Why Do Pastors and Elders Need to be Biblical Scholars?

"We must NOT make the mistake of making evangelism the enemy of theology or discipleship the enemy of edifying scholarship... Historically, pastors were as 'comfortable with books and learning as with the aches/pains of the soul.' Elders/pastors are called to be both shepherds and theologians! 

But Why?

Right thinking about God exists to serve right feelings for God. Logic exists for the sake of love. Christian zeal must be according to biblical knowledge (Romans 10:1-2)... Thinking hard about biblical truth is the means through which the Holy Spirit opens us to the truth (2 Tim. 2:15)... The great commandment of Loving God includes our minds. Truth received through the mind stirs the religious affections of Spirit-filled saints!

Paul reasoned with his unsaved audience in Acts 17 and he regularly employed rhetorical questions in his inspired epistles (1 Cor. 6:2, 9, 15, 19). He assumed that believers would use their minds in effort to think biblically about something. Jesus utilizes/assumes logic in Luke 12:54-27...

2 Cor. 4:2- I want to to be this kind of preacher. I want to stand before God on the last day (2 Tim. 4:1) and say, "I did my all to be faithful and let people think of me what they wanted to think. I don't want to be the kind of pastor who's always watching what people are going to say and then governing what comes out of his mouth by what people are going to say...."

2 Tim. 2:15- It takes hard mental work to rightly handle the Word of God. Don't let anybody ever tell you that hard mental work is unspiritual. We are using our minds to understand God's Word, and we are depending in prayer upon the Holy Spirit to guide our minds... Reading a substantial book is hard mental work. Such is true of the infallible Word of God! (2 Peter 3:16f).

Loving God With All Your Mind

Reason & Revelation- Reason is indispensable for the Christian life because without understanding spiritual growth is impossible. God designed us to be converted and conformed to Christ through mind renewal.

Romans 12:1-2 lays out the importance of the this process: I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

As God’s truth permeates our minds, it imparts objective facts and it impacts our subjective thought process. In other words, God’s truth forms the basis for what we think and fashions how we think. Scripture provides us with the truth we need to inform our thinking and to shape our wisdom. For this reason, and many more, an unreasoned Christian life is a deficient Christian life—the mind must be engaged.

That being said, we must never allow our reasoning to rise to the level of authority. What does this mean? J.I. Packer incisively explains: But all its many varieties spring from a single principle, namely, that the final authority for my faith and life is the verdict of my reason, conscience, or religious sentiment as I examine Scripture “with an open mind,” and measure it by what I have learned from other sources, historical, philosophical, religious and scientific. What under these circumstances reason and conscience say, what I find that “I feel,” that God says (Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God, 50).