How expert are our experts?

There are times I've been asked to speak on something because of my expertise in specific areas. That happened when I was in academia both in lecturing undergraduate and postgraduate courses and at other universities or conferences. By and large I was quite confident doing that and felt I had something to offer. I was speaking on areas I'd spent significant time studying and in some cases had probably done my own, peer-reviewed research in.

In church contexts, it has happened less frequently, unless you count regularly preaching. That's because pastors of churches are more commonly 'generalists'. We've probably done further study and training of some sort that has equipped us to preach and teach in our churches, because, skills-wise, that's a key element to being a pastor (e.g. 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:9). But we are more like a schoolteacher than a university academic if that makes some sense (and yes I know being a pastor more complex than educational/teaching level).

There are times though, when I've been asked to teach as a Christian minister in particular areas because of my expertise. I used to quite regularly do Science and Christianity talks, because I had a background and training in both. More recently, I've written and spoken on church ministry in hard places because I've done some of that kind of ministry.

This is useful, but also something I'm wary of. It's useful because we can benefit from the teaching of someone who has more expertise than us in particular areas. But I'm wary because I recognise the limits of my expertise. For example, if I teach about ministry and church in hard places, I have read some books and I have got some years of experience, but I have neither done extensive study (e.g. reading lots of literature and doing any of my own research) nor do I have very broad experience (I have worked in former mill-towns north of Manchester, which are hard places, but they are a fairly specific hard place). I think those things need to put some caveats into how you listen to me.

This leads me to some thoughts that have been percolating around my head for a while, as I've listened to the 'experts' in ministry areas I've been interested in, e.g. church-planting, outreach with Muslims and church in hard places.

First, for the experts:

1. Humility is good. You have some expertise, but don't crave to be thought of as the expert.
2. Honesty is good. Be clear about what expertise you actually have and what it's based on.
3. Provisionality is good. We all get excited about the dynamic speaker who will tell us definitively how to do things...that is until they don't work for us. Be really careful about being dogmatic about stuff that is really just what you think from your experience.

Second for the listeners:

1. Be teachable. Often in these situations, if I'm teaching, I'm trying my imperfect best. I probably know that I may be wrong and I'm open to you showing me that. Don't be there to pull me down or to take the worst interpretation of what I'm saying.
2. Be wise. In most of these situations, I think it's good to ask good questions of what we're hearing. For example, out of what context is this person speaking? How generally applicable is what they're saying? Or how context specific is it? What weight of theology, experience, study etc. lies behind what they're saying?

Why do I say this? Well let me give a couple of examples?

Suppose you ask a children's ministry expert to come and teach how to do children's ministry. Their expertise lies in the fact that they have been the full-time children's minister at a large evangelical church in a middle class area in the south-east of England. Now imagine you are a minister working in a rural village in North Yorkshire wanting to improve your volunteer-led and run Sunday School. The difference in context and situation is massive. It's not that there won't be things to learn, but both expert and listener will help each other as they recognise that. It's not much use for the expert to recommend a highly expensive curriculum that the minister can't afford. Similarly, if you were listening to how the expert had developed their own localised curriculum for children's work, you need to translate from full-time employed to volunteer-led.

Or how about the church planting expert telling you how to raise funds. The approach they followed and recommend is to work out of a well-off local church, perhaps especially encouraging a small number of substantial givers in the church to join and fund the new plant. You're listening as someone wanting to plant in the a town in the North-East of England where there aren't any well-off local churches or Christians. Both the expert and the listener need to recognise some things. The expert is only expert in funding the kind of church plant they have been able to do. But that doesn't mean the listener can't think about translating it. For example, do the church or the Christians need to be local to fund the church?

So I say it because I think a more humble and thoughtful approach to expertise in quite lot of training and conferences on Christian ministry could be more productive and perhaps less dispiriting for those listening.