9.23.04

Dr. Michael Bush's children, from left, John Peyton, Sara Jane and David

Teaching opportunity a surprise for new seminary professor

Dr. Michael Bush and his family recently moved to Due West, where the former pastor has been appointed assistant professor of worship and homiletics and director of the Institute for Reformed Worship at Erskine Theological Seminary.

Bush, who received a Ph.D. degree at Princeton Theological Seminary, recently talked about his journey to Erskine, his ideas about worship and preaching, his family, his favorite hymns, and even an explanation of the portrait that hangs in his office.

You have come to Erskine Seminary to teach courses in homiletics and worship and to direct the Institute for Reformed Worship. How did you wind up seeking a place as a seminary professor? Have you had experience as a pastor or as a seminary professor elsewhere?

I have been pastor of churches in Virginia, Alabama, and Georgia since 1991. During graduate school I was interim pastor of a couple of churches. Even during graduate school I always assumed I would be a pastor all my life, so I went right on doing pastoral things then.

A year or so ago I really began to hope God would call me to a teaching role, but all my work as a pastor didn't impress most academic search committees. So I regard it as a great privilege but also a bit of a surprise to teach at Erskine Seminary, and I am very grateful for this opportunity.

What about your own denominational background? Do you come from a churchgoing family?

My extended family is almost uniformly Southern Baptist, but I'm from the small corner of the family that went off and became Presbyterian. Specifically I'm a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

I grew up in a wonderful, historic church in Lexington, Kentucky, the church where the Old Princeton theologian Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield grew up in the 19th century. I take inspiration from that, and I have a big picture of Warfield in my office to remind me of that connection. Warfield taught as a ministry of the church, and I want to do that, too.

As you embark on your "teaching mission" at ETS, what task or principle is most central for you?

I just want to do it well.

Complaints about preaching are sometimes heard, not just isolated criticisms of a particular pastor, but laments about preaching as a lost art. What do you think you can focus on in your classes that will strengthen the next generation of preachers?

My first theological teacher, the late John Leith (a Due West native and Erskine College graduate, by the way) used to ask preachers, "Are you going to preach the gospel on Sunday, or are you going to pussyfoot around?" I got that question several times on the telephone. He was right to worry, because there is a great deal of goofing around in pulpits. God doesn't call preachers so we can tell jokes and bear witness to the state of our own piety, but that's what happens a lot of times.

As much as anything I want to develop in preachers an understanding of preaching as the service of the Word of God, and help them develop a sense of gravity about that, as well as the skills for preparing and delivering a potent sermon. Preaching is an act of common worship and I think it should be done in a worshipful way, not calling attention to the minister. Preaching is about the message, not the messenger.

So the hearers are also participants?

Yes. People complain about sermons partly because they don't know how to listen to them anymore. Their standards for good preaching come from standup comedy or from religious programming on television, but these standards are misleading when we apply them to sermons.

It takes time listening to a truly able preacher, one who does not give in to the temptation to entertain, for a congregation to learn again to hear a solid sermon appreciatively and to make the most of it.

How do you approach the teaching of worship courses? Do you make an examination of how worship has been conducted in the past? Do you focus on scripture? Do you enter the traditional-contemporary-blended fray?

How worship was conducted in the past is definitely important. Scripture is also, of course, though Scripture includes fewer hard and fast rules for worship than some of our Puritan ancestors thought. I want to encourage worship that shows it understands what the word 'God' means. Nicholas Wolterstorff is right when he says, "In the presence of God, it is foolish to chatter."

The trend of evangelicals joining the Orthodox Church has gotten some attention recently. I'm not going to do that, but I understand why others do. The Orthodox don't fool around. The attraction of Orthodoxy is partly that it goes deep theologically, but also that they think of worship as taking place right at the gate of heaven, in the communion of the saints.

I'm less interested in music style than in worship that wants to glorify God more than it wants to create an entertaining or moving experience for the worshipers.

Do you have a favorite hymn or a favorite "hymn era"?

There are great hymns from many eras, but most of my favorite hymns come from earlier than the 19th century.

When faith began to be identified with a feeling in the 19thcentury, the wind dropped from the sails of God-directed worship music, and there was a turn inward. There are luminous exceptions, of course, but generally speaking music for congregational singing has been a bust since Isaac Watts. That's a long dry spell.

The Anglicans produced some tremendous God-oriented hymns in the last hundred and fifty years, but they tend to be difficult musically and most of us American Protestants don't know them.

My favorite hymns are things like "Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation" and "I Greet Thee Who My Sure Redeemer Art." Another great one is "For All the Saints." It's a pity we usually only sing it once a year, maybe twice. 

Again, I think the best hymns are the ones that direct our attention beyond ourselves both textually and musically. I pray ardently for new worship music that will do that in a contemporary idiom.

How do you and your family like living in Due West?

We like it a lot. It's a big switch from the pace of the cities we've lived in recently, Atlanta and Huntsville.

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