Training Pastors within the Local Church

My next few posts will attempt to pose a question and seek a few biblical answers related to pastoral training. As a seminary graduate, I would have probably identified pastoral training with the seminary or bible college in the past, but in recent years I've come to see a healthy local church as the best place for pastoral training. In fact, I'd even say that seminary training apart from active practicum in a local church is theoretical at best and devoid of any meaning at worst. Of course, most of my own pastoral mentorship has been done in Russia, but the biblical precepts are universal. So herein lies the question we need to ask: what relationship should the local church have with men God is calling into the ministry?

            During the second century A.D., Tertullian posed his now infamous rhetorical question, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?”[1] In the space of two small lines, he encapsulated the struggle that has plagued the church ever since, namely how to balance the academic development and practical ecclesial training of a pastor. This struggle has not been limited to the western hemisphere. Some recent writers have begun to collect numerous data from varied Russian sources, and “several dissertations and theses have been written over the past few years regarding the issues surrounding theological education in Russia.”[2] The question of locale for the most effective pastoral training is a current issue among evangelical theologians, missiologists, and church planting practitioners, because the answer has both theological and pragmatic missiological implications for holistic church planting. My thesis is that the local church should be the primary location for pastoral training.

For the past two centuries, pastors have been trained as professionals in their fields in Russia, but this has not been without real pragmatic problems that reflect deep theological issues related to the doctrine of the local church. Since the fall of communism, Russia has provided a clear look at the establishment of the seminary or bible college as the preferred mode of professional training for Christian workers. In institutions like Moscow Baptist Theological Seminary, St. Petersburg Christian University, Bryansk Bible College, or Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary, there is a current crisis that has resulted in an ongoing struggle for seminaries and bible colleges to survive.

It is not my goal to establish the exact curriculum for pastoral training. Even the description of the necessary steps for the transition from an extra-ecclesial model to an ecclesiocentric model of pastoral training is outside the parameters of this discussion. However,I have to say that the local church is the most biblical model for pastoral training. What do you think?

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[1] Tertullian, “Prescription Against Heretics” 7 (The Prescription Against Heretics [Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, 2004], 12).

[2] Harris, “Proposal for a Contextualized Educational Program for the Training of Russian Spiritual Leaders,” Paper presented to Mission Consulting Group (Pasadena, Calif.: Mission Consulting Group, 1999), 2.