For the Sake of the Church

Introduction

As Practical Theologians working in the context of Protestant-Reformed institutions of theological training in the Netherlands, we consider it our duty to reflect on and account for our own distinct view on the interrelatedness of church, ecclesial practices, and Christian theology. This article reports on this. The departments of Practical Theology (PT) in these concrete contexts often work together with other theological disciplines like Systematic Theology, Biblical Studies, and Church History. Though the perspective of such practical-theological research and training is not limited to education for work in the context of ecclesial practices, this remains a vital rationale for these institutions. Their focus on ecclesial practices offers a specific contribution to the international scene of PT, which this article aims to describe.

The focus on ecclesial practices is part of a broader tendency to view religion in general, and Christianity in particular in terms of practice. Two trends within the study of religion may count as examples of this. Representatives of the first are Martin Riesebrodt (1948–2014), a German-American professor of sociology and politics from Geneva and formerly the University of Chicago, and Christian Smith (1960), a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame. Riesebrodt views religions as concrete systems of practices. According to him, the meaning of religious action is not contained in its beliefs or elite presuppositions. Rather, “Religion is [...] a factual system of religious practices that combines theory and practice.”^[1] Smith builds on this argument in developing his own theory of such a system. His conclusion is that, despite the Western tendency called ‘secularization’, “numerous other powerful causal influences simultaneously encourage the practice of religion.”^[2] Trying to comprehend the world without attention to concrete religious practices will fail, Smith contends. Therefore, empirical research into religious practices is needed.^[3]

Secondly, from a philosophy-of-religion-perspective, the Norwegian scholar Jan-Olav Henriksen defines Christianity “as a cluster of practices that taken together manifest a distinct historically and contextually shaped mode of being in the world.”^[4] Christian religion consists of practiced and traditional sets of acts: it “is thus constituted by a chain of memory that links back to and uses the Jesus story, as this story is mediated to individuals via the Christian community.”^[5]

In this vein, the Dutch practical theologian Henk de Roest calls for research on communities of practice and makes a plea for a ‘turn to the community,’ not as the object of research but rather as its partner.^[6] De Roest wants to encourage theological reflection here because

[i]n these practices, practitioners and everyday believers feel addressed by God in Jesus Christ who chooses them, speaks to them, inspires them, calls upon them to act, makes demands on them, promises to be with them, enables them to cross boundaries and build bridges, sends them into the world and evokes and renews their faith, love and hope.^[7]

De Roest calls this the Missio Dei-rationale for collaborative practical theological research into practices of faith. Dutch Protestant-Reformed PT is explicitly committed to such reasoning. The strong influence of empirical theology (Johannes van der Ven and others), and the huge attention to lived faith have contributed to a renewed sense that ecclesial practices as such are worth investigating. Such research is worthwhile not only or even primarily from a systematic-theological point of view, as if it were about doctrines and beliefs. Its relevance stems from the fact that it is closely related to pragmatic questions like how to survive the secularization, and to the role of spiritual resources within churches for believers living their everyday life. If PT neglects the pragmatic task of training professionals for such challenging contexts, it will be to its detriment. Let us be clear: by ‘church’ we do not necessarily mean its institutional form, as it was dominant in society and for the (religious) life of people in other eras. Instead, we must consider the attention that is given to communities of faith (smaller or larger) and their practices, expressed in a range of manifestations. We contend that in all their diversity those practices share a common aim or orientation, namely to be connected to the God that people encounter in reading and practicing Scripture. People become connected to what the Apostle Paul calls “the Body of Christ”. That is why we use the word ‘Church’ (with a capital C) to indicate the network of Christian communities in both its fluidity and institutionality. Hence the title of this article: For the Sake of the Church. Our Dutch perspective calls for acknowledging our own interdenominational diversity as well. As members of the Protestant family, yet with distinct Lutheran and Reformed characteristics, we use the broad term Protestant-Reformed.

In this article we describe how we envision and practice PT within the context of our Protestant-Reformed institutions of theological training and research in the Netherlands. The four of us feel strong ties to the Church. Some of us serve or have served as ministers and still conduct church services. Now called to serve within our institutions, we will first introduce these places of learning (1). Secondly, we will describe an international turn to the ‘Church’ and ecclesial practices (2). In the next section we outline the attention to ecclesial practices and Protestant-Reformed PT in the Netherlands (3). The fourth section discusses Protestant-Reformed characteristics of PT that resonate with a turn to the Church (4). In the final section we will summarize our conclusions (5).

1 Introducing Dutch Protestant-Reformed Academic Training and Research

The landscape of theological training and research in the Dutch speaking areas of the Netherlands and Belgium^[8] is rich and pluriform. In a recent volume on the future of religious leadership, no less than fourteen institutions appear in a range from Orthodox, Catholic, Old-Catholic, Protestant, Free Church, and migrant-churches.^[9] Within this spectrum, three stand-alone theological universities now exist, each connected to a protestant denomination: Protestant Theological University (PThU), Theological University Utrecht (TU|U) and Theological University of Apeldoorn (TUA). We will briefly recount their history here insofar as it relates to PT. The historical connection to concrete churches and denominations is reflected in the attention paid by their respective PT departments to ecclesial practices, e. g. through the use of empirical methods. The question this article addresses is: “What does the study of ecclesial practices within Dutch Protestant-Reformed Practical Theology contribute to the international field of PT?”

The PThU (ca. 250 BA and MA students in 2022) originated in 2007 after a merger of three major protestant denominations in the Netherlands in 2004, and has its roots in the Hervormde, Gereformeerde and Lutherse education for ministry. The landscape at the Dutch state-universities has changed dramatically since the end of the 20^th century. Theological faculties disappeared. They were either turned into departments of the Humanities or into faculties of Religious Studies. As the result of a long and turbulent decision-making process, the PThU had locations in Amsterdam and Groningen (2007) and recently has decided to move to one location in Utrecht from 2025 onwards. In his 2022 official dies-rede, Henk de Roest recalled that the PThU reaches back to several predecessors: the Theological University (School) Kampen (1854) that drew on the Gereformeerde tradition; the Luthers Seminarium (1816); and the Hervormde faculties of Divinity (Godgeleerdheid) at Groningen (1614), Amsterdam (1632) and Leiden (1575).^[10] The Gereformeerde tradition is the youngest as the corresponding denominations originated in the 19^th century. The Lutheran strand within the PThU remains a vital and important part of its sources and international recognition.

Dutch church history can recall many stories of splitting and division, as well as (more recently) mergers, which is reflected in the history of their respective institutions of theological training. Whereas the PThU originated as a merger, the TU|U (ca. 130 BA and MA students in 2022) is the result of a conflict within the Gereformeerde Kerken during WWII. This denomination itself was a split from the great Hervormde Kerk in the first half of the 19^th century. It had its own theological education from 1854 in Kampen. As this denomination split in 1944, a second institute for training ministers was founded soon after the war ended. Thus, Kampen had two theological schools: one left Kampen to join the PThU in 2012, and the second is in the process of moving to Utrecht (hence the name: Theological University Utrecht). Both the TU|U and the predecessors of the PThU originally were primarily for theological education for ministers within their own denomination. As the 20^th century unfolded and general societal, cultural, and religious trends came to influence these two institutions, the bonds with their respective denominations somewhat loosened and relations with other churches and theological faculties intensified.

The third theological university was established in 1894 and predominantly relates to the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken (Christian Reformed Churches), which formally became a denomination in 1892. It is called Theological University of Apeldoorn (TUA) (ca. 160 BA and MA students in 2022) after its location in the city of Apeldoorn. Since 1975, TUA has been recognized by the Dutch government as an academic institution for theology. Its students have a wide range of denominational backgrounds.

All three institutions have their own rich history in Practical Theology.^[11] The Hervormde tradition of theological education explicitly characterizes itself as pluriform, and has done so ever since the early 19^th century. Especially its relation to modernity and its positivism was of concern to PT. In his overview of 20^th century Hervormde PT, Gerrit Immink refers to several strands, like the hermeneutical tradition, appropriation of cultural tendencies, and existentialist-pneumatological accents that all attuned to the reality of religious praxis in its cultural setting.^[12] This attunement to culture and the empirical, he says, should nonetheless never become stronger than attention to ‘the operation and presence of God’s salvation’ in order to warrant the ‘revelation-dimension of the praxis.’^[13]

The shared Gereformeerde history of PThU and TU|U (from 1854–1944), on the other hand, shows a clear preference for a specific area of PT, namely the church offices. PT in the neo-Calvinist tradition at predecessors of the PThU and TU|U was called Ambtelijke vakken,^[14] a term coined by one of the tradition’s core theologians and founder of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Abraham Kuyper, in 1894.^[15] The first phase^[16] of teaching this subject in the Netherlands was on a broad range of church practices and lasted from 1880–1910. During this period, the name praktische theologie was used alongside ambtelijke vakken and attention to psychology (of religion) was growing. However, solid concentration on church offices and how pastors could and should apply Holy Scripture in their practice of preaching and liturgy, pastorate, and catechesis became dominant from 1910 until the second half of the 20^th century.^[17] From 1955–1970, an ecclesiological broadening of the spectrum became visible, culminating in the new subject of gemeenteopbouw (community formation, Gemeindeaufbau). The last quarter of the 20^th century can be labelled as a turn to practical theology^[18] as an action science, making room for ample empirical research into the life of people.

From its inception in 2007 onwards, the PThU firmly established its department of PT. The work of Gerrit Immink has gained international traction^[19] The same applies to Henk de Roest and colleagues in practical ecclesiology, especially his work for the journal of Ecclesial Practices^[20] and implementation of a variety of empirical methods in PT^[21], and to Marcel Barnard and his team in the broad field of liturgical and ritual studies including the founding of the Institute for Ritual and Liturgical Studies (IRiLiS),^[22] and to Jos de Kock and his companions for the Research Centre for Youth, Church and Culture (OJKC)^[23]. These examples might just be the internationally most visible ones besides the work done for spiritual care, homiletics, pastoral care etc.

The history of the TU|U, which separated from the predecessor of the PThU in the 1940 s, bears many resemblances with the former’s history regarding PT. Initially, the TU|U strongly opposed the alleged liberalism surrounding mainstream practical theology worldwide and concentrated on the traditional areas covered by church offices. Since the 1990 s, however, it experienced the same tendency as the predecessor of the PThU. Practical theology shifted from a dogmatic and normative discipline towards a contextually sensitive, hermeneutical interpretative discipline.^[24] Its focus, however, was still homiletics as a task of the pastor. Quite recently, the focus has shifted more towards practical ecclesiology, including attention to empirically based theological ethnography.^[25] At the TU|U, PT and its ecclesiological focus became more aligned to the work of Stefan Paas in missiology^[26], because PT and mission are combined in the Centre for Church and Mission in the West (CCMW).^[27]

The tradition of the TUA is strongly connected to a more pietistic-conservative strand in theology, in which PT was also taken in its concentration on the practices of the pastor.^[28] Like the other institutions, the TUA long adhered to the term ambtelijke vakken. Lately, this has been modified by taking more account of context and its description.^[29] This more empirical approach aligns well with the TUA’s addition of a special chair in pedagogy.^[30]

To conclude, the attention to empirical methods within PT, which is very much present within the PThU and its predecessors, and has more recently been employed by the TU|U and TUA, is an important feature. All three institutions continue to study ecclesial practices. The question this article addresses is how such a focus within these institutions of Protestant (Reformed) origin contributes to PT worldwide.

2 A Turn to the Church in PT?

After this historical-institutional overview, we now contend that PT being directed to ecclesial practices (‘Church’ in its broadest sense) may well be in line with some international trends in PT. It is helpful to summarize these trends in order to discover what Dutch Protestant-Reformed PT brings to the field internationally. As these three institutions are (at least partially) meant as training grounds for ministers and chaplains, focusing on churches and church practices is partially just a pragmatic choice. Yet we believe that there is more at stake here. There are central theological convictions that contribute to this focus. The institutions and their convictions have developed not only from their own traditions but clearly also in dialogue with the international academic PT forum. To show this, we first sketch how church and church practices are present in the international PT context (section 2), before turning to the Netherlands (section 3).

As mentioned in the introduction, international PT pays remarkable attention to practices within (and outside of) churches. Again: by ‘church’ we do not necessarily mean its institutional form, as it was dominant in society and for the (religious) life of people in the cultural West. We aim at the attention given to communities of faith (smaller or larger) and their practices. We confine this paragraph to four examples from the USA, Great Britain, and Germany, where this ‘turn to the Church’ can be observed.

Bonnie Miller-McLemore distinguishes four ways of conceiving PT. It is an area of research, an academic discipline in which people are trained, a way of describing the field in which people serve in practice, and the way (non-employed, non-professional) believers practice their faith.^[31] By doing so, Miller-McLemore makes an important decision that she advocated earlier in her publications. She argues for a conscious turn of PT to the practices of faith. Description and interpretation are not everything, as if PT coincided with hermeneutics. It is more about phronesis.^[32] According to Miller-McLemore, the main flaw of PT might have been not so much its concentration on some kind of clerical paradigm (Farley)^[33] but that it has become increasingly academic. This dilemma is interesting and important. Miller-McLemore stands for what she calls “a preferential option for practice”.^[34] This is much more than just the practices of clergy or ministers in church buildings. Practice here refers to lived experiences of faith within a (predominantly) Christian context.^[35] Though the inclination towards practices as such is not disputed, its preferential option for Christian practices is. Ruard Ganzevoort, for example, is more inclined to speak of a broad spectrum of possible objects of PT – ranging from clearly clerical practices in the context of the liturgy to the broadest phenomena of religion in many cultural contexts.^[36] Here, PT is more or less equated with general hermeneutics. It is this tendency that Miller-McLemore addresses and counters with her focus on Christian practices.

To a certain degree, Christian Grethlein does the same when he, from a German evangelisch perspective, defines the object of PT as ‘communication of the gospel’ in the broad field of human life, but focused on what the Church does to humbly serve everyday life.^[37] Grethlein exemplifies such communication of the gospel by describing the core business of PT as the discussion of a Christian way (or form) of life.^[38] Whereas the liminality of our age might be in the foreground for many, the concrete forms of Christian life still communicate the gospel. Though in new ways and shapes, practicing faith in shared meals, conversations, teaching, and learning still draw on this ‘churchly’ center. Grethlein takes these ‘life-forms’ (Lebensformen) to be embodied, lived, and dynamic communications of the gospel.^[39] It is not a coincidence, however, that his latest book concerns liturgy – one of the core practices the Christian tradition offers.

Both in the USA and Germany, the role of church and religion is relatively large when compared to the more secularized countries and regions. One might assume, then, that analyses of being church under the conditions of post-Christendom or post-Christianity in Europe offers a different perspective. But that this is not entirely the case. Surely, churches and church life in the Netherlands are in decline.^[40] Yet, PT still needs a “reference point in practice and, indeed, in the life of the church,” as the British practical theologian Pete Ward explains. He goes on to say: “The academic practice of theology is therefore located in relation to the ongoing life of the church”.^[41] This church life is not as institutionalized as it was when it was firmly grounded in the Constantinian era. Though there still are lots of institutional residues, the “liquification”^[42] of Church is everywhere. Therefore, much talk and thinking about Church is not so much about its institutional character as about its practices – practices that are deeply embedded in tradition and yet open to contextualization.^[43] This attention to lived theology and concrete practices is, in fact, an example of PT attuning itself to church life. Thinking through what such attention means for ‘being church’, however, is still an ongoing quest that is (or should be) on the agenda of PT.^[44] This is what many have labelled a plea for a practical-theological ecclesiology.^[45]

Our fourth example from international PT comes from Andrew Root. Root explicitly addresses the role of the Church within a secular context and frequently uses a specifically Lutheran Protestant lens to observe what it means to be a faithful Christian in our context. He has published three books on the role of the church for faith in a post-Christendom society, or, as he labels it, on ‘ministry in a secular age’.^[46] Two more books deal with the question how churches in decline can survive their demographical fate without succumbing to the neo-liberal concept of innovation.^[47] According to Root, the core problem of Christian churches in a secular world is not “the loss of people and resources” but goes much deeper: “It’s really the transformation of belief itself”.^[48] Root states that this transformation, due to the dominant immanent frame, consists of “the loss of a God who is God”.^[49] First articulated in his book Christopraxis, Root’s Barthian-Lutheran goal is to make room for God to be a God who acts in this world – i. e., that ministry “is not solely attention to church practices but also attention to these very ‘in-church’ practices through a missional impulse that searches for God’s ministry as it comes to humanity in the world”.^[50] This is why he states that much professional and academic interest in the church’s chances for survival depend too much on human activity:

This kind of thinking implicitly concedes that the immanent frame is closed, and God cannot personally act in it. This leads congregations to think they must, themselves, become the subject of their own story if they hope to survive.^[51]

3 Ecclesial Practices and Protestant-Reformed PT in the Netherlands

Above we have seen some examples of a trend in recent PT, namely an empirical interest in the lived faith of individuals and in communal Christian practices. Such attunement aims at understanding life within those communities of faith, along with the search for strategies to steer church in an increasingly secular context in the West.

Looking at the three institutions, we could point at contributions by different domains of PT to the study of ecclesial practices, e. g. by spiritual care, homiletics, pastoral care and counseling, liturgy, youth-work, diaconate, or practical-ecclesiology (community building). Our aim, however, is more general: What does the specific contextual approach of PT that is cultivated at our institutions contribute to the field? What does ‘our’ focus on the centrality of Church and ecclesial practices have to offer?

4 PT, the Church, and Protestant-Reformed Theology

Describing the contribution of Dutch Protestant-Reformed PT to the field, we contend that certain elements of our theological tradition might help taking the reality of church as seriously as possible. In this, our work is not unique among the various traditions, and not all Protestant (practical) theology displays the same interests that we pursue. Yet, we think a Reformed contribution can be helpful to the broader spectrum of PT and is related to the international examples we discussed above (section 2).

5 Conclusion

This article introduced three Dutch institutions for theological training and research that are closely related to concrete churches and denominations: the Protestant Theological University, the Theological University of Apeldoorn, and the Theological University Utrecht. As might be expected, churches and their calling are a core business for them, and we briefly indicated how PT has evolved within these (church) contexts. Then we turned to four important contemporary PT voices in the field: Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Christian Grethlein, Pete Ward and Andrew Root. Their contributions indicate a renewed attention to ecclesial practices, not as a specific denominational training program, but more as the lived-faith-context that enables and supports faith communally. Furthermore, a tentative overview showed how this has been done in the recent past of these institutions. The last section indicated which specifics from the Protestant-Reformed tradition could be relevant to qualify and undergird such attention to Church and ecclesial practices: Firstly, this tradition’s inclination explicitly names God’s action as constitutive for the Church and subsequently for (practical) theology; secondly, a specific accent on covenantal paradigm of promise and faith; and thirdly, its attuning to the brokenness of this world. We contend that this Dutch confessional venue into PT takes seriously what Loffeld called ‘places of salvation-reality and their analysis’.^[91] Training for working in such ‘places of salvation-reality’ requires PT’s commitment to a holistic theological approach, as it is envisioned by the international examples we discussed.

Of course, we rely on many colleagues – both within and outside theology – who from (partly) different perspectives and fields of interest investigate spirituality, faith, and practices that are not specifically church-related. Church and non-church in liquid times, nor research into this, cannot and should not be monopolized. Our strategic aim is to contribute inter- and intradisciplinarily to the flourishing of communities of faith in our context, which defines our main subject of research. To use the words of John Swinton and Harriet Mowat:

The fundamental aim of Practical Theology is to enable the Church to perform faithfully as it participates in God’s ongoing mission in, to and for the world. As such it seeks to reflect critically and theologically on situations and to provide insights and strategies which will enable the movement towards faithful change.^[92]