Theology as Transformation: There are some kinds of knowing that leave you relatively unchanged. relevant to the everyday reality of being human.Ģ. Thus, if theology deepens worship, then theology is inherently practical-i.e. And when God’s people gather to worship him together, they are doing the very thing for which they were created. We were created to glorify God by living as his image bearers in the world, and this is something that should characterize every minute of every day.

But such worries fail to understand that worship is the business of humanity. It may be important and powerful, but ultimately worship is something you do on Sunday morning in isolation from the pressing realities of everyday life. To some extent, I think we worry about theology being impractical because deep down we also suspect that worship itself is impractical. As beautiful and amazing as God is, how could we possibly come to know him better without falling more deeply in love with him while at the same time falling on our knees in awe before him? Knowledge, love, and worship are the inseparable triad of good theology. Knowing God more deeply necessarily leads to both love and worship. But we err when we think of this kind of knowing in purely cognitive terms, as though knowing God could be limited to some set of right statements we make about God. After all, that’s what the term means: the study of God. Theology as Worship: Theology is fundamentally about knowing God. So there’s a sense in which I want to say a hearty “Yes!” to the question of whether theology should be practical, but only if we carefully redefine what that means.Ĥ Reasons for Thinking that Theology Is “Practical”ġ. After all, that’s where we do all our living. If we can’t explain why theology matters, we have a problem. I’ll admit that part of me resonates with such concerns. Unless we can explain why these things matter for the everyday lives of regular people, we should stop wasting our time and get on with more important issues. Theologians spend all their time wrestling with things like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and whether we should say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or from the Father alone. Teach theology long enough and you’ll face countless forms of the same basic question: What does this have to do with real life? Will it affect the way we do ministry, how we share the gospel, or what we do every day? How is it relevant to the problems and challenges the average person faces? You know, is it practical?Īnd the deep suspicion lying behind such questions is that most theology is rather impractical.

Christian ways of life