N. T. Wright had been recommending reading the works of Josephus, a first century Jewish scholar, to get a feel for the Jewish world which was the stage for Jesus and the early church. A person in the audience challenged Wright by pointing out Josephus’ penchant for self-promotion. Wright countered with some self-deprecating comment about his own works and then concluded with the statement: “I hope none of us reads naively.”
That comment stuck with me in the four years since I heard it. I’ve done a fair amount of naive reading over my lifetime, mostly in books about how to grow a church. I became aware of that problem some years before hearing N. T. Wright when Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Church, made waves across denominational lines and had clergy flocking to satellite conferences to learn how to replicate his phenomenal results at Saddleback Church. That wave petered out for most all mainline clergy who tried Warren’s methods. In retrospect we forgot in our enthusiasm that Warren was a Southern Baptist, and Southern Baptist is a very different church culture than our own.
The problem of reading naively is that when the latest magic bullet fails to produce the expected results we find a thousand different reasons to dismiss the whole book itself. In fact, about 25% of Warren’s book can be relevant to churches like ours. We have to read with discernment, the opposite of reading naively.
This lesson learned comes back to me now as I re-read Martin Thornton’s Pastoral Theology: A Reorientation. It was the book that gave birth to a vision of a community in common spiritual formation and thus set me on a path that has led to, among other things, the Trinity Way of Life. Now the great challenge is to reread it with discernment. That takes time and patience.
The Apprentice Priest 