"Too Big To Know"

When I read the following quote from David Weinberger's book, "Too Big to Know," I wondered if the position and expectations of the local minister was changing rapidly, even from the time I entered seminary in 2003.

Weinberger describes the former way of education for a professional career:

"People study hard and become experts in particular areas. They earn credentials—degrees, publications, the occasional Nobel Prize—that make it easier for us trust them. They write books, teach classes, and go on TV, so that we all can benefit from their hard work. The results of that work go through vetting processes appropriate to the type and importance of its claims, providing us with even more assurance of its accuracy. As new discoveries are made and sanctioned, the body of knowledge grows. We build on it, engaging in a multi-generational project that, albeit with occasional missteps, leads us further along in our understanding of the world. Knowledge is a treasure, knowing is the distinctively human activity, and our system of knowledge is the basis for the hope that we might all one day come to agreement and live in peace.

We’ve grown up thinking that this is how knowledge works.

But as the digital age is revealing, that’s how knowledge worked when its medium was paper. Transform the medium by which we develop, preserve, and communicate knowledge, and we transform knowledge."

 Weinberger, David (2012-01-03). Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest P . Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

In my short nine-year ministry, I have often experienced a certain amount of anxiety regarding the amount of knowledge I've managed to retain from my seminary degree (three years, full-time graduate school).  While teaching classes, leading groups, preaching sermons, and offering pastoral care, I have been self-conscious about the amount of knowledge I share with, repeat, or impart to my parishioners. 

My experience in the DMin program at McCormick Theological Seminary, and specifically in this most recent course, "The Gospel and Global Media," has transformed the model of ministry into which I am growing.  The role of the Pastor is not necessarily to "know" the most information, but to lead in such a way that knowledge is sought after, discussed, prayed about, and used to live into faithful discipleship.  The truth is that there are plenty of sermons, worship services, and online Bible studies, but the role of the pastor is to exhibit wisdom in preaching, teaching, leading, and caring, in order to discern God's word in the midst of a mass array of words.

Weinberger writes:

 

"In a networked world, knowledge lives not in books or in heads but in the network itself. It’s not that the network is a super-brain or is going to become conscious. It’s not. Rather, the Internet enables groups to develop ideas further than any individual could. This moves knowledge from individual heads to the networking of the group. We still need to get maximum shared benefit from smart, knowledgeable individuals, but we do so by networking them."

In my context of ministry, the network includes a mass array of "pop-Christianity," which is broadcast on television, on the radio, blogs, online Bible studies, etc., and fellow community faith leaders, the small groups in the congregation, and the authors of secular and religious books which the congregation is reading.  It also, and most importantly, includes the triune God.  The pastor's role is to use the "knowledge" acquired through theological and biblical study, as well as the wisdom and centered leadership that is required to discern the word of our Triune God in the midst of the many words which inundate our world.