Scholarship and Warmth: An Interview with Bruce Waltke

Dr. Bruce Waltke is a preeminent Old Testament scholar. His teaching career has earned him a reputation of being a master teacher with a pastoral heart. Dr. Waltke has also pastored several churches, lectured at many evangelical seminaries in North America and has spoken at numerous Bible conferences.

I’ve been impressed by Dr. Waltke’s scholarship, as well as his pastoral warmth. I’m grateful to Dr. Waltke for agreeing to answer some of my questions.

As Professor of Old Testament, what brings you the greatest joy? Is it studying, writing, teaching, or something else?

I wish I could say that I find my greatest joy in my students.  Though I do delight in them and in their ministries, I find my greatest joys in writing and publishing and in teaching. I used to get the most joy out of teaching and preaching, but as I got older I realized more and more how transitory verbal ministries are. As I got older I came to value teaching more and more for  what it built into the lives of my students and its multiplication and its continuation in their ministries. That reward, however, is less direct and seemingly more restricted  than that of writing, for writings touch more lives for more time than students in a classroom. But writings, like all things, will pass away, as publishers undoubtedly will cease to publish my dated works. But unlike Qoheleth I know there will always be a residue of eternal profit, for all ministry participates in the eternal kingdom of God.

Your exegetical work seems to me to combine scholarship and worship, which aren't found together as often as one might wish. How have you been able to maintain both together?

Others note an alleged combination of scholarship and worship. It must be relative, for I am unconscious of it.  My scholarship always seems to be inadequate because knowledge is always imperfect--there is always another book to read on a subject or is being written on it.  As for worship,  though I do not know the full depths of my depravity, I know it well enough to know that my motives are always tarnished by self-interest, not by worship. My spiritual flaw is a carnal perfectionism. I believe God is taking that flaw and sanctifying it by his Spirit in me.  Quintillius said:  “Ambition is a vice but it can be the mother of virtue.”  To become a vrtue must be the work of God's grace.  I have nothing of which to boast. This process of holiness is true of all healthy Christians, isn't it?

Pastors often feel pushed away from theology to be more "practical." What advice would you give to a pastor who aspires to be a pastor and scholar?

I cannot distinguish between theology and practical theology.  If my theology does not change my life, it is not good theology, but an idol. I hope every pastor who stands behind the sacred lectern is a scholar.  By that I mean, I hope the teacher of God's Word will teach it as responsibly as possible within the time available.  Very few are so gifted they can be both an academic in a university or seminary and a pastor. There is by the restraint of time and being human a less than perfect scholarship and of pastoring. What is needed is both humility, a recognition of our limitations, and a commitment to give God the best of what he has given to us. We need to keep our priorities straight, lest we make Success our god. It's hard not to envy those who worship Success and receive worldly rewards.

Knowledge is both a virtue and a vice.  It is necessary and certainly better than ignorance.  Paul frequently says he doesn't want us to be ignorant.  On the other hand, it is a vice: it always puffs up and is imperfect.  By God's grace I overcome its endemic tendency to pride the pure virtue of love and its imperfection by the pure virtues of faith and hope.

It's a joy to see the warmth between you and your friend Haddon Robinson. It's a good example of friendship maintained through years of life and ministry. How have friendships like this sustained you?

Photo courtesy of Chris Brauns

Haddon is so uniquely gifted that I feel unworthy of his friendship.  His warm friendship toward our family  is a mark of his truly godly character. His brilliant conversation always refreshes me.  Bonnie's love is peerless. Elaine and I treasure their friendship.  The sustenance of their friendship brings delight, psychic joy that cannot be fully verbalized. When the four of us are together we  seem to feed on each others thoughts, commitments and basic disposition toward God and others, though Elaine is now suffering dementia. Haddon or Bonnie never interpret us negatively; they truly believe and hope all things;  I do not think they ever think of enduring us.

How can we pray for you?

I have taken a leave of absence from teaching at Knox, to test how I can best serve God without a contract to teach. Pray that I will finish well and have the wisdom to prioritize my time well in this new context. 

Playing It Safe?

For the past couple of years, I've been thinking a lot about Jesus' famous parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). It's been one of those passages I can't get out of my mind.

Here's the parable: a man goes on a journey. Before leaving, he entrusts his property to three servants. Each one gets a lot: one gets five talents, possibly worth some three million dollars. A second gets two talents, probably worth just over a million dollars. A third servant gets a paltry (!) half a million dollars or so. When the master returns, he holds them accountable for how they've invested what he left with them. Two servants doubled the money and are rewarded; the one who received the least amount of money only preserved the capital and receives a strongly worded rebuke.

It's not hard to see what the story means. Jesus has left and has entrusted his followers with resources. He will return and hold us accountable for what we've done with what he's left us. Six lessons:

1. God has given all of us something. He's given the least of us a lot. I love what J.C. Ryle says: "Anything whereby we may glorify God is ‘a talent.’ Our gifts, our influence, our money, our knowledge, our health, our strength, our time, our senses, our reason, our intellect, our memory, our affections, our privileges as members of Christ’s Church, our advantages as possessors of the Bible—all, all are talents." We all have them.
   
2. Nothing we have is ours. The servants didn't own their resources; they only managed them on behalf of the master. We don't own anything we have. It's all God's, and we'll give account for all of it one day. I should mentally write on everything I have, "God's." It's all his. Nothing is mine.
   
3. The amount is irrelevant. I sometimes think that God has given others more, so they're more accountable. Not so. We will not be judged based on how many talents God has given us, but based on what we’ve done with them. I love how Spurgeon puts it: "If there be degrees in glory, they will not be distributed according to our talent but according to our faithfulness in using them."
   
4. We're supposed to do something what what we have. It's not enough to play it safe. I love what D.A. Carson writes: "It is not enough for Jesus’ followers to ‘hang in there’ and wait for the end. They must see themselves for what they are—servants who owe it to their Master to improve what he entrusts to them. Failure to do so proves they cannot really be valued disciples at all."
   
5. It's really about our view of God. The one servant played it safe because he had a distorted view of his master (Matthew 25:24-25). How I live, and what I do with what God has given me, is really an indication of what I believe to be true about God.
   
6. We're supposed to live for that day when we'll give account. When I read this parable, I often think of four words: "Not me. Not now." All of this is not about me; it's about God. All of this is not about now; it's about that day when I'll give account to my returning Master. Live for that day. As Randy Alcorn says, "Financial planners tell us, 'When it comes to your money, don’t think just three months or three years ahead. Think thirty years ahead.' Christ, the ultimate investment counsellor, takes it further. He says, 'Don’t ask how your investment will be paying off in just thirty years. Ask how it will be paying off in thirty million years.'" Live for that day. Evaluate everything for how it will pay off in eternity, for that day when you'll give account to your Lord.

This parable continues to significantly shape me. There's enough to feast on here for a very long time. Refuse to play it safe with your life. Instead, invest everything you have for Jesus and for eternity.

The New Normal

One of the things I wrestled with as we considered the call to plant a church is that some things were going to have to change.

• We would have to be a lot more dependent upon God in prayer.
• We would have to be a lot more intentional about evangelism.
• We would have to be willing to risk a lot more in terms of our comfort and security.

Would we be willing, I asked, to live prayerfully and evangelistically? Were we willing to risk our comfort and our security for the sake of the gospel?

Put that way, there was no way to say no. In a sense, this is the new (old) normal. Not that everyone is called to plant a church, but all of us are called to live prayerfully, evangelistically, and to invest everything that we have for the sake of the Kingdom.

I began to envision what it would look like to not plant a church. In the end, it looked kind of the same.

I'm not surprised that we had to wrestle with that call to plant a church. That's a good thing. I'm a little surprised that I had to wrestle with how prayerful, dependent, and "all in" I was prepared to be. That should have been settled a long time ago. Once you've encountered the grace of Jesus, is there any other way to live?

Living Into Focus

Arthur Boers is author of Living Into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distraction. And he knows what it’s like to struggle with busyness. He’s written a book about living well, believing that we’re not without choices as we confront the frantic pace of our lives. “I trust that sleepwalking is behind me and that more balanced and invigorating patterns of living are available to all of us,” he writes. “It remains possible to live well.”

Boers once pastored a church in which the congregation identified busyness as a key spiritual issue they were facing. The elders of the church agreed, but he jokes they were too busy to respond for a couple of years.

According to Boers, busyness is a discipleship issue. Busyness is a major challenge in most people’s lives. He points to experiments that show that busyness and haste leads us to be swept up in an agenda that isn’t God’s, or ours.

Not only is it a discipleship issue, but It’s also a missional issue. “If we are not living in substantially different ways from people in our culture,” he asks, “what do we have to offer? If we are not living in abundant ways, why would people want to join us?”

Boers encourages us to pay attention to our use of technology. “As devices and commodities move into the center, focal things become peripheral.” Boers is not against technology, but believes that we need to have discerning conversations about technology, and what our real priorities are.

He challenges pastors to face the issue of busyness in their lives and their churches. “Pastors, model what it means to live the life God has called us to, even at a cost.”

Boers spoke to Toronto pastors yesterday about living with focus. The video is a bit rough, but you can check it out here. You can also find out more about Living Into Focus at Amazon.com or Amazon.ca.

How Many Hours Should Pastors Work?

I've heard the advice many times: Pastors should work as many hours as the average person in the congregation, plus commute time, plus the number of hours that they serve or attend the church. This works out to 40-50 hours for the average workweek, plus another 5-10 hours for the commute, plus another 5 hours for time spent in church ministry, for a total of 50-65 hours a week. Therefore, pastors should work at least 50-65 hours a week.

I don't buy it.

Here's the truth in the advice: pastors should work hard. The pastorate is a place where lazy people can hide. I've met some lazy pastors, and they do need a kick in the posterior. And yes, we shouldn't expect more of others than we ourselves are ready to give. And for some, they will be able to work 50-65 hours and still live healthily. Imposing this advice across the board, however, is less than helpful.

Here's the real issue. Our challenge in ministry isn't to buy into a lifestyle that's driven by busyness and the lack of healthy rhythms. For instance, if nobody in the church is taking a weekly Sabbath, the answer isn't for the pastor to stop taking a Sabbath. Instead, the pastor should be model what it's like to pause, rest, and find refreshment one day a week. If the fathers in a community never make it home for dinner with the family, the pastor should not necessarily follow that pattern and work through dinner. Instead, the pastor should wrestle with how often to be around for the family even when work is calling.

I speak as someone who has wrestled with this for years, and failed often. I remember the years that I just wasn't there for my family. I know I didn't serve my family well those years. I don't think I served my congregation well then either.

Is it hard to figure this out? Absolutely! But what we need - not just pastors, but all of us - is to discover how to work hard, but also how to love our families, abide in Christ, and live on mission in the everyday rhythms of life. Capitulating to unhealthy and unsustainable work patterns is not the answer. Discerning what it means to live faithfully as a follower of Christ is a much tougher assignment, but an important one.

I want to work hard. But I also want to be around enough to love my family and build relationships with my neighbors, to live on mission, and to take time to pause, rest, and pray. I want the same for everyone in the church.

There's no place for laziness in the pastorate, but there's no place for capitulating to unhealthy cultural patterns either. Pastors, lead the way in learning what it means to live, as they say, with gospel intentionality in the everyday rhythms of life.