlapping, but hegives great cases for why these functions are important for practical theology and for a minister’s training. He has organized his chapters to address the various areas of ministry that the Bible describes.Osmer incorporates these areas of ministry into as new model of ministry developed by Charles Gerkin. The new role for the minister is the interpretive guide. In previous generations, people viewed the minister as the authoritative guide to everything. When there were questions about morality or life, the minister was supposed to know the answer. The developing model is no longer for the minister to be an authoritative guide, but a guide who may be equally new to the terrain, but knows how to interpret the maps and the topography. This emphasizes the companion nature of the ministry rather than the unquestioned leader.
The first chapter focused on listening as a priestly office. For the minister or pastor to be the interpretive guide, he or she needs to be able to understand the community to which he or she ministers. It is not as important for an authoritative guide to understand the context because that person ought to know what is best for the group. In this chapter, Osmer discussed gathering information and listening to people’s stories. The situation that people are typically in is rarely due to simple circumstances. Everyone has a long back-story, and most people are multifaceted and complicated. Learning the situation and of both individuals and churches will go a long way in ministry. Osmer discusses some of the tactics and strategies that one may use in gathering the data and the stories of the people in the congregation. There are a number of qualitative research plans discussed in the book that help the minister with the task of listening to the congregation, and Osmer describes these in detail.Osmer discusses some of the issues with doing this type of research such as the reflexivity. When the minister of a congregation conducts the research, the process of the research will certainly affect the results. Although this should not discourage the minister from doing this research, as the researcher may best interpret the data.
The second chapter has to do with the Biblical tradition of the sage. This is different from either the prophet or the priest because these individual do not directly receive their inspiration from God, but from the wisdom around them. This too is an important aspect to the model where the minister is the interpretive guide. If the minister is exploring new territory, there may not be a prescribed action for every situation. However, pastors ought to be able to use wisdom and understanding to interpret the situations around them much like the biblical sages. The biblical sages represent to the canonical books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. In the Hebrew Bible, there are counselors of various types who give the kings advice. These people had to weigh situations and make judgments rather than use concrete systems. These people were not always associated with the cult, but do have strong ties as Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth represents. Some of the positions may overlap, but the sage is the most distinct from the other offices. In minister, there is often gray area, and it is not always clear what the best mode of action may be. Osmer uses the example of alcoholism being one of those grey areas, where ministering to others can be difficult to determine what the best course of action is. This is an extremely important area for the minister, who is the interpretive guide, to learn.
There times when the minister must speak for God. The premise of Prophetic discernment is that God and Israel or the church live in a covenant relationship. The covenant is lenient, but there are certain parameters of that covenant. It is the role of the Prophet to determine when Israel or the church has stepped outside of those barriers and needs to return. This will frequently be the role of the minister. It is inevitable that churches are going to make mistakes and will need to return to the covenant with God. To be an interpretive guide and to engage in spiritual discernment, one must have a developed spiritual life. There are two poles to the prophetic discernment. On one side of the prophetic discernment scale, is sympathy. This is the ability to feel what God feels concerning all the suffering in the world. When creation suffers, God feels its pain. The other pole to prophetic discernment is ethical and theological interpretation. This revolves around making decisions based on what is the theologically or ethically correct course of action.
Osmer’s final chapter discusses the pastor as a servant. Osmer breaks down three models of leadership identified as “task competence,” “transactional,” and “transformational.” Each of these forms has its strengths and weaknesses, but not of these necessitates servant leadership. Servant leadership is a concept that is radical and different from the majority of the world’s perspective on effective leadership, but it is highly supported in Deutero-Isaiah and in the New Testament. Humility and servant leadership transform all of these models into highly important aspects of the servants leader pastor’s work. The servant leader does not act out self interest, but only the interest of the kingdom of God.
Osmer’s application to my specific context
Although the book is very good, Osmerdid not write this book to my exact context. The Osmer wrote Practical Theology to address congregational minister, who were in a conventional pulpit position. I am serving as a Campus Ministry Intern at the Southern Hills Church of Christ, which is congregational ministry, but it is different from the typical ministry. This book offers great insights to doing ministry in any situation. The early part of the story of Olivia Potter, which Osmer used to demonstrate the usefulness of Practical Theology, is very common, and there have been people whom I have met through working with the Campus Ministry who have a similar story to Olivia. I have never been in the position of Reverend Gains, who was very influential in Olivia’s life, to help a person make the radical transformation into a minister of God, but I have seen others minister to people in a radical way that made huge impacts on people as they moved forward out of college.I believe that college is a very important time for individuals. It is the time that people will likely make decisions that they will not change for the rest of their lives.
As Osmer has diligently demonstrated the need for a minister to posses these skills, this book should be highly useful for campus minister. The minister of college students needs to be able to attend to the students, think wisely, discern like the prophets and serve selflessly like Jesus. It does not matter what context one is in, ministry will nearly certainly involve serving other people in some manner. The ability to listen to people and to understand what they are going through is an extremely valuable skill to have. The need to listen in campus ministry is higher than other ministries. The nature of campus ministry is that people are not in the ministry for the long term. Students come and go from a campus ministry frequently and few will stay part of the ministry after graduating from college. Thus, there is a need to be always listening to what people are saying because that could change rather quickly.
In campus Ministry, being a servant leader is especially important. It is common for students to become part of a campus ministry without feeling like part of the larger church community. There is usually very little that is actually keeping a student at a particular congregation. Students will not support a campus minister who acts out of selfish ambition. A large degree of humility is important for campus ministry in general. Campus ministry has the tendency to fluctuate, and this will happen regardless of the actions of the campus minister. Having the humility that Osmer talks about, which come from an attitude of servant leadership, will help the campus minister to see the larger picture and not become discouraged based on the current movement of the campus ministry.