1. Distinguish scholarly from devotional resources, using the publisher, the author’s credentials, and the work’s stated purpose as clues. The former are appropriate secondary sources for practical theology, the latter usually are not.

2. Consider the level of technical difficulty (degree of understandability) of your chosen sources. Keep stretching yourself to learn by reading challenging sources.

3. Grant experts their place within your interpretations, then keep them in it.

4. Do your research on the tradition with the intention of understanding it more deeply in its own integrity (vs. seeking “official” support for what you already think).

5. Remember the need for suspicion as well as retrieval in interpretation.

6. Don’t be thrown by differences of interpretation in secondary sources. Given the plurality within your faith tradition (e.g., Paul’s vs. Mark’s vs. John’s theology) and the different interpretive methods within academic research (e.g., historical vs. literary methods), differing and even conflicting interpretations of the same element of tradition by scholars are to be expected.

7. Remember that living within a tradition means continually moving from your grasp of it as a whole (your background understanding of it), to your interpretation of some part of it, then back to the whole again. Every receptive and disciplined interpretation of an element of your faith tradition will deepen your appreciative and critical understanding, not just of the specific item you are considering, but of the tradition as a whole. This deepening of background understandings can stop when you know everything the tradition has to say about every possible situation of concern.