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Thoughts on Schooling

It is generally believed that a basic level of education is needed to function in society.  This is one reason the government provides schools, paid for with your tax dollars.  Some people do not want their children to go to government schools so private schools or homeschooling are utilized.  Whatever the schooling, it is illegal to keep children out of the lower levels of education, except in extraordinary circumstances.

As children grow up, additional education may be needed for desired profession.  Mike Rowe is a great proponent of trade schools for some.  If a person wants to be a doctor, more mandatory schooling is necessary.  Lawyers do not need to go to school.  All that is required is to pass the State Bar exam.  However, it may be difficult to get a job without the prerequisite schooling (see Suits).

It has been the practice for millennia to send those who wish to be pastors to school.  Many years ago I met a young lad who believed he was called to the ministry.  He told me that he was going to quit his job and get his schooling done and then get a church.  This warmed my heart.  As more and more Christian movements are denying the need to educated pastors, churches in California are becoming more and more heretical.  The New Apostolic Reformation is gaining strength in Oakland and Richmond.  They are encouraging young men to drop out of high school and enter “on the job training” for pastoring a church.  This is producing churches with functionally illiterate pastors.  Strange movements of prophets and sign gifts are coming out of the NAR also.

I was asked to be the pastor of San Lorenzo Baptist Church during a game of Rack-O.  In many ways this job was trust upon me.  I had already finished my BA in Religious Studies at SJSU and was finished with my first year of seminary.  I accepted the job, making it clear that I would finish my education was soon as I could, which I did.

A conservative education in proper Biblical truths and theology have given me the framework and limits to my preaching.  I will not preach anything that comes to my own desires, as the NAR does.  Christianity has 2,000+ years of history and that needs to be taught along with original languages, proper theology and proper ways to interpret and teach the Bible.  This is all part of a pastors education.

If you look back in history, Pastors were some of the most educated people in America.  Harvard and Yale and Princeton were divinity law schools.  They believed that a person could not be a lawyer without a divinity/theology degree (we should try that today).  This explains why the signers of the Declaration of Independence were lawyers but also ordained ministers.

Every job needs some level of training.  Internships, trade schools, one-the-job training, College, university and seminary are all levels of training that are required for different jobs.  It is dangerous to put unschooled people in the pulpit of churches.  The strength of their personality can only take them so far.  Eventually they will fall into the error of teaching their own ideas.


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