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Thoughts on Career Clergy

From the first time pastor schools, or seminaries, came into existence, the plan was to train saved, dedicated, ministry oriented people in the business of being a pastor.  Most, if not all seminaries and Bible colleges in America required a statement of faith.  These schools wanted to know the salvation story, or testimony of their students, mostly to confirm they are saved.

Over the past several years, seminaries have stopped requiring this statement.  It has been explained to me two ways.  First, many seminaries now teach counseling and social work.  These occupations are not people who preach the word, so the thought was that these people need not be saved.  Second, attendance and enrollment in seminaries were decreasing.  There are many factors to account for this, but to keep enrollment up, these schools reduced the entrance requirements, which included a statement of faith.

The result is that seminaries and Bible schools are graduating people for the purpose of being pastors, who may or may not be saved.  They are graduating people who want to be a pastor, as a job or a vocation and not as a ministry.  There becomes the real possibility that there are unsaved people in the pulpits of churches today.

Another aspect of this phenomenon is that some people bypass school altogether and just start a church.  I have known three such people.  One had graduated from high school and had one year of college.  He wanted to be a lawyer, because he wanted to be rich.  To earn a little extra money he was the youth director at a church.  When the church split, 60 people drafted him to be their pastor.  Instead of saying that he had to go to school, he agreed to start right away.  He knew nothing of theology and could even give a coherent testimony of his salvation.  There is a real possibility that this man is an unsaved pastor.  He is funny and preaches from the news, so his church is large, but God may not be there.

The New Apostolic Reformation is against all forms of formal education.  They are putting young men who have dropped out of high school or barely graduated, into pulpits with no thought as to their salvation.  As long as prosperity can be taught, their churches will grow and the leadership will get rich.

The Bible is the inerrant Word of God and the preacher/teacher/pastor must have the Holy Spirit to preach and teach this word correctly.   There are mechanics of preaching and public speaking that most anyone can learn, but to share the Word of God is special and a spiritual task.  For the saints to be edified, for God to be glorified and for people to get saved, the pastor must be saved.  Yet that is not always the case.

The young pastor who got drafted by his church has been a pastor for 25 years and has a church of over 4,000 and he is very rich, by his own admission.  Yet, I must wonder if he ever met Jesus in all this preaching.  He once told me that as a pastor, he could make more money than a lawyer, with no education and no accountability.

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