There are churches where the pastor doesn’t know any Greek or Hebrew and his church history knowledge is woefully short (perhaps he is shocked to learn that Luther baptized babies when one of the church’s youths returns for Christmas break from college). There are churches where the structure of choosing officers is a real mess. And there are all sorts of dire consequences that can and often do follow from these deficiencies.
But in many of those congregations, we find real pastors who preach the Bible to God’s people, who baptize in His name, and who administer the Lord’s Supper in public worship. They care for the flock, marrying and burying as appropriate, counseling disciples to continue in the discipleship of the Lord.
A denomination should never exalt its standards for ordination as if they were the absolute criteria for whether or not a person is truly a Minister of the Gospel. And even though there are occasions when transfers in membership can and should be made due to the consequences of ignorance or other problems, the lower standards of other church families gives no denomination the rights of a social service worker to simply declare the family dysfunctional and demand the immediate confiscation of all the children. Even bad fathers are still fathers.
Promoting an adequately trained and educated clergy was one of the struggles of the Reformation. I thank God for it and hope it spreads. But without arrogance and faction.
And without hypocrisy where the ideal is invoked for the sake of thinking oneself better than others, while the substance has long been missing.
Well said.
This can be very difficult to apply at times.. I’m the VP of our local ministerial association. Mostly evangelical churches– a hound from every town. I greatly appreciate these ministers (a group of us meet weekly to pray–Pentecostal (4-sq, Church of God) , Lutheran (ELCA, Free), Presbyterian (PCA) , Baptist (GBC, SBC), non-denominational). And yet there are some I’m not sure what to do with. No training- no schooling- self-appointed. I have elders in my church who are better equipped to be pastors than some of them. I’m willing to cut Mark Driscoll slack on the lack of training (he is working on his masters)- but mostly because he appears to have the fruit of a pastoral calling. Yet I don’t know what to do with a congregation of 15-30 under a man who has made himself a pastor. Is this just number hypocrisy on my part? I also know that there are pastors in Africa who have little to know knowledge of the Bible, yet are pastors. Trying to figure out where to draw these lines is hard at times. Some are too ignorant to even be heretics. Should I receive them as a fellow pastor? Would I take communion from them in a joint community service?
One thing that pastors who have received better educations can do with poorly educated pastors is … become their friends. Then through conversations and recommending books, etc … they can actually help such pastors become better educated.
It is also helpful to realize that very few of us are actually well educated. Do we really think that a year and a half of Greek, a year and a half of Hebrew, and a couple of exegesis classes can turn anyone into a Bible scholar? Let’s hope not!