Biblical vs. Systemtic Theology

At the end of this month I will be speaking at a men's retreat for a church from New Jersey. Both pastors attended Westminster Seminary as did I and really like the counseling approach they learned there and that is conducted at the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. I counsel there part time and my wife works there full time. They contacted the agency last year for a speaker and ended up with me. They wanted Ed Welch but he is too big now, and busy, for a small retreat for a local church. The retreat went well last year, both for me and the men who attended. This year they would like to get a little more specific on how they can live in relationship better with one another. Last year I just gave them too much information. This year they would like me to get more specific on how to love each other better. 

   I met with the pastors for lunch this week to discuss what to present at the church. They are both great guys. They are thoroughly Calvanistic and I am a committed Arminian. To their credit, they found this out last year after the seminar and still invited me back this year. I told them I was pleasantly surprised and pleased. They stated they discussed it but don't have any concerns as I didn't say anything heretical last year ( in their estimation). The associate pastor and I got into this lengthy discussion about the relevance and importance of systematic theology. I didn't agree, though as he talked, I could see some of the merits, in defending orthodoxy from heresy for example. However, for application to living, I just don't see that much applicability. Biblical theology yields much greater self understanding and knowledge in living. It is dealing with scriptures more accurately I believe as well as the Bible is not a systmeatic theological textbook. It is a story. God chose to communicate to us in this fashion for a reason. We should read it as a story and find our lives interpreted by that story as they are imbedded in that story. I found the whole discussion rather anxiety provoking as I felt like my friend and I were talking past one another. I just think systematic theology doesn't meet people where they live whereas biblical theology does. They identify with subjects in the story more and parables and story's just communicate more than doctrine does. I think biblical theology is more relevant as it is the form the scriptures take and in which God chose to reveal himself to us.