Thousands of men enroll each year in
seminaries of their choice, hoping to become equipped to do the work of
the ministry. There they are taught the Word of God and every
related subject imaginable. There they are instructed on how to
interpret the Scriptures, how to formulate a theological framework, and
how to “do ministry.” Everything from church history to homiletics
to hermeneutics is available to anyone who wishes to enhance his
effectiveness in ministering the Word of God. Church leaders do
indeed need to be trained, but the seminary system is an inefficient
tool to use in reaching this goal.
Before proposing the biblical model for training elders, let’s first
lay out a typical scenario that one encounters after making a decision
to go to seminary. First, since in most cases the would-be
seminarian does not live near a seminary, he must relocate to an area
where there is a seminary. Second, the would-be seminarian
must be certain that he has the financial means not only to set up house
in this new location but also to pay tuition and fees. These
expenses typically add up to upwards of $2,000 per quarter (sometimes
even more than that). The would-be seminarian is expected to pay
these fees before the actual training ends. This usually means
that the seminarian must work a full-time job while completing his
education. Of course, he may opt to take fewer classes and prolong
the number of years it takes to earn the degree. This, however, is
considered undesirable since, ideally, the seminarian wants to begin his
professional ministry as soon as possible. Any delay means more
time in the secular work force instead of in the “Lord’s work.”
Naturally this puts much stress on the seminarian’s family, and
especially his wife who, in some cases, is expected to support her
husband financially. This is even more of a burden if there are
children involved. Finally, after three or four years of hard work
under the direction of university trained Ph.D.s, the seminarian is
given a Master of Divinity degree (M.Div) and is ordained by his
denomination on the basis of his accomplishments.
There are at least four major problems with the scenario given
above. The first problem is that the seminarian must leave his
local church to receive this kind of training. Second,
university-trained professors (not church leaders) are doing the
training. Third, the seminarian must pay exorbitant amounts of
money to learn the Word of God. And fourth, the seminarian’s newly
acquired degree is somehow seen as qualifying him to be a church leader.
In the NT it is quite clear that training men for leadership
positions is the responsibility of each individual church. A man
who senses that he has been gifted by God in the areas of leadership and
teaching is to be permitted to exercise these gifts so long as he meets
certain qualifications which we will examine later. Moreover, such
a man has the right to be trained in these areas by those leaders within
his own local church. In apostolic times there were no seminaries
to attend. Instead, when an apostle was sent to a city to organize
those who had come to believe, it was he that was responsible for
training men to be leaders in that church.
We have several examples of this in the NT. In Ac 11, after the
good news was proclaimed to those in Antioch, Luke records that the
Jerusalem church sent Barnabas there to strengthen them. Barnabas
in turn found Paul and “so for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with
the church and taught great numbers of people” (11:22-26). Ac 13:1
indicates that in addition to Paul and Barnabas there were more
“prophets and teachers” who had been sent to Antioch, presumably to
train men at the Antioch church. After their initial evangelistic
visits to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, Paul and Barnabas returned to
these cities and appointed elders in each church (14:21-23). We
must assume here that Paul was consistent with his own policy of
appointing only qualified elders, whose qualifications he lays down
elsewhere (1 Ti 3:1-7; Tit 1:5-9). Another instance of this
training pattern is found in Ac 19. Here Luke says that Paul held
daily discussions in a lecture hall for a period of two years (vv 9-10).
The purpose for calling attention to all of these passages is to show
the apostolic pattern of training elders. Far from insisting that
a prospective elder uproot and move his family to a new location to
receive this training from the apostles, the reverse is true–the
apostles went to the prospective elder. This pattern is by no
means confined to the book of Acts but is also found in the pastoral
epistles. Paul left both Timothy (in Ephesus, 1 Ti 1:3) and Titus
(in Crete, Tit 1:5) for the purpose of setting the churches in
order. A major part of this responsibility entailed the selection
and training of elders (1 Ti 3:1-7; Tit 1:5). Again we find that
this training takes place within the church and by church leaders.
This leads to the second point; namely, that church elders (not
university professors) are responsible for training other potential
elders. Paul makes this clear in 2 Ti 2:2 where he commands
Timothy, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many
witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach
others.” Paul seems to be setting a pattern here for training
elders. Timothy was to train reliable men, and they in turn were
to train others. There was to be an unbroken chain, as it were, of
trained leaders.
Three points may be made about Paul’s statement. First, an
apostle’s stay in any city was only temporary and was meant to wean a
newly formed church so that it could stand on its own. Paul tells
Timothy in 2 Ti 4:21 that after Timothy’s ministry was completed in
Ephesus he should do his best to go back to Paul before winter. He
gives Titus similar instructions in Tit 3:12–hence their temporary
stay. Second, the men that were trained by Timothy and Titus were
members of the church in which they were trained. The men who were
so trained became leaders in that church. There was no such thing
as the current practice of calling an unfamiliar pastor from afar to
lead a church. Third, once there were trained men in a church all
subsequent training was to be done by these newly trained
men. Since the apostles’ stay was only temporary, the only
way Paul could ensure that the Faith would remain pure and alive was to
command Timothy to “entrust [it] to reliable men who will also be
qualified to teach others” (2 Ti 2:2). In other words, after
Timothy and Titus were gone, it was up to those who had been trained by
them to follow their example and train other qualified men.
Indeed, they were not only responsible, they were in fact obligated
to find other qualified men whom they could train. This flies in
the face of the current practice of the church wherein a would-be church
leader is informed that he first must spend several years in a seminary;
and even then it is more likely that he will end up with a church of his
own elsewhere rather than go back to the church from which he was
sent. It is those who are currently in charge of the church who
should be held responsible for this man’s training. In a recent essay on
the church, one writer has concluded: “theological seminaries and
divinity schools equip pastor/teachers and others to instruct people in
the Word. This is a fulfillment of Paul’s command to
Timothy: ‘And what you have heard from me before many witnesses
entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also’ (2 Ti
2:2).” (John P. Newport, The People of God: Essays on the Believers’
Church, 31-32). Are Paul’s words to Timothy really fulfilled by
the seminary? We have already seen that Paul’s words assume that
it is the church elder who is to do the training, not the university
professor. Any attempt, therefore, to justify the seminary
via Paul’s statement in 2 Ti 2:2 is ludicrous. We are simply
forced to admit, however sadly, that the church has abdicated its
responsibility in this area.
But perhaps even more abhorrent than the church’s negligence in
training its own leaders is the fact that the would-be church leader’s
only recourse is to pay thousands of dollars to receive training that he
is supposed to be receiving free of charge. Paul warned against
men who require money to teach the Scriptures (“who think that godliness
is a means to financial gain,” 1 Ti 6:5), and he made a clear
distinction between what they do and what Christians are supposed to do
(“Unlike so many, we do not peddle the Word of God for profit,” 2 Co
2:17). What does it mean to “peddle the Word of God” if not to
require payment for teaching it? Yet this is precisely what occurs
in the seminary system–and Christianity as a whole has not only
tolerated this practice, but has embraced and perpetuated it! When
Jesus sent out the Twelve he told them, “freely you have received,
freely give” (Mt 10:8). Surely this principle applies across the
board, whether the issue is the gospel message or the content of the
Faith. Is it likely that Jesus or Paul would have commended the
current seminary practice of financially bilking would-be elders?
Not if we are to limit ourselves to their recorded statements about such
matters. In addition to the passages above we may add Paul’s
statement to the Ephesian elders in Ac 20. There Paul insists that
while he was with them (three years according to v 31) he did not
hesitate to proclaim to them “anything that would be helpful,” but
taught them from house to house (v 20); he did not hesitate to proclaim
to them “the whole will of God” (v 27); and he did all this without
coveting “anyone’s silver or gold or clothing” (v 33). In fact,
Paul said that “these hands of mine have supplied my own needs” (v 34).
What, someone may ask, of all the statements in the NT which seem to
indicate that the teacher is to be paid (e.g., Ga 6:6)? Without
even addressing just what it is that the disciple is supposed to “share”
with the teacher, of this much we may be certain: it is one thing to
give voluntarily to those who are teaching the Word of God; it is quite
another thing to compel the disciple to give money and withhold the Word
of God from him unless he pays up! The question is, Which one of
these two cases more closely resembles the seminary system? The
answer, of course, is the latter. It’s as though in Paul’s
list of qualifications for an elder (1 Ti 3) tucked somewhere
between “not given to drunkenness” and “not a recent convert” there is
the statement “and not a poor man, lest he not be able to pay his
teacher”! There can be little doubt that Paul’s response would
have been nothing short of outrage had anything resembling this current
practice been attempted in his day.
One final objection to the seminary system has to do with the
unhealthy emphasis that is given to a degree program when determining
who is to be appointed an elder in the church. The major concern
of the ordination board is what the ordainee believes and where he
obtained his degree rather than whether he meets the moral requirements
set forth by Paul in 1 Ti 3 and Tit 1. In most cases, if the
ordainee has his seminary degree he’s a shoo-in. There is no
serious consideration given to the lifestyle of the ordainee or whether
he has proven his ability to have charge over the church of God by an
examination of his family life. How could there be? None of
the men on the ordination board actually knows the ordainee in any
intimate way. None of them has ever made it a point to spend
several months with the ordainee on an intimate basis so that the board
could know for certain whether or not this man is really
qualified. The most they can go by is what the ordainee says about
himself–not exactly a fool-proof method for determining the
qualifications of a would-be elder. Again, we are forced to take a
look at the apostolic pattern. When Paul did leadership training
he stayed with potential leaders (as we have already seen) for two or
three years. No doubt he instructed Timothy and Titus to do the
same. The reason Paul had no problem emphasizing moral character
as the main ingredient for an elder is because in such an intimate, one-
on-one disciplining of potential elders it would become increasingly
evident who was qualified and who was not. Paul was not so much
interested in mass production of elders (as seems to be the emphasis of
the seminary) as he was in pouring his own life into a few “reliable”
men who in turn would do the same with others. In today’s seminary
system it is virtually impossible to have this kind of “life-style”
discipleship. The attempt by some seminaries to form fellowship
groups that meet weekly with a seminary professor for one hour does
little toward developing intimate relationships between mentor and
protege. But then that is not so surprising when one considers
that the seminary is merely a product of the church, which has its own
problems with accountability and intimacy.
The overall inadequacy of the seminary raises several pertinent
questions. Is it wrong for someone to go to seminary? Can
someone legitimately be involved in the seminary system and at the same
time oppose it? Just where is the blame for all of this to be
placed?
Perhaps the blame that this chapter seems to place upon seminaries is
in fact misplaced. Perhaps the seminary is nothing more than a
necessary evil. The church has abdicated its responsibility
(indeed, its obligation) to train its own potential leaders. If
the church won’t do it then of course it is better that the seminary do
it rather than it not be done at all. So, in answer to the last
question, the blame ultimately falls upon those leaders in the church
who refuse to heed Paul’s injunction to Timothy to train other
elders. Because of this abdication of responsibility it is indeed
possible for someone to be involved with the seminary system and still
oppose it. If there is no leader within his church who is willing
to train him, then what recourse does he have? He is not so much
perpetuating the system as he is begrudgingly conforming to the system’s
requirements so that a greater goal may be reached–that of becoming
trained so that he can train others.
Another question remains. If the seminary system is inadequate,
then what is the alternative? The alternative of course is the NT
pattern of local elders training other elders. All of the training
should be based on current seminary curriculum and standard textbooks,
and should cover the full gamut of theological training (including
biblical languages) so that nothing essential is left out. Yet the
trainers have the added advantage of knowing personally those whom they
are training. They have contact with them not only during the
training sessions but in the church as well. This is especially
true of those in the house church movement. Knowing whether or not
potential leaders meet the moral requirements for elders set forth by
Paul is not a problem since house churches make it a practice of holding
each other personally accountable for the way members conduct their
lives.
Are seminaries legitimate? Not if legitimacy is measured by the
NT record. Seminaries undermine the method of training elders that
Paul handed down to Timothy in three ways: 1) that which is supposed to
be given free of charge (namely, the Word of God) is, in effect, being
sold (“peddled” to use Paul’s word); 2) that which is the responsibility
(obligation) of the church, or rather, church elders–namely, the
training of other elders–has been abdicated and handed over to the
seminary; and 3) the training that is received in the seminary is seen
somehow as having primary importance for ordination with little or no
consideration given to the moral character of the would-be elder.
Pastors and elders are, in assembly-line fashion, being mass-produced
at break-neck speeds. With such practices as these, is it any
wonder that the institutional church is plagued by lack of integrity in
many of her so-called leaders? Is it any wonder that so many
high-profile “Christian leaders” are being exposed (primarily by the
unbelieving media) with sexual immorality and financial scandal?
There can be little doubt that the institutional church and her sister
institution, the seminary system, have acted as accomplices in the
current state of affairs in the church. The former abdicates its
responsibility, while the latter trivializes its responsibility.
Neither of these, regardless of what is claimed, has fulfilled Paul’s
words to Timothy: “And what you have heard from me before many witnesses
entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2
Ti 2:2).
