I don’t think anyone with even a nominal appreciation for sanity or safety would offer a rebuttal to the following postulate: for high-stakes professions, particularly for jobs where other people’s lives are at stake (think: skyscraper architects and airline pilots), competence is a non-negotiable.
Let’s think this through
An airline pilot is entrusted with hundreds of lives multiple times a day, not to mention staggeringly expensive equipment. Naturally, I don’t think any of us would eagerly trust our lives to someone who doesn’t have a pilot’s license but has loved planes ever since he was a kid, and has even read a few books on aviation and watched some Youtube videos on how to fly. Hey, maybe he even went to a unaccredited piloting school for a few years to be told stories of piloting by older pilots and to listen to some retired pilots talk about what they think it means to fly a plane. And in the fall semester of the final year of this school, by the way, there’s an entire class where you throw paper airplanes around outside in the quad to learn the fundamentals of aerodynamics. Confidence booster, right?
No. In actuality, a pilot must undergo rigorous, multi-stage training (including theory, simulators, and supervised flight hours) which — only after intense education, experience and examination — result in certification and licensing. Their knowledge of aerodynamics, meteorology, and emergency procedures must be thorough and painstakingly accurate. ATP pilots in particular have to log 1,500 hours of flight time just to become a captain of a major airline’s aircraft.
It’s not just the Pilots
And skyscraper architects (I’m writing this from my very tall hotel in Boston while looking out at even taller — much taller — buildings around me): Go ahead and check out how rigorous, demanding, and lengthy the NAAB and AXP are, and how comprehensive and unforgiving the ARE exam is. And rightly so — thousands of people can inhabit a single skyscraper!
And that’s to say nothing about heart surgeons, nuclear power plant operators, bomb disposal technicians, or even financial planners. These are high-stakes jobs, and people’s lives and futures are dependent on the competence, training, certifications, and capabilities of these professionals. Note that they’re not too worried about whether you always wanted to defuse bombs growing up or if you had a passion for operating a power plant as a child. No, they just need to know that you know what you’re doing, and that you take it seriously enough to do it right. They don’t (and shouldn’t be) concerned with what you think your calling is. They are concerned with your ability to perform your duties as someone who is well-qualified, trustworthy, and fully knowledgeable.
Get to the point…
So to my point: looking around, it would appear that we apparently think the role of Bible teacher (in a pastoral or online capacity) somehow deserves far less rigorous training, fastidious dedication, working knowledge, and unforgiving scrutiny. That, you know, anyone can do it as long as they have a passion for it and as long as they have personal experience with an area of life relevant to their didactic sphere (are you a mom? You can teach on motherhood! And so on).
But here’s the reality: just as you aren’t qualified to design a skyscraper because you’re creative or don’t mind heights, and just as your neighbor isn’t fit to pilot a plane on the basis that he loves planes or has flown in one a few times, people are not qualified to teach the Bible (online, in church, in print, or otherwise) simply because they have a passion — excuse me, a “call” — or a burdened desire or even a felt need to do so. These are paltry, unacceptable substitutes for actual qualification. We would think so for a pilot or skyscraper architect, wouldn’t we? Or a heart surgeon? Or even the guy driving the metro subway train? Of course we would.
What happened?
So when and where and how and why did we decide that the Bible teacher (let alone reader) need not be intimately acquainted with the intricacies of theological frameworks, design patterns, historical and cultural contexts, or any of the other myriad aspects of Biblical literacy, much less have a working knowledge of the language in which it was actually written? When did we start thinking of this profession so lightly that we decided it was fine to not rigorously test and examine Bible teachers over protracted periods of scrutiny and in investigation? When did we lower the bar to somewhere around McDonald’s front-line associate-level (or lower) for the highest-stakes job in human history?
To add to this, the sad reality is that most (I said most) Bible teachers today (remember, I’m including the vast swath of confident YouTube geniuses and emergent Facebook scholars) can’t even properly punctuate a sentence these days, let alone read a meaningful book that’s not about vampires and werewolves, much less swim in the deep waters of any meaningful, timeless arts. And unfortunately, most of them have very little idea what they’re doing when they pick up a Bible and open their mouths. It’s a shame when it’s online. It’s a tragedy when it happens in print. And it’s a outrageous travesty when it happens behind the pulpit.
What do we do?
So what’s the answer? Force everyone to get a Doctorate in Pastoral Theology or Archeology or Ancient Near Eastern Customs or all of the above? No — the good news is that almost every single educational resource necessary to robustly equip pastors and Bible teachers is available for free online. It’s a start, at the very least. And — speaking for myself here — I know that I would greatly respect a pastor or a Bible teacher who didn’t get everything right (I’m one of those fallible ones myself, to be sure) as long as it was clear they were pursuing any knowledge available to them.
I recognize, upon re-reading this several times (I’m now on the train on my way home to Maine), that it could come across as condescending or a bit too rigid. But I implore you not to misunderstand my intent: I do not stand as an exception to the consternation I’m employing here. I recognize the need in my own life not to “wing it” or just autopilot my way through study based on what I’ve been taught my whole life or what I think “the Spirit said to me” that week. We all need to get a lot more serious about accessing and using the tools available to us, which are many.
It all makes sense now
In the end, the present crisis is a perfect explanation for where we are now as a nation and as an ecclesiastical presence in the West. No wonder people are flocking to Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. No wonder even more are leaving the Church altogether. If it’s not because they’re keen enough to detect and rightly reject unqualified teachers of the Bible, it’s because these same unqualified teachers’ bloviations aren’t feeding them in any meaningful way, leaving their anemic husks to wither away at the first appearance of the blazing sun of persecution.
We need to take competence and qualifications much more seriously than we do. I don’t know the answer, outside of knowing that extreme and knee-jerk responses to the problem aren’t going to solve anything (crossing the Tiber in one direction or the Rubicon toward the world in the other). But I at least see the problem. Too, I was part of it for a long time, myself. Maybe you are or have been, as well. Either way, we need to at least act like Bible teaching deserves all the training, testing, and equipping than any other high-stakes job requires, and so much more. Eternity is at stake.
