• Directories
    • Business Directory
    • Church Directory
    • Organization Directory
  • Advertise
  • Donate
  • Help
  • Log In

MENUMENU
  • Learning
        • Leader’s Edge
          • Author Interviews
          • Book Summaries
        • Book Reviews
          • Book Look
          • EMQ Book Reviews
        • Publications
          • Anthology
          • Evangelical Missions Quarterly (EMQ)
          • Missiographics
        • Podcasts
          • The Mission Matters
          • Members Only Feed
          • Missions Podcast DirectoryNew
        • Topics
          • COVID-19 Resources
          • Diaspora Missions
          • Global Issues Updates
          • Member Highlights
          • Mobilization
          • Muslim Missions
          • Support Raising
          • UkraineNew
        • Media Library
          • Conferences
          • Global Issue Updates
          • On Mission
          • Thought Leader Briefings
          • Webinars
          • Workshop
          • View All
  • Programs
    • Accreditation
    • Bible Certificate
    • Church Missions Coaching
    • Cohorts
    • Cybersecurity
    • ImproveNew
    • Mission Jobs
    • Missions DataNew
    • Publish
    • RightNow Media
    • The Mission App
    • Women’s Development
  • Events
          • Calendar
          • In-Person Events
          • Virtual Events
          • Event Recordings
          • Awards
        • Premier Events
          • Mission Leaders Conference
          • On Mission
        • Upcoming Events

          • Peer 2 Peer for Marketing and Communications Staff: Foundations for an Effective Communications Department
            Tue May 17 2022, 02:00pm EDT
          • CEO Thought Leader Briefing: Woke Driving Conditions: Navigating the New Political Environment
            Wed May 18 2022, 01:00pm EDT
          • Evangelical Views on Women in Ministry & Marriage: Differences in Interpretation, Not Inspiration
            Fri May 20, 2022, 04:00 PM PDT
        • View All Events
  • Research
          • Missions DataNew
          • Missiographics
          • Research Reports
        • Popular Research
          • Compensation Reports
          • COVID-19 Resources
          • Field Attrition Report
          • View All Reports
        • Contribute
          • Current Research Projects
          • Volunteer
  • About Us
        • Who We Are
          • Our Contribution
          • Meet the Team
          • Board Members
          • History (1917–present)
        • Our Beliefs
          • Statement of Faith
          • Community Standards
        • Awards
        • Partner with Us
          • Advertise
          • Donate
          • Sponsorships
          • Volunteer
        • Help
          • Contact Us
          • Advertising Specs
          • Branding Guidelines
  • Join
        • Learn
        • Learn what you cannot learn anywhere else.

        • Meet
        • Meet people you otherwise won’t meet.

        • Engage
        • Engage in a community like none other.

          • Benefits
          • Benefits for Churches
          • Pricing

Sponsored Content

Upcoming Events

  • Peer 2 Peer for Marketing and Communications Staff: Foundations for an Effective Communications Department
    Tue May 17 2022, 02:00pm EDT
  • CEO Thought Leader Briefing: Woke Driving Conditions: Navigating the New Political Environment
    Wed May 18 2022, 01:00pm EDT
  • Evangelical Views on Women in Ministry & Marriage: Differences in Interpretation, Not Inspiration
    Fri May 20, 2022, 04:00 PM PDT
  • Webinar: An Introduction to the Theology and Practice of Cross-Cultural Risk
    Thu May 26 2022, 12:00pm EDT
  • Pocket Guide to Being a Missions Pastor: 5 Things Every Missions Pastor Needs to Know
    Wed Jun 1 2022, 01:00pm EDT

View all events »

Topics

author interview CEO Church Church Missions Church Mission Team Church Planting COVID-19 Cross Cultural Skills Diaspora Disciple Making Discipleship Focus Future Innovation Islam Justin Long Leadership Management Member Care Missiology Missionaries Mission Finance and Administration MLC2019 MLC2020 MLC2021 Mobilization muslim Muslim Diaspora Networks Partnership Podcast Presenter Pursuing Partnerships Series Research Risk Short-Term Missions Spirituality support raising Training Trends Unengaged Unreached Weekly Roundup Women Women in Leadership

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

The Multi-tasking Challenge of Training for Church Leadership

Posted on April 1, 2007 by Ted EslerApril 1, 2007

by Gary Corwin

Juan is a farmer and the lead elder of a small village church in the high Andes. Kofi teaches theology at an African seminary and is writing several articles for a new contextualized Bible Encyclopedia.

Juan is a farmer and the lead elder of a small village church in the high Andes. Kofi teaches theology at an African seminary and is writing several articles for a new contextualized Bible Encyclopedia. Gupta pastors a fast-growing urban megachurch made up of university students, diplomats, wealthy business people and the urban poor. Each is part of church leadership for the mushrooming “new Christendom” of the southern hemisphere of which Philip Jenkins (2002, 2006) has written so eloquently. Each also has very different educational needs.

How their educational needs will be met is one of the great challenges facing the global Church today. The answers will not be the same for each of them—although there will be common threads. The diverse needs of various church contexts require very different kinds of leaders, and different kinds of preparation for those leaders.

I was reminded recently that Martin Luther made this case early in Protestant history. On one of the less frequented bookshelves in my office there rests a 1977 issue of the Trinity Journal. In it is “Martin Luther on the Training of Pastors and Theologians,” the first article I ever had published. Looking at it again brought to mind just how prescient Luther was on this subject.

As both a doctor of theology and a professor, Luther had great respect for the simple country pastor who faithfully shepherded his flock by keeping them engaged with the Word of God and applying it to their daily lives. Both for the lay person and for the highly trained theologian, the Bible had to be at the center of the training curriculum and of their ministry to the church. Although everyone did not have to master the Greek or Hebrew language or the history of theological insight and debate, some individuals were called into these areas. These people did this to facilitate the transformation of culture by the gospel, and for the protection of God’s people from the philosophical and psychological wolves of the day. Still, although it was their job to communicate the fruit of hard-won insight and argument for the spiritual benefit of their flocks, it was not the task of all pastors to sort out the arguments.

In actuality, Luther wrote much more on the subject of training children than he did on training pastors and theologians. It is interesting to note that he thought the children of Christian families should have memorized at least the four Gospels by the time they reached their tenth year. If he thought this appropriate for children, one can only surmise how much more he thought adults, and especially pastors, should know the scripture. The intricacies of theology, however, he was happy to leave to the rigorously trained and appropriated gifted persons. And these persons (he showed by example and theory) should be mentored in spiritual things through dialogue and shared life1 as much as through lecture and reading. This was highly advanced for his day and, unfortunately, still highly exceptional in seminaries and schools of divinity around the world today.

Years ago I was tasked for about ten years in SIM to assist and help coordinate the efforts of over five hundred leadership training institutions and programs around the world. Some were full-blown seminaries offering accredited degrees; some were simple village Bible schools. Still others were dry-season training institutes or TEE programs with circuit-riding instructors. Each type of ministry played a key role in training pastoral and theological leadership for the burgeoning churches of the southern hemisphere. Unfortunately, more often than not I found that those involved in one kind of program had less appreciation for the others than you would hope. Rather than cheering one another on and working symbiotically to help make each other successful, there was far too much criticism and segregation of approaches.

It is an interesting but sad footnote that some who advocate most strongly for seeing church planting movements established today among least-reached peoples often fail to see the value of higher levels of training for some church leaders. Their fear, and rightly so, is that creating a knowledge and status distance between highly trained and less-trained but natural leaders among a people will short-circuit the church planting movement that is so needed. But they are also being short-sighted in that it is the gifted insiders among a people who are far better positioned than the catalytic outside missionary to sort through the philosophical and psychological challenges to bringing about gospel change in that culture—and helping to make the training at every level more relevant. It is worth praying in the days ahead for great wisdom. Big-picture thinking and cooperation need to increasingly become more the rule than the exception in the multi-tasking challenge of training for church leadership.

Endnote
1. The outworking of this was the source of Luther’s famous work Table Talks, published in 1566.

References
Jenkins, Philip. 2002. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press.

_______. 2006. The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. New York: Oxford University Press.

—–

Gary Corwin is associate editor of EMQ and missiologist-at-large for Arab World Ministries, on loan from SIM-USA.

Copyright © 2007 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

GoToOlder PostNewer PostAll PostsA Second Look: Editorial by EMQ Editor Gary CorwinEMQSectionVolume 43 - Issue 2

Comments are closed.

Subscribe to Our Mailing List

Keep up to date with our community.

Menu

  • Home
  • Directories
  • Advertise
  • Donate
  • Contact Us

Join

  • Join
  • Benefits
  • Learn
  • Meet
  • Engage

Help

  • Contact Us
  • Terms
  • Cookies Policy

About Us

  • Who We Are
  • Statement of Faith
  • Awards
  • Resources
Missio Nexus Logo

© Missio Nexus. All rights reserved.
As an Amazon Associate Missio Nexus earns from qualifying purchases.


PO Box 398
Wheaton, IL 60187-0398

Phone: 770.457.6677
678.392.4577

Annual Sponsors

ECFA Logo Brotherhood Mutual Logo

Subscribe to our Mailing List

Membership website powered by MembershipWorks