What are they learning – those students in their Sunday school class? Those kids in the youth ministry? Those adults who come for services week by week?

The level of biblical ignorance is frightening to contemplate. Not only has our society lost the tradition of biblical learning, people in our churches seem to know less as one generation flows into the next. The apparent exceptions are those young people who have been in Christian day schools or were home schooled by Christian parents. And strange as it may seem, I find a good deal of that troublesome.

I attended seminary many years ago. It was academically rigorous and, for me, spiritually deadening. Partly, that was my fault. I came to regard the great teachings of the Bible as things I learned to pass tests and get grades without making application to my own soul. But I am not prepared to take full responsibility. The Bible was never intended to be an academic subject. Its purpose is far more personal and life changing.

Often there is a tendency for people to agree with my critique of seminary education yet that model persists throughout the church. Even Sunday school is a quasi-academic institution.

So what do we do? My suggestion is rather simple. We should strive to teach the Bible in a way that encourages application to the lives of both teachers and learners. We may understand what the Bible teaches about marriage, but will that come into play when a marriage gets rocky? We may have some grasp of the way God preserves his people and how we must strive to be faithful, but will that make a difference when a person is so disillusioned that dropping out of the church is a real temptation?

Biblical information is vital to make biblical applications. Otherwise we have a faith we must make up as we go along. Sadly, that describes one part of the contemporary church. But biblical information – understanding the Bible’s content, studying the doctrines that flow from that content – is not enough. It can make a beautiful philosophic system. But only as it is applied in the power of the Spirit do we see change in the community of faith.

Will the church stand apart from society or will it be absorbed, simply reflecting the mood of the day? Will we be people of the book as well as people who attempt, with God’s help, to live by that book? It’s far more than a sophisticated self-help text. It is the power of God to change us. It tells us about Jesus.

                                                                                          Robert Edmiston 
Training Coordinator, CE&P

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