October 8, 2009 by Jeff Purswell
Categories: Theology
A couple of months ago C.J. invited me to begin contributing posts to the Sovereign Grace blog, of which this is the first. Those who don’t know me will surely wonder why; those who do know me will no doubt grasp the irony, given my blustering tirades against the general blog phenomenon (which I’ll spare you, since including them here would be self-defeating). In any event, let me stress the privilege it is to share this space with C.J. and, as of next week, Dave Harvey, and provide a bit of background for future posts.
My main responsibility in Sovereign Grace is overseeing the
Pastors College, which is the primary mechanism by which we train pastors for ministry in our
family of churches. Many components go into this training. We teach our students Greek so that they might have access to the original text of the New Testament. We ground our students in the text of Scripture in both its specifics and scope. We endeavor to provide our students a solid theological framework for grasping God’s revelation in its various parts and proportions. We provide pastoral care and structures for personal growth to encourage and support our students’ progress in godliness and the process of sanctification. We teach ministry skills such as preaching and biblical counseling to help them bring God’s Word to bear upon the lives of the people they will one day serve. And we do all of this in the context of a particular local church—
Covenant Life Church—which provides the students both a church home and a functioning model for the material they are learning in the classroom.
Underlying these facets are certain core convictions we have concerning theological training—convictions derived from Scripture’s profile of a pastor and the local church which he’s called to serve.
For example, with the exception of the gift of teaching, the biblical requirements for eldership (e.g., 1 Timothy 3 & Titus 1) all speak to a pastor’s character; there’s nothing about personality types, educational levels, or social standing. Transcending all other considerations, a pastor is to be an illustration of the transforming effects of the gospel he proclaims, and an example of sound Christian living to those he serves. We therefore give much attention to, and invest resources toward, encouraging and cultivating progress in our students’ spiritual lives.
In our training, we never want to neglect the very characteristics that qualify a man for ministry in the first place.
The local church context also plays an important role in the Pastors College. Since we are training pastors called to “shepherd the flock of God,” we want to expose them to an actual “shepherding” context—a model of ministry where God’s people are being taught, cared for, and nourished. Therefore,
we never want the training of our students to be disconnected from the context for which they are being trained—the local church.
In addition to character and context, there’s the substance of our training. When asked to describe the nature of our training, I frequently use this description: we’re training men to do
theological ministry—ministry with a self-consciously theological rationale, where every methodology employed flows from and is informed by theological conviction and appropriate biblical warrant. Far from being innovative, this is simply a reflection of the radically Word-centered nature of the pastor’s call that pervades the New Testament. From the apostles’ disciplined devotion “to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4) to Paul’s insistent pleas that Timothy devote himself to the proclamation of Scripture and its teaching (1 Timothy 4:6, 13, 16; 2 Timothy 1:13; 2:2, 15; 4:1-2, et al), God’s Word places a claim on both the content and methodology of pastoral ministry: Scripture and its teaching must be the standard and substance of the pastor’s ministry.
Now, that’s easier said than done, for at least two reasons.
First, perhaps more than ever before, pastors are vulnerable to competing visions for ministry, to measuring ministry “success” by business metrics rather than faithfulness to Scripture, to grasping for some heretofore undiscovered insight that will make the decisive difference in their church. Even for the most earnest pastor, the promise of immediate success is a powerful enticement to pragmatic measures.
Second, it’s a challenge because Scripture doesn’t speak specifically to every facet of church life and ministry. It requires an ever-deepening understanding of the Bible, a grasp of its details and overarching unity, a sensitivity to the “pattern” (2 Timothy 1:13) and proportionality of its truth. More than anything, it requires
a firm grasp of the gospel and its entailments for the Christian life individually, and for the church’s life corporately. Of course, faithful pastoral ministry will look different in different contexts, and no one will execute theological ministry perfectly. Our perception is never perfect, our motives unclouded, or our actions flawless. It is, however, something to which Scripture calls us to aspire.
Well, that’s a glimpse of what we’re endeavoring to instill into our students in the Pastors College, and that’s what I’ll be thinking out loud about in upcoming posts: theological and biblical reflection, particularly as it impinges upon the glorious work of pastoral ministry—proclaiming the gospel, expounding God’s truth, and caring for those for whom our Savior died. The thought of that privilege is staggering.