How NOT To Teach Church History

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[00:00:27] GO! All right, so I'm taking these classes to finish up one of my degree. And I'm taking this church history class and there's a specific book we're supposed to do a book report on. And it's called Turning Points by Mark A. Knoll. And he's kind of famous in the church history, Christian history kind of circuit.

[00:01:41] Yeah, when I posted recently on Twitter and I asked our followers, you know, do you know

[00:01:45] this book and what do you know about it? points. The idea is the big moments in church history. So, it's hard to imagine discussing the big movements of church history but skipping over the great awakening and the great century of missions especially because you mentioned some other movements like the Pietas that he definitely allotted a lot of time to. And the Counter-Reformation as well.

[00:03:01] And so, this is and the reason I think this take actually in the school. I was like, I said the best and easiest class for last. And I couldn't help but notice that my professor was always putting down great people. He was putting down Charles Spurgeon. He was putting down Jonathan Edwards.

[00:04:20] He was really digging into the flaws of Martin Luther

[00:04:23] or John Calvin.

[00:04:24] And I want you to know, I don't think that's wrong.

[00:04:26] You can teach the bad sides, with nothing positive to say. And I thought to myself, if I got a seminary education here and I didn't and church history wasn't a strong suit of mine, I would think that this was a correct course on church history and I would come out of this class not knowing church history hardly at all. In fact, I would have a very negative, just like this book that you had to read, Elise, I would have a very negative impression of church history.

[00:05:40] And I think that this really explains

[00:05:43] one of the major problems we have today,

[00:05:44] which is a lot of people do

[00:05:46] have a very negative impression of church history.

[00:05:48] When you say the teach church history. Now, I'm not saying there's no historical theology or merit to it, but that is the secondary level of what church history is. Church history is

[00:07:03] a great movement of God's people through 2,, like everybody before 1517 would consider themselves to be Catholic. Now that's the difference. What does that mean exactly? Does it actually mean the Western Catholic church that was united? That's another one of these myths is like, the Catholic church was united until 1517,

[00:08:21] which is completely false.

[00:08:22] And this is actually mentioned in this book,

[00:08:24] and I'm gonna quote a little bit here.

[00:08:27] He says, and he's could go back in time and eliminate one quote from history, that might be on my top contenders list because it's so obnoxious. Absolutely not. I've been running church history podcasts for five years, Elise is right here for three or four years. We are not becoming Catholic anytime soon at all ever.

[00:09:40] Because-

[00:09:41] Isn't that a reveal party?

[00:09:42] Yeah, no, we're not doing that because Catholicism,

[00:09:44] in fact, the more you teach church history,

[00:09:45] I feel like in my experience,

[00:09:47] the further removed from Catholicism, always took over a country, they would immediately replace all the old history with new stories that emulate the models they want you to emulate. There's a reason that's happening around the world today in many of the Western countries. It's not an accident, it's intentional. Rewriting history changes things. And let's be honest, the average Christian in the pew today, if they were to have the

[00:11:01] history of the church rewritten and handed to them start doing martyrs and missionaries is not the theology, not the different historical events.

[00:12:22] I mean, sometimes that's really interesting,

[00:12:23] these different missionaries who go into these different,

[00:12:26] like, you know, the're doing a huge disservice. And I think that's actually one of the things when you're teaching a history course is you want your students to feel engaged. You want them to be, okay, this is the story of this person. This is why it matters. Not, well, you know, this was a heresy

[00:13:40] that was happening about this time, which can be important.

[00:13:43] But sometimes we focus on that and we go,

[00:13:44] this person lived from this date to this date.

[00:13:46] And then their teacher was going on, they were trying to stay awake and how they were like, and these people traded seashells for copper. And that's just, yes, it's true. That may have happened, but it's not history class. And if that's your impression

[00:15:02] of history, you're dying and you don't want to it something that they want to click on and want to listen to or want to go talk to you about. And you need to make these stories real. Elise said how studying these stories can be encouraging to your faith. Jonathan Edwards says there's two ways to encourage faith. By teaching doctrine and precept, teaching theology, or by example.

[00:16:21] And we always see Rev. Thotsenmaier as a missionary. He says,

[00:16:23] Where are the examples? There are lots of people podcasting giving you theology,

[00:16:26] but there's only a handful of names without any real recognition. This isn't just a problem in church history. As someone who has some experience teaching history courses even at a high school level, this is becoming a problem across the

[00:17:41] board everywhere where history has become so shallow you to see it. This is your critical theory history. Critical race theory comes from critical theory, which all comes from history itself, actually. But this is this new way of teaching history, where the bad guys are actually the good guys,

[00:19:01] and the good guys are actually the bad guys.

[00:19:03] This is where, if you've heard people

[00:19:05] basically living through today,

[00:19:07] where they suddenly important parts of history, like the Armenian genocide or the communist revolutions in the world. And they start to paint down the evils of these other countries. And this is happening in our history classes. I mentioned that I had a professor that was doing this and Elise's book that she had to read,

[00:20:20] The Turning Points, is doing this as well.

[00:20:21] But this is happening all across where,

[00:20:24] oh, actually, you know,

[00:20:25] missionaries did a lot more harm

[00:20:27] when they entered those cultures than they actually did. cultures are sacred. That culture is sacred and that Christianity somehow is harming these cultures. And the thing is, Christianity transcends culture and it transforms culture. This is not to say that a church in China should look identical to a church in the West, but there are tenets of faith that they should look, they should look the same in a lot of different areas.

[00:21:42] And that's one of their biggest beefs

[00:21:44] is that we don't wanna bring our Western Christianity

[00:21:47] to these churches in Asia and Taylor actually in this book that I was reading, the guy says that Hudson wasn't a good missions theorist, which is complete garbage because of China's millions and the recruiting efforts that expanded into a North American branch. And I believe it was a New Zealand or Australia branch. Plus there was Scandinavian countries. So if he was a terrible missions theorist,

[00:23:00] why was he so successful?

[00:23:01] That might actually be the perfect,

[00:23:03] I didn't know that in the book.

[00:23:04] I didn't read the book, Elise read the book,

[00:23:06] but that might be the perfect example

[00:23:07] of what I'm talking about.

[00:23:08] Hudson Taylor wasn't know history, if you are not aware of this stuff, if you're not pre-knowledge, you're going to believe these little nitpicks. You know, imagine if, think of your, think of famous important Christians

[00:24:21] that are meaningful for today.

[00:24:22] You know, I think of,

[00:24:23] I'm trying to use an example that I think

[00:24:25] universally people would agree with.

[00:24:26] I think most people throughout history, what the great cloud of witnesses that we can point to as stalwarts of our faith, and these new history people have been changing them and rewriting them and remodeling new heroes. And the sad part is most of us don't know history well enough to even realize that it's happening. That's the new history movement.

[00:25:41] Don't do that.

[00:25:42] When you're teaching church history,

[00:25:43] stay away from that movement as well.

[00:25:46] Actually, I mean, there's a huge long list of people, Alexander MacLaren, all these guys are living in Britain

[00:27:02] at the exact same time that apparently

[00:27:04] everyone is doubting their faith.

[00:27:05] Now, how do those things not to do? We don't, for starters, don't skip it completely.

[00:28:21] Don't use it just to prove your theological points

[00:28:23] and be like, aha, this is, you know,

[00:28:25] the Presbyterian church was all right all along,

[00:28:27] they were the only good guys.

[00:28:28] Or what is, there's certain people who are like, start with, and it seems easy, obvious, start with stories. It's history and people relate to the stories of the people themselves. Agreed. I think that one of the things that is probably top tier we should be doing is reading a bunch of biographies, because those, like I said, have been some of the most encouraging to me,

[00:29:40] and I think it gives you just a huge appreciation

[00:29:43] for all the people who came before us.

[00:30:43] reading the stories. And then you realize, I'm not alone. There's been a lot of Christians doing and having these thoughts that I've been having for 2,000 years, and they've gone

[00:30:47] on to change the world. And the number two thing that then happens is you become humble.

[00:30:52] You realize, I'm not doing nearly as much for the faith as many other wonderful Christians

[00:30:56] throughout history have done. And you also realize, my theological persuasion, although

[00:31:00] maybe the most correct, most biblical, is not the only one. There are others who are,

[00:31:05] you know, we're not talking about heretics if you don't have heroes of your own you will be given heroes And you probably don't want to be given heroes by the world So you should be coming up with these heroes on your own looking reading and then you'll find Favorite people throughout history and you'll obviously, you know, your Hudson Taylors your Charles Spurgeon's those people But you'll find a bunch of people that you've never heard of before and you're like these people are the coolest people ever and then

[00:32:23] You'll want to go out and tell people. Oh my goodness. Do you know the story of so-and-so?

[00:33:25] of what people go through. And I will say too, go for students. If you're a youth pastor or youth director, you're just working with younger people, they need this more than maybe any other group,

[00:33:29] because they're going to, many of them will go off to secular universities where they will be taught

[00:33:32] different versions of history that will shipwreck them if they don't have an anchor to help hold

[00:33:36] them down. Of course, the Bible and God are the real ultimate anchor, but there's nothing wrong

[00:33:41] with teaching them a good solid foundation in history as well to help keep them from washing after the end of scriptures. Like God is still using them. I know that what we have done since then is not canonized on the level of scripture, but we haven't stopped doing great things through God's strength and people need to hear that. And the number two thing is wisdom. Read the books and share the knowledge that you're learning. So many of these people over the course of 2,000 years have written books or have preached sermons

[00:35:02] like we share with our thoughts.

[00:35:03] They are wise and full of just deep thoughts

[00:35:06] that go so incredibly further can teach some of those wisdom, teach some of those quotes, teach some of those thoughts that are higher level that will get them to engage, get them reading things that are outside their normal comfortable level. And you would be surprised how much they can often rise to the occasion and how much even high schoolers, even young people can often learn from these great thinkers

[00:36:20] of the past and go, you know, I don't agree with all this,

[00:36:21] but there's some interesting stuff here, here, here, and here.

[00:36:24] And I think if you can do those two things,

[00:36:27] church history will become much what will happen. That's what I'm thinking of. Watch out, that's the threat. Yes. Look, I will say, I do wish I could show, like, I don't know how to say it. I wish I could show all the famous theologians that have big podcasts or the famous pastors around the world, our inbox of people. We're not a big group.

[00:37:41] We're not tiny, but we're not a huge group.

[00:37:42] And yet we are regularly getting comments and messages

[00:37:45] and emails from people going, wow, that was encouragement.

[00:37:48] I can't believe how be an anchor that many people will be able, who have it,

[00:39:00] will continue to lean on,

[00:39:01] and many people who don't have it will continue to slip

[00:39:04] because it's not there,

[00:39:05] and it will just make it all the harder for them to stand

[00:39:07] when they think they're all alone,