Last week, if you had happened by my office during one of those rare moments between appointments and meeting the weekly deadlines, you would have found me nose-deep in Charles Hodge’s three-volume Systematic Theology.
Since in seminary I adroitly avoided all but the minimum reading requirements in theology, why am I now spending discretionary time reading theology, something I once considered a soporific?
The blame (or credit) goes to my mentor, August Francke, who convinced me that as a pastor, I’m in the idea business. In case you don’t know him, I’d like to introduce you to Francke. He’s not a celebrity, but he changed my ministry.
I remember when I first met him. I groaned as I read the assignment for my seminary course “Church History from 1500-1800”: “A twenty-five-page paper on some aspect of this period.”
“Another boring paper,” I grumbled. “If only I could find an interesting person to write about.” George Mller, the man with the exemplary prayer life, was the only name that came to mind. But I discovered Mller wasn’t born until 1805.
Rats! Mller would have to wait till next semester. Then I recalled from Mller’s biography that he had been influenced by someone named August Francke. Maybe I could write on him.
I soon discovered there weren’t any decent biographies in English. I had to rely on a microfilm of an obscure dissertation for source material.
Furthermore, Francke was known as a founder of Pietism. In seminary, I knew how disreputable that label was. Calling someone a “Pietist” was no compliment. It was only a shorter way of saying, “You anti-intellectual, socially uninvolved excuse for a Christian!” But in Francke, I discovered a man who has since helped shape my ministry.
Francke and his times
In Francke’s native Prussia, the church of his day was engulfed in dead orthodoxy. As a university student, Francke was deeply influenced by reformer Philip Spener, who stressed the need for conversion followed by Bible study and good works resulting from a heart made right with God.
Francke was converted in 1687, and through Spener’s influence was appointed professor of Greek and Oriental languages at the newly opened University of Halle. Francke was also given pastoral charge of about two hundred families in the Church of St. George in Glaucha, a nearby suburb.
Glaucha was the cheap nightspot of Halle. When Francke arrived, 25 percent of its buildings were drinking dens or houses of prostitution. He began to catechize the children and then preached a series of sermons on the responsibility of training children in the home.
Francke’s preaching was anything but spectacular. Historian F. Ernest Stoeffler notes that his sermons “lack all sparkle and originality,” with “few illustrations, no interesting turns in phraseology, no startling insights.” Francke’s success was due to authenticity and kindness; the hearers knew the messages were backed by his life.
Many think of Pietism as theologically shallow. But Francke’s students weren’t getting devotional fluff. They were equipped with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The center of the theological curriculum was the study of the Bible in the original languages. He balanced academics with practical ministry, requiring his students to teach the children of Halle in his schools.
Pietism today is accused of being unconcerned about social needs, but Pietist Francke saw needs and started institutions to meet them. He began by helping distribute bread to the poor once a week and then inviting them to Bible classes and devotional services.
He built an orphanage. He started schools for poor children-and for upper-class youth (including a young man named Zinzendorf, who would make his own mark on history). He opened schools to teach the trades and skills.
Out of the trade schools eventually arose a print shop, a pharmacy, a hospital, a dispensary, a chemical laboratory, a bookstore, a home for indigent widows, a library of twenty thousand volumes, a museum of natural science, a home for itinerant beggars, a farm, and a brewery (which hardly sounds “pietistic”!). The profits from some of these ventures helped pay for the nonprofit nature of others.
In addition, Francke had a burden for missions, highly unusual in the religious climate of the day. Many churchmen were not merely apathetic but hostile to world missions, limiting the Great Commission to the apostles. But through Francke’s influence, missionaries were sent to India and the American colony of Pennsylvania.
Thus Francke was a scholar, theologian, educator, pastor, social reformer, and missionary visionary.
If I’m not careful, gazing at a giant like Francke can make me feel awfully inadequate. The day has long passed when I could parse a Hebrew verb. I’ll never found an orphanage (much less a brewery!). And I’ll never spend concentrated time building a theological foundation like he did. Spending a few minutes a day with Charles Hodge is as much as I can carve out. I lack Francke’s intellectual and administrative gifts and fall far short of his example. But he continues to shape my life and ministry. Here’s how.
Learning to be Francke
First, Francke reminds me to keep my devotional life at the heart of a busy schedule. With all that he accomplished, Francke was incredibly busy, yet he maintained a fervent heart for God throughout his life.
I’m like Snoopy: allergic to mornings. I’ve struggled for years to get up early for personal devotions. But whenever I try, my quiet times become real quiet-I fall asleep. I have to fit in time alone with God later in the day. Even then it’s not easy, but thinking about Francke reminds me to keep tending the devotional fire.
He not only taught his students the academic disciplines, he also taught them to feed their souls through Scripture, devotional books, meditation, and prayer. Francke believed many problems of the church in his day were due to pastors “who had theological knowledge without a heart conformed to Christ.” Ouch! That hits close to home. Francke challenges me to develop the head of a scholar along with the heart of a pastor.
Too often, we opt for one or the other. Francke knew his Hebrew, Greek, and theology, but he also led prostitutes and orphans to Christ. He talked comfortably with both seminarians and street people.
Francke reminds me to make the message plain. One of the supreme compliments of my ministry was when a mother who had just started attending our church told me that her junior-higher was listening to my messages and even taking notes. Glory!
Sound theology means right ideas about life. Ideas shape our world. Francke changed his world by teaching proper theology. He showed that simple people can grasp sound theology if it is practically oriented.
Since I have realized that I am in the idea business, I have done several things to promote biblical thinking. I now compose each of my sermons on my word processor. The discipline of putting my messages into print forces me to be clear, concise, and interesting.
To make sure I’m scratching where people itch, we schedule church before Sunday school. During the Sunday school hour, I lead an open discussion of the message I have just preached. People are free to ask me anything. Sometimes they do! Nothing keeps me on my theological toes like a sincere, tough question.
For example, when the California lottery started, I heard on the radio that 74 percent of eligible Californians would buy a ticket the first week. I surmised that the figure included quite a few Christians. I decided to interrupt my series on 1 Corinthians and preach a message: “Should Christians Play the Lottery?” We had a lively Sunday school discussion that day, with questions like “What do you do if the supermarket gives you a lottery ticket when you buy groceries?” and “How is playing the lottery different from mailing in your Reader’s Digest sweepstakes tickets?” Through expository preaching I try to help people think biblically about the practical matters of life.
Finally, Francke helped me deepen my commitment to the local church as the means of worldwide impact. To my knowledge, he never left Prussia, but he influenced the world. Halle was the center, the model, but the world was the goal. He built a solid church as the core of his ministry. That commitment to the church has helped me persevere when I feel like bailing out.
We recently went through a difficult time as a church. A widow in her thirties with two children died a slow death from cancer. Her husband had done the same two years before. Naturally, she wanted to be healed so she could raise her children. We all wanted her to be healed. We prayed fervently, but she died.
It wasn’t an easy death. The last couple of months, she was paralyzed from the chest down, completely bedridden. Hospitalization seemed to be the only route. But a group of nurses in the church banded together and organized round-the-clock home care so she would not have to be separated from her children and home. They gave her injections, and when the cancer moved into her lungs, they arranged to have oxygen delivered. Others brought in meals. One of our elders helped with her business matters. An attorney in the church helped with the will. It was a beautiful expression of the arms of the body of Christ in action.
A hospice nurse outside the church who heard about what was happening couldn’t get over the fact that all these nurses donated their time and help for what stretched to more than two months. The dying woman’s father-in-law was a crusty retired sergeant, hostile to Christianity. At the funeral, he told me that he had never seen anything like the love our church had shown to his son and daughter-in-law. He since has affirmed faith in Christ. It was a gratifying expression of the church modeling the love of Christ to a needy world.
In his book You and Your Network, Fred Smith says, “As a person changes his heroes, so he changes the direction of his life.” August Francke became my hero, my mentor. Go ahead-call me a Pietist. If it means being classed with August Francke, I’m honored.
-Steven J. Cole
Cedarpines Community Church
Crestline, California
A PRAYER FOR PASTORS
O Lord God, I beseech you to give to your church, both now and at all times, pastors and teachers after your own heart, those who shall bring the sheep of Christ into his fold, and who, through the influence of your good Spirit, shall feed them with saving knowledge and understanding.
Make every preacher of your Word know and always remember that he who plants is nothing, nor he who waters, but you are all in all, who alone can give the increase.
Let none of them vainly presume on their skill and ability to do any good and obtain any success by their preaching, but let them all humbly wait upon you. By fervent daily prayer, let them seek for and obtain the aids of your grace to enable them to dispense the Word of Life, and let your blessing render their preaching happily successful to the souls of those who hear them. Amen.
-August Hermann Francke, May 25, 1725
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