One of the things I’ve heard pastors who were educated prior to the information age lament is the seemingly counter-intuitive practice of leaving the local church to learn how to serve the local church.
In other words, in the past a man has sensed a calling to ministry under the existing ministry of a local church. Desiring to equip himself through higher education, he would then leave the local church to go to seminary. There he would learn in a sanitized classroom environment occupied with other students all the while removed from the local churches they attended when they first sensed this call.
The result? A man who spends three years learning a lot of “isms” and “ologies” only to realize in his first pastorate that it takes another three years to unlearn all of the unnecessary baggage that is not particularly helpful in communicating and ministering to the average church member who has not attended seminary. This is one of the many problems that I believe the Internet reformation (yeah, I’m pioneering this term) will solve consequentially
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