There is nothing stopping the majority of pastors from teaching basic systematics and biblical theology in their churches. Most could have a reasonable stab at historical theology and ecclesiology too. Assuming they’re able to teach the Bible at all, I’d imagine hermeneutics are going to be there too. 

One of the great things about believing the Holy Spirit works in God’s people to help them understand the scriptures, and of believing in the perspicuity of the scriptures themselves, is that we ought to recognise all believers are capable of reading and understanding God’s Word. I won’t run through all the caveats (that I’m sure you’re familiar with) about what perspicuity actually means and how we might understand what the scriptures have to say. Let me just leave the bald statement here: all believers ought to be able to understand the scriptures for themselves in some measure.

Most pastors not only believe this, but reckon their job is therefore to show people what the scriptures say, what they mean and how they apply to us. I was talking to someone who was going to be leading a bible study at our church about this. We both recognised you could run any bible study armed only with these three questions: (1) what does this say?; (2) what does it mean?; and, (3) how does that apply to us? Even in our sermons, nothing should really come as a surprise to any of our people as we’re speaking. Everything we say they ought to be able to see in the pages they’re reading.

We tend to recognise that bible study and sermon prep is often much more complicated than it needs to be. I’ve heard more than a few pastors say something similar to what I said above concerning bible study. The emphasis is always on the fact that our people can understand this and they can teach the bible. They’ve convince themselves they can’t and that they need the experts to come and tell them, but the truth is, they can make observations on the text, work out what it means and then apply it too. Most of the time they just lack confidence. Lots of pastors actually spend their time trying to build that confidence in our people, showing them how we do it so that they can do it for themselves. We’re aiming to show them that they can read and understand the scriptures and don’t need the experts to tell them; they have the greatest interpretive expert dwelling inside of them!

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