Training

Though I realize there are other methods of training pastors, it seems that the vast majority of them come from Seminaries. As with many institutions of higher learning, seminaries are designed with the basic premise that if pastors learn the right things then they will be successful. The training is extremely uniform though it attempts to prepare an extremely diverse group of prospective pastors. They may have many of the same basic gifts, but their personalities, stage in life, and ministry experience is generally all over the board. The pastors that leave seminary are able to correctly prepare and deliver sermons. They also seem to be lacking in disciple-making, leadership development, vision casting, and personal spiritual development (their own development). I believe all of these things and more are best learned by practice and in a live environment. I propose an alternate, system similar to the one that the medical profession uses, in which perspective doctors must do internships and residencies before they are sent out on their own. I believe a system could be developed that requires one year (20-30 hours) of class work and two years of resident work at a local church. The churches chosen would need to meet certain criteria obviously, but with some of the recent work done on healthy, growing, and comeback churches there should be a large group to begin with.

The benefits to this system as I see it are:

1. Lower barrier to entry. As it stands seminary is a rather large barrier to entry due to the cost and time involved. The value that it offers is at odds with the cost it requires. Basically, if you have the time and money to invest, you can get your paper. If you don't... then many churches will not consider working with you.


2. More personalized training. Much like a doctoral internship, ministers could experience several different res of ministry within a church before deciding upon their focus. And, the host church could provide feedback based on real-time observations of actual experience.


3. Development by doing. Christian love is best lived out in the context of a community of believers interacting with a lost world. It takes all of ten to fifteen hours to read a great book on leadership or evangelism. But it can take months or years of practice to really learn the application of those systems.


4. DNA transfer. Church is an organism. Healthy churches have a certain DNA or Culture. You cannot teach those things in classroom, they must be fused into a person through time and effort.


5. De-centralization and Exponential Growth. Limited supply and Increasing demand is a bad thing in the pastor training economy. It is true that online availability can help with some of this, but that only provides an online version of the current system... which gives even less personal feedback based off of observed practices. Assuming my system works it will lead to more healthy churches by spreading the DNA from healthy churches across the nation. That will open the door for more and more training centers.

It is easy at times to look at our failing churches and blame pastors and people for being lacking. They lack vision, they lack passion, they lack surrender and spirituality. Perhaps all of those things are true. Yet, I wonder... who ever taught them how to cast vision, how to live with passion, how to practice surrender and develop a strong spiritual relationship with God? Were those things built into them in their three years (and countless thousands of dollars) spent on seminary? If pastors are the leaders of the church, then who are the leaders of the pastors? In our current system it is the seminaries, and those people who run them. And, if our system is getting the results it was designed for (which all systems do) then we need to change the way we train people. And, I think it requires something deeper than simply looking at our curriculum choices and teaching practices.