Training for Ministry 3b: Church-Based Initiatives Part 2

Where do churches find people to serve as full-time staff members for their ministry?

An old joke is that one church was soliciting resumes from potential candidates for its open position of senior minister. The job description defined the ideal candidate as someone 30-35 years old, with a M.Div. degree, 20 years of experience, and a track record of growth in at least two earlier ministries. Preference would be given to candidates with wives who could lead the worship program (for no pay) and the women’s ministry (also for no pay) and with at least two well-behaved children who would anchor the youth program.

Do not laugh this off too quickly. I have advised churches looking for a minister who had expectations that were not too far removed from this!

Most of European (and therefore North American) Christianity has looked to higher education as the training venue for ministers. In fact, the origins of higher education in the Western tradition can be traced to ministerial education. Historically, it is not so much that churches adopted a college/university model to prepare ministers and pastor, it was that ministerial education became the university system we know today.

But even in the twentieth century, this was not always the case. Let me suggest two models that emerged before 2000.

My friend, Daniel Rodriguez (Pepperdine University) wrote an insightful book on the current state and prospects of the Latino church in 2011 (A Future for the Latino Church). In his study, Dr. Rodriguez points out that many Latino or Hispanic churches have followed an apprenticeship-type model to produce ministers. Young men (primarily) would choose to become preachers by working with an accomplished minister for several years, then “graduate” to their own congregations as the pastors. Higher education was not a necessary part of the picture. This did not mean that none of these people were college graduates, but that training for church leadership was done within the local congregation in a very “hands-on” experience. A similar model can also be found in some African American churches. Sometimes this was a family situation, with the son of a pastor learning from his father and eventually succeeding him in ministry.

Another model came out of the mega-churches that began to arise in the 1980s and 1990s. As they grew, these churches sought and employed many pastors from smaller churches, usually the most gifted and successful. They also added recent Bible college graduates. But these sources were not sufficient to meet their staffing needs, nor were all the people hired from outside the mega-congregation suitable and compatible for that church. A common talking point was that all staff hires needed to have the church’s “DNA,” which could not be found outside that congregation. What this meant was a combination of methods, priorities, and philosophies that contributed to that church’s growth. Logically, the best source of people infused with this church’s DNA were already members, so many churches began to hire from within.

In both models, the things often seen as lacking were biblical knowledge and theological education. Therefore, there was often a move to provide some type of classes within the congregational setting to better prepare future church leaders in these areas. This was done while the person being trained was actively involved in ministry at some level within the church, an intense form of On-the-Job Training.

This is the basis for the model we are proposing, the Wildewood Academy. Next week I will explain it in more detail.

Mark Krause
Wildewood Christian Church

Training for Ministry Week 3a: Church-Based Initiatives

The two previous blogs in this series tried to establish a few things:

• From its earliest days in the 1800s, the Christian Churches both recognized the need for educated church leaders and were blessed with some outstanding examples. As the frontier region of the United States moved further west, many institutions of higher education were established, often with a primary objective of educating young men (and a few young women) for church leadership positions. Alexander Campbell’s Bethany College in West Virginia was a model for such schools.
• As these nineteenth-century schools matured, some adopted theological and biblical positions that aligned with the modernists in the Fundamentalists vs. Modernists controversies of the early twentieth century. Graduates of these schools were viewed with suspicion by many of the conservative churches of the Restoration Movement. This led to the rise of a different type of school, the Bible colleges, conservative institutions of higher education where the Bible was used as the authority for all branches of education. The primary product of these schools was to be ministers who returned to local churches and missionaries who were deployed across the world for cross-cultural evangelism.
• The mid-twentieth century was a high point for the Bible colleges in terms of influence and production of graduates who ministered in local churches. A decline in the viability of this model was fueled by growing costs and a lack of young people from churches who wanted to pursue this path of training for ministry.

Where does this leave us now? And where do we go from here?

Before answering these questions, I want to lay out some principles from ministry training that have not changed since the early days of the Restoration Movement over 200 years ago, or since the time of the first century church for that matter.

1. I believe the church needs leaders who have training in the teachings of the Bible, the doctrines of the church, and the methods and practices for “doing church” (such as preaching). As a generation of veteran ministers is now moving into retirement, this need is greater than ever.
2. I believe God calls people and points them toward a life-long career as church leaders. I have observed two tragic situations in the many churches I have visited in the last forty years: (1) people in ministry positions who do not feel called, and (2) people in churches who have been called to ministry but never responded. Both of these situations need to be addressed by encouraging people whom God is calling into ministry training programs.
3. I believe the primary responsibility for giving those whom God calls to ministry lies with the local church and its leaders. A college experience and degree will enhance the maturity, knowledge, and skills of just about anybody, but ministry training divorced from its primary venue is inadequate.

Where does this leave us now?

These things are the basis for establishing the Wildewood Academy, a new venture of Wildewood Christian Church in Papillion, Nebraska. Next week I will introduce some of the other initiatives for localized ministry training

Where do we go from here?

The following week I will lay out the foundational principles and philosophies behind the Wildewood Academy.

Mark Krause
Wildewood Christian Church