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by Kevin Pauley
There seems to be a loss of connection between what student nurses are taught and what they need when they work in hospital wards. They find it difficult to bring together and make sensible their theory (school of nursing) and their practice (hospital ward). This gap between theory and practice is not a situation confined to social work and nursing. The same problem besets those who work in education or many other professions, such as medicine, law enforcement, and the church.
One way to prevent the development of a theory/practice gap is to have the nursing teachers give up a period of introduction for new students in the school, and begin their training with a period on the wards from the first day. To avoid a similar theoretical introduction to academic theology, ministerial students should begin their university course with work in the city (in a hospital, city planning or industry).
The very word “theology” has been used more than once as a pejorative word meaning irrelevant. Arguments put forward are dismissed as “mere theology”: that is, the arguments in the speaker’s mind did not connect with the practical situation. Theology in the mind of a secular society has come to stand for irrelevant theory, just as rhetoric now means irrelevant speech.
The beginning of this gap between theory and practice lies far back in history, and it was certainly an issue in the very early church. The writer of James’ epistle took to task those who emphasized faith at the expense of works. Both faith and works, he points out, belong to one another:
“Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! …this kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” (James 1: 22,27)
Perhaps this very problem is what Jesus addressed when He prayed “I’m not asking that you (God the Father) take them out of the world but that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no more defined by the world than I am defined by the world. Make them holy – consecrated – with the truth; your word is consecrating truth. In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world.”
Notice that He didn’t just leave us with theory (truth), but that theory led immediately to mission? Not words, works – you don’t learn that in seminary.
Kevin Pauley is a pastor and writer. He lives in Illinois with his wife, Lynn, their five children and two dogs. His internet address is Berea.
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