Patterson & Scoggins on Theological Education

For the past few days, I've been posting about George Patterson and Richard Scoggins in their approach to evangelism and discipleship as it relates to missions (taken from their Church Multiplication Guide: The Miracle of Church Reproduction). If you want to read the guide, see http://buckburch.blogspot.com/2012/09/waste-of-time-question-about-cm.html for a link to download a free copy. The guide could be looked at as a reference manual for systematic theology for the local church as well as a documented shift in the authors’ training methodology for leadership development. 

            In the first part of the guide, Patterson and Scoggins outline what they believe the church should teach. There are seven commands that a believer must obey. There are two ordinances: immediate baptism as confirmation of salvation and the Lord’s Supper. There are seven elements that make up the worship aspect for the local church: prayer, praise, Bible teaching, confessing sin and forgiveness, the Lord’s Supper, giving, and fellowship (p. 77). Albeit not an exhaustive work on these subjects, the guide does successfully answer the surface questions that must be taught to a new congregation. By looking through the eyes of several types of practitioners in this missiological process, the authors are able to address the basics for an elementary theological education. A potential drawback to this approach is the sheer repetition in the material as it is addressed by each practitioner, but the authors seem to overcome this weakness through the introduction of variations in perspective.

The authors prefer an on-the-job training for men who will be readily accepted as leaders of a new church. Patterson gives a personal historical testimony of how he abandoned centralized theological education in favor of a more decentralized approach wherein the entire local church undergoes training. Patterson “trained them to grow along with their congregations” (p. 47).  Only “elder types” are now chosen for theological training that leads to church planting. The “single young men who had previously come to our resident Bible institute” (p. 47) are now largely overlooked. For pioneer areas, they admonish the reader to “mentor able, mature men who will qualify as biblical elders” (p. 148). Instead, they encourage the reader to avoid training single, young men in pioneer fields as pastors (p. 148).

They also advocate more informal training methods rather than a formal seminary approach. According to the authors, this works best for pioneer areas where there is no established church, but this strict admonition only serves to limit the range of application, both in fields where there are existing churches or conventions as well as in those same pioneer areas after several new churches have begun. It could be argued that the Church Multiplication Guide is a great starting point but not a true guide for multiplication, because it fails to address the environment of a second or third generational reproduction. It seems to be more about the startup than about the maintenance, more about beginning new work than about facilitating later growth. However, perhaps this was never the authors’ intention.

Regardless of the pros and cons of formal theological education, Patterson and Scoggins present a valid case for informality within pioneer areas. The question for western mission fields and fields within other developed urban areas is this: Should the seminary baby be thrown out with the formal bathwater? Or does formal theological education still have a place for second or third generation churches in emerging networks?