Continuing to reflect on Thom Rainer’s 14 Predictions for 2014, Part 1 and Part 2.
12. Local churches increasing their roles as ministry training leaders. The role of ministry training in the past decades fell largely upon Bible colleges and seminaries. More churches in 2014 will partner with those colleges and seminaries to provide contextual training at a local church. (90%)
This is a side effect of megachurches. Congregations of 20,000 members will often have their own training programs for church planters or children’s ministers. But I’m not seeing this in the Churches of Christ. We still rely on our colleges and universities very heavily.
13. Church movement to the community. The posture of many American churches in the most recent decades has been to find ways to get people in the community to come to the church. That is shifting, perhaps dramatically. In more churches, the congregation will move to the community. Instead of a philosophy of “y’all come,” the dominant theme will be “we’ll go.” The congregants will be a more powerful presence in the community they serve, thus ministering to, influencing, and reaching more people with the gospel. (80%)
This is certainly happening in Churches of Christ, especially among the more progressive ones, but many fairly conservative Churches are taking steps into their communities as well.
This is a great, wonderful, necessary trend, and we’re only seeing the very beginnings at this point.
This does not mean an end to the attractional church. We’ll still want our members to invite friends to visit, and we’ll still want to reach out to visitors, but we’ll also reach out into the community to touch lives and show the world the glory of God.
14. More multiple teaching/preaching pastors. In larger churches, there has been a decided trend toward having more than one teaching and preaching pastor. Now the trend is taking place in smaller churches. We will see more churches with attendance under 200, even some under 100, with more than one teaching/preaching pastor. Of course, not all of them will be full-time vocationally at the church, so there will be more bi-vocational pastors whose role is to be a second or even third pastor in these smaller churches. (85%)
I’ve seen more of this lately, but not as a huge trend. I mean, most Churches of Christ over 200 have a youth or other second minister who likely fills in for the pulpit preacher on occasion. Smaller churches may have a gifted elder or deacon who fills in when the regular preacher is out. But I’ve not seen a trend toward two or more pulpit men.
In fact, my experience is that churches find that having two or more men share a pulpit can be unstable. It’s hard to lead part-time. And therefore, my experience is that when this is attempted, such as after a merger, one minister will quietly look to leave, believing the church is better off with just one preacher.
We in the Churches of Christ have a deeply sermon-centered church culture — whether we want that or not. It’s here. And we want to hear from one man most of the time. That’s our culture and it’s not changing anytime soon.
(The reason the no-hireling minister Churches of Christ no longer exist is that churches without a preacher soon die. I’m not sure why this is, but it is.)
I am not yet totally sold on local ministry training. The closets the CoC comes to it is the Preaching School. Also, back in the nineteen-fifties there were preacher training classes set up by individual ministers in their particular congregations which were attended by men of the area who did not have the resources for a higher education. Gus Nichols of Jasper, Alabama was one of those ministers. Ministers who were trained under Gus Nichols seemed to come away with a good basic education in sermon preparation and preaching, simply because he was a gentle man, with no demons to slay; but his case was rare. Whereas some Preaching Schools find a demon to battle at every turn.
I trust more so an atmosphere in which a person comes into contact with a diversity of thought. Not only ideas one has never before entertained, but also having the opportunity to hear one’s own beliefs, in comparison, come out of another’s mouth. That is when a person sometimes realizes just how off the mark and misguided he or she must have sounded to others.
My question is just how many congregations are teaming up with the seminaries? Now I know that the D.Min. Program at lipscomb requires candidates to have a ministry position for admission. (The best evidence of this are the female D.Min. Candidates who are in pulpits or serving as chaplains, etc.) Thus, that is one way that churches and seminaries team up. However, not all minsters are doing D.Min.s. The M.Div. seems to be the standard ministerial credential. The problem is that M.Div. candidates don’t seem to get exposure to congregational life and then struggle when they are out looking for jobs with little to no experience.
Our congregation (of 70-80 on Sunday morning) recently added a retired man (c. 71-72 years old) as an associate minister. He preaches at least 1 Sunday each month, usually on Sunday morning. Most of the rest of the preaching is by our young (33 or 34 years) preacher. They work together in visitation, though the older man is more involved in administration than the main pulpit man. So far, it seems to working well.
I (who will turn 74 next week and have spent my life in ministry, and still work part-time with Eastern European Mission) meet with the two of them for breakfast quite frequently (2-3 times each month) at the request of our elders who asked me to “mentor” them some. I see this as a good way for me to help give guidance to them, especially to the younger man. The older man left church altogether when he left home as a youth, but returned a little over 10 years ago and became quite involved. So in a sense, I’m mentoring two “young” preachers, though one of them is only young in experience, not in age.
Please pray for me, for them, and for the congregation.
John, your comment on older preachers mentoring younger preachers is very appropriate! I was not near Jasper, but I roomed at Harding in the late 1950’s with one from his congregation. I also heard him speak several times, both as a preacher and a guest teacher. The small churches in Walker county still benefit from his work in teaching preachers!
You are right in your characterization of brother Gus! Sadly, you are also right in your characterization of too many of the schools of preaching, both in the USA and abroad. Many are more interested in maintaining the traditions of the churches of Christ than in seeking out the riches of God’s good news of redemption and freedom in Jesus our Lord.
Perhaps most churches are not more into “training” leaders is that too few in our congregations are able to provide such training….
At this point, the multiple preacher model is only stable when one professional has the pulpit most of the time, which makes him what we call the “senior minister” –and the rest of the preachers are subordinate staff. This is because of our strong historic conflation of Sunday sermonizing with spiritual leadership. The guy who has the floor on Sunday is our leader. (Even if the board can fire him.) I would note that many large congregations have men called “executive ministers”, who are the Chief Operating Officers and manage the daily church operations… but the pulpiteer is always the superior. We all know this idea to be flawed, but it is a difficult reality to dislodge as long as our religious identities continue to be entirely based on where our rumps rest on Sunday morning. So long as we continue to be pulpit-centric, change in our form of de facto leadership will be slow and difficult.
Focus more on Jesus and the gospel about him and less about less important things is the starting place,
For several years now we have had two preachers and it has worked beautifully. Both have been and are gospel men with no mandate but to preach the riches of Christ. Every ministry is to the same end.
Our elders model humility, transparency, and are no better than the rest of us. We in the pew know they love us. All together is works to Gods glory.
At long as neither minister has a major ego, it can be done. Gender nor age should matter.
Internships are the major way that I see #12 being carried out in churches of Christ.
a watershed moment at HH was when our leadership recognized that we weren’t hiring an intern to serve us – we were supporting an intern to be servants to that intern’s spiritual growth.
Nick,
Thanks for mentioning internships. I’m not aware of many internship programs being available. Over at Wineskins, we’re setting up a jobs listing for ministers, and have made a point to include internships, because we believe in them. If you know of any intern programs, I’d appreciate you helping us get those posted once Wineskins’ listing is good to go (should be any day now).