I think the way in which the Wesleyan Church and most denominations are training, educating and ordaining pastors needs to be reformed, not just because of the financial collision that’s coming or the context and content of the training, but because the way in which we think about and church leadership needs to be reformed.
Let’s start with the purpose of the church and work our way down. I know this is a seemingly endless debate and no statement of purpose will ever be agreed upon by everyone, but here’s my (non-comprehensive) take: Make disciples of Jesus. To me, everything comes back to that. To live and love as Jesus did pretty much takes care of all the “but what about _____” questions.
So if making disciples is the goal, I say we currently have an insufficient process and structure for developing the leaders of a disciple-making movement.
If you simply read the New Testament and then tried to set up a leadership structure for church accordingly, would you come up with what we have today? What we currently have is a person at the top of the pyramid (Senior Pastor or Lead Pastor if you want to sound slightly cooler) who has the most education, preaches most Sundays, visits the sick and elderly, leads board meetings, counsels, lead evangelism efforts, administrates, comes up with a vision for the future of the church, etc. Who can do that and do it well? Yet this is what denominations are trying to train ministers to be. Again, you can look at the classes for ordination and see that the goal, whether it’s intentional or not, is to produce Swiss army knife pastors who have the necessary tools to be able to do it all.
This should not be.
There’s good reason why the New Testament speaks often and in detail about the Church being a body. One of the reasons is because people are normally really effective at a few things, not many. Also, the New Testament often speaks about leadership not as one person, but as a group of people, each with different gifts, abilities, and roles. One passage that’s often used is Ephesians 4:11-12 which says, “And he (Christ) gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
A few thoughts about this:
1. Paul doesn’t say that one person should be all these things or attempt to do all the things that they do. I tend to have more of the prophetic tendencies and I’m pretty terrible at shepherding. This verse gives me a lot of freedom. It doesn’t give me the freedom to not be compassionate and loving, but it does give me the freedom to not try to mainly operate in that role.
2. This, and other verses, seems to indicate that leadership is not to be something that is done by one person at the top of a hierarchical pyramid, but rather something that is done by a group of equals who submit to Christ as the ultimate head. (You can read more of what I wrote about that here and here).
3. All of those people and roles are needed for a disciple-making movement. The apostle is the one who starts new works and communities of faith. The prophet calls people to repentance and obedience. The evangelist connects with people and presents the Gospel plainly and attractively. The shepherd comes along beside believers and walks them through both good and bad. The teacher studies and explains the Word in ways that educate and challenge. Take away any of these and something that is needed to start and sustain a disciple-making movement is missing.
4. Verse 12 says that the reason Christ gave the Church these people is so that they could equip others to do ministry. If the ministry is only done by one or a few, than the movement ceases to exist once those people cease to exist. Unfortunately, our current way of training ministers doesn’t seem to account the idea for a multitude of gifts and roles or that the point is to equip others. Much is learned about being the “do-it-all” pastor but not much is learned about operating out of your giftedness, utilizing a plurality of leadership, or equipping others to do ministry.
OK, so I should probably stop with the parts that are critical and move on to possible solutions. Looking forward to writing about those in the next couple of weeks.
Looking forward to the solutions as well my friend. I like the part about grace. When we compare ourselves to other pastors (and their gifts, our lack of them, etc) it can be terribly discouraging. I am so so at a lot of things my peers are great at, but I need to let any sort of comparison go. Yet, the way we “produce” ministers in the Wesleyan church is to make them all as similar as possible, in hopes that they themselves will find their own voice/niche in the future. For some whose personality and gifts fit the educational structure, it works out very well. For others it does not. I almost liken it to the way the educational system in America is failing young men, by trying to put them all in one singular model that is designed for a specific personality/learning type.
But back to what you said: It’s all about disciples (of Jesus). Not disciples in the name of Jesus, but actual disciples of Jesus. Yes, let’s all get back to that.
That’s good insight and a good comparison. I think there’s an obvious similarity. The fact that we’re using traditional education models to train pastors is becoming more and more troublesome to me. To me, educational performance is not as good an indicator of ministry fruitfulness (notice how I didn’t use “success”) as someone who’s had good mentoring and modeling.
I like your distinction of disciples of Jesus rather than disciples in the name of Jesus.
Awesome post. I really like your breakdown of Eph 4:11-12. I think you fit the phophet description very well with a little apostle mixed in.
I struggled for quite a while finding the role I was supposed to fill. Even as a lay person, I thought I had to do all those things well. It was miserable. Now I keep my work focused mainly on teaching. I’ve been much more effective that way.
Thanks, Doug. If you want more in depth breakdowns of the Eph. 4:11-12, read some stuff by Alan Hirsch.
Glad to know you’ve found your sweet spot. It’s an incredibly liberating thing. The fun stuff is when you start using it in harmony with people with other roles and gifts in a very natural and spirit-led way. We’re beginning to discover what that looks like and there’s something very pure and encouraging about it.
I especially like #3. I wonder if there are church plants who start with a core team that fits those descriptions. That would be interested to know and see. Shouldn’t those training pastors also fall into the same categories. Are those in our religion departments too similar? It would have been nice to go on hospital visits with Dr. Foutz. I think whatever training we do has to be more mentoring/field ministry intensive. I’m pretty sure that’s how they did it in the Bible.
Good questions. I don’t know if there are churches that intentionally say they want to start with a core team that has those five roles, but I know there are some that pray for God to bring the right people around.
The thing about our teachers in college is that…well, they’re primarily teachers. Nothing wrong with that except when they’re the primary trainers of ministers. Is it any wonder we come out of college thinking that the most important tools to have are preaching skills and theological knowledge? That’s what teachers are passionate about. We need a diversity of people training ministers.
I’ve been reading . . . and thinking . . . and now commenting.
Two words: paradigm shift
Or maybe three words: HUGE paradigm shift
So thankful for you.
LYF.