Training pastors/seminary

Error message

On the occasion of Michael Farris leaving HSLDA: thoughts on the church's reformation...

Neither the slaughter of one-quarter of our children we liltingly refer to as "abortion," nor the promotion of sodomy and the denial of First Amendment rights of Christians who object to it, will be repealed in our courts. Any remedy will have to be legislative.

Legislation, though, depends upon the will of the people and at this point we, the people, do not have the will to stop either of these obscenities. Nor very many others.

How might this change?

The history of the early church shows the way. The men who knew Jesus went out preaching, and in time the Roman Empire turned away from effeminacy, sodomy, female rebellion, and child slaughter that was characteristic of their pagan religion.

Now, though, Christendom is in its death throes. Seventy-five years ago, J. Gresham Machen said America was living...


Only lawyers should be ordained to pastoral ministry...

For a few years now, I've been telling men I think a law degree and some experience litigating should be a prerequisite for ordination to pastoral ministry. Seriously.

Where am I coming from?

Think of the reformation of preaching this would produce.

Men who preach would have been trained to say "no" and to speak towards the inevitable judgment. They would understand their purpose and the effect going beyond yes to no would have on the souls under their care. They would have been acclimated to controversy and would view adversity as the necessary environment for truth to be revealed so it may be embraced. For error to be revealed so it may be rejected.

The curriculum of most seminary training today is...


Is there a Christian ghetto in our future...

This is a talk given by ruling elder Ken Patrick at a conference held this past Saturday at his church, Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA), in Ludlow, Kentucky. Titled "Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture," the conference's other speakers were Trinity's pastor Chuck Hickey and an attorney from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Jeff Shafer. I attended the conference with my son, Joseph, and his fellow pastor Paul Belcher (both serving Christ Church in Cincinnati). Hope you find this talk as wise and helpful as Joseph, Paul, and I did.

* * *

Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture

by Ken Patrick

Before we begin, let me talk about my qualifications to divine the future: I’m not a prophet; I don’t have a “word from the Lord” in the sense that I’m about to share any divinely sourced revelation with you; God didn’t appear to me in a dream.

What I’m going to share are simply observations on what may come to pass if current trends continue, and what I would do if I were in charge. If you find yourself disagreeing with what I say, hopefully you’ll stay until I’m finished. We’ll have a Q&A session where you can ask a question, and of course you can pigeon-hole me afterward.

So, to answer my own question right up front—is there a Christian ghetto in our future?—I think the most likely answer is “of course, yes” at least in an intellectual sense and perhaps in a real, physical way as well. I think it’s very possible that we’ll see both. Before I begin describing what these Christian “ghetto” scenarios might look like, let’s establish why many of us think...


Crossway's ESV now written in stone...

Shows are meant to be consumed in front of the curtain—not behind it. Behind are the things you don't want the audience to see or know because it would ruin the performance.

Bible translations are hammered out behind the curtain, and for good reason. It wouldn't give people confidence in the trustworthiness of the English Bible they read to watch the arguments and votes over how to translate this or that Hebrew or Greek word or phrase. Other parts of the Bible publishing business may be even more disconcerting, but let's focus here on the academics' work.

Although the scholars who produce Bible text for their Bible publisher are paid for that work, most of their income is from tuition paid by seminaries whose curricula require those students to spend years studying Hebrew and Greek. So these scholars have two priorities at odds with each other.

First, in order for their publishers' investment in their translating work to realize a profit, scholars must not stop assuring church people that every last word of the text of their version is precisely what God Himself inspired. Nothing has been changed...


Questions about Christian witness in the public square...

Here's a response to a couple questions posted under "Trust your nose...".

Dear (brother),

Thanks for your questions. A couple responses:

1. Let's say a man speaks out against the sins of society and uses Scripture to support his arguments. You say it would be wrong to discourage him, and I agree. But let's say a man speaks out against the sins of society and decides not to overtly use Scripture to support his arguments but instead uses natural law. Would that man be wrong to not openly use Scripture?

Tactics are open to debate. Each man decides what is best in which situation. Would I have thought Gov. Mike Pence should have quoted Scripture in supporting the state's just-passed RFRA when Tim Cook and the NCAA attacked him? Not necessarily, but then again, maybe. But I'd argue in favor of quoting Scripture in the public square on strategic—not just principled—grounds. If it were a timid person in the congregation I serve who spoke up in defense of God's Moral Law and did it on the basis of general revelation, I'd simply...


Clearnote Pastors College Commencement, 2015...

Two weeks ago, we had the commencement of Clearnote Pastors College. Our speaker was Dr. Harry Schaumburg, author of two excellent books on sexual sin titled False Intimacy and Undefiled.

Here's a pic taken after the ceremony (left to right, front to back): Pastor Joseph Bayly (CNPC Board Chairman), Dr. Harry Schaumburg, Pastor Nathan Harlan (CNPC Board member), Mr. Brian Bunn (grad), Dr. Benjamin Burlingham (grad), Mr. Forest Gafford (grad), Pastor Jacob Mentzel (CNPC Board member), yours truly, Mr. Thaddeus Walker (grad), Mr. Dewayne Pinkney (grad), Mr. Nathaniel Crum (grad), and Pastor Stephen Baker (CNPC Principal and Board member).

If you are interested in being trained to serve as a pastor, check out Clearnote Pastors College.


Jameis Winston and Lovie Smith...

Because of the noise of the galloping hoofs of his stallions, The tumult of his chariots, and the rumbling of his wheels, The fathers have not turned back for their children, Because of the limpness of their hands...  - Jeremiah 47:3

The biggest name in the NFL draft this year is Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston. Winston is no Andrew Luck golden boy. He brings some baggage including a civil suit alleging sexual assault (authorities declined to file criminal charges), some pranks and tirades, and conviction a year ago for stealing crab legs from a Publix.

Naturally, then, NFL general managers and coaches are scrutinizing Winston. After last year's tsunami of criminal charges causing the season of shame that came to a fitting end with Darth Hoodie winning the Super Bowl, no one wants to bring a Johnny Manziel into their locker room. And since the Tampa Bay Bucs have the first draft pick this year, it's Tampa Bay's GM Jason Licht and Head Coach Lovie Smith who have been spending time and money looking into Winston's character.

Lovie's been around for 19 NFL drafts and he says he's never seen the level of investigation of a player that Winston is being put through. GM Licht reports the Bucs have talked to...


Sticks and stones don't break my bones but names do always hurt me...

I felt the death of Joe Sobran keenly a few years ago. Three of us took a road trip out to D.C. for Joe's wake. We were grateful to meet some whose names we had heard through the years, but the occasion for the trip was sad and remains so to this day. Who is there to teach us a Christian view of culture and politics today? Certainly no one even close to Joe and the best of those with claims to fill in the gap Joe's death left among us are Roman Catholics. I've long recommended a rule of thumb that a man would do well to make the pilgrimage to Rome for instruction in culture, economics, politics, and moral theology, but for his doctrine and salvation he must live in Geneva.

Anyhow, in celebration of the...


PCA pastor says Jesus' manhood is catching up with the world's...

Presbyterian Church in America pastor Rich Bledsoe, one of Dr. Leithart's Theopolis Institute men, posted a piece on sexuality I take as typical of the posture of PCA and Oatmeal Stout Federal Vision pastors toward today's sexual anarchy:

PARAGRAPH ONE:

I would like to beat a very old drum here, one that I beat a lot, but only because it has proven so illuminating to me. Back to Barfield’s “original to final participation”. Along with everything else, masculinity in its original natural form is dying.

Masculinity in its "original natural form" was created in the Garden of Eden by God. It started dying immediately after the Fall of Adam when, speaking to God, Adam blamed his sin on "the woman You gave me." Masculinity's original natural form was created to bear responsibility—not claim victimhood—and so masculinity started dying with the Fall.

Yet masculinity has also been being reborn since the Fall, generation after generation as men are born again. As Scripture says, "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation," so throughout history the power of the Holy Spirit has been conforming men to the image of Christ. Certainly He is "masculinity in its original natural form."

Sadly, Rich doesn't say a word about the Holy Spirit's work renewing masculinity among men of God. He only says masculinity is dying...


Early bird registration ends soon...

This is the last week to enjoy the early bird discount on our upcoming conference for officers of Christ's church. Prices go up beginning February 1, so register now and prepare to enjoy three days of fellowship, good food, and good teaching aimed at equipping us to better minister to those in our churches who are preparing for death or grieving the death of a loved one.

Whether you're a pastor, elder, or deacon who has been in ministry for years, or are a student preparing for ministry, we'd love to have you. The topics will be very practical—what you need to know in the hospital room, what you need to know about funerals and graveside services, what you need to know about cremation, and what you need to know about the biblical ethics surrounding the end of life, for instance.

Click here to register and find out more about our speakers, topics, and schedule. Early bird pricing is only $75 for regular attendees and $60 for students.

Click here to read my much longer pitch on why I'm excited about this conference, and why you should consider coming.


Racism and degreeism: returning pastoral training to the local church...

So President Obama has been mistaken for a menial worker in the service industry? Big deal. All of us have, but I'll bet President Obama didn't hold down a summer job in high school cleaning motel room bathrooms. It was a step up from the previous three years I'd spent cleaning stalls in a boarding stable three times a week.

But yes, racism is alive and well in these United States. In a sinful world, racism is the human condition. Who would expect pride and selfishness not to take hold of the natural fissure of skin color? While the earth remains, there will be racism, although here in Bloomington the greater evil on display everywhere but never lamented is the classism of degreeism. As I said last Sunday in a sermon on Nazarenes and shepherds, Bloomington despises West side folk who live in single or double-wides, chew tobacco or smoke cigarettes, and don't finish high school. The undegreed life is not worth living.

Company men in some of the more conservative Reformed denominations share a certain disdain for Doug Wilson and for years men have been hearing me say it's largely because Doug's an autodidact. This is the source of their dyspepsia.

A charitable construction of their concern would be that Doug has holes in his knowledge or that he hasn't learned the importance of nuance. An uncharitable construction would be that Doug is...


Feminist gobbledygook at the PCA's seminary...

One of the more troubling elements of my education at the PCA's Covenant Theological Seminary (2001-2004) was the lack of Biblical witness in our required counseling classes. The "Marriage and Family Counseling" class used secular counseling sources almost to the exclusion of Scripture's teaching on those topics. One resource we were asked to read and review was The Couple's Survival Workbook: What You Can Do to Reconnect with Your Partner and Make Your Marriage Work by counselors David Olson and Douglas Stephens. Here's a review of that work I wrote for the class along with the comments made by the counseling professor (in bold italics). What you will see in his comments is a man who is uncomfortable with the words of the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, who shuffles away from the sufficiency of Scripture and a Biblical view of sexuality. My review...


Leadership in the PCA: protecting power structures while tossing a bone to younger men...

The third key issue (first here and second here) identified by the Cooperative Ministries Committee of the PCA at this year's General Assembly was "The rising generation of leaders in the PCA:

The rising generation of leaders in the PCA – particularly, seeking to find new avenues of including younger people in denominational leadership.

Are the fathers of the PCA really ready to grant younger men access to the reins of power? Here's a case study based on the Board of Trustees of the denomination's Covenant Theological Seminary...


Church fathers: only God is good...

Happy Father's Day, home fathers and church fathers!


Seminaries and search committees in the dance of death...

Pastors are called to warn their sheep. This is the reason the Apostle Paul declares his innocence of the blood of those he pastored, saying he never failed to warn them. His warnings were both public and private and he gave them every last warning God commanded him to give. (See Acts 20.)

This is not true of Reformed pastors, today. There is a great absence of pastoral care among us and the pastor whose ministry is characterized by warnings must justify those warnings while the lethargic and conflict-avoiding Reformed pastors around him who trade in flattery and presumption are viewed as paragons of clerical virtue.

Think of the spiritual destruction of their sheep caused by such careless pastors and we tremble. Let's keep in mind, though, that people choose their own churches and pastors, and thus a certain measure of blame belongs on the congregants themselves. They have a chaplain rather than a pastor because they prefer a chaplain to a pastor. They prefer a man who can keep a good religious shine on their Reformed veneer providing religious cover for friendship with the world.

If this were as far as it went, it would be bad enough. Remember how our Lord took pity on the crowds because "they were sheep without a shepherd?" This is the condition of all those souls who have chosen churches and pastors who are committed never to warn their sheep. But it goes further. The damage caused by faithless shepherds extends beyond their own parish to sheep tended by faithful shepherds, also. Richard Baxter describes the process by recording the irritation sheep have with


Book recommendations: Baxter's Reformed Pastor and Shusaku Endo's Silence...

It seems inane to say so when so many others have said the same so often for so many centuries, but having recently led our Pastors College men through Richard Baxter's The Reformed Pastor, I was reminded how central to the development of my work as a minister of the Word Baxter has been. After seminary, I read The Reformed Pastor, followed quickly by Baxter's Autobiography, and it's impossible to overstate the impact both had on my pastoral conscience and commitments these past thirty years. Page after page, I see my markings and marginal notes and think to myself, "that's where I learned that" and "that's why I think that way!"

Whether you're a deacon, pastor, or elder, if you haven't read Baxter's Reformed Pastor, buy it now and read it yesterday! Then preach on Acts 20 and you're good to go! (Or to sit down and mourn and cry and beat your breast and confess your failures to the Chief Shepherd, asking for His mercy and renewed commitment to faithfully shepherd Christ's Church which He bought with His Own precious blood.)

* * *

Speaking of books, I also just finished Silence by Shusaku Endo and recommend it to our good readers. (I was up staying with my brother, David, for a couple days and pulled it from his bookshelves, so thank David for the recommendation.) Silence is said to be the masterpiece of Japan's most respected novelist and the work is a fictionalized account of the great persecution Christians suffered in Japan during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries...


Choosing a pastor...

You must not only choose men of counsel, but if you would design the unity and peace of the churches, you must choose men of courage to govern them. For as there must be wisdom to bear with some, so there must be courage to correct others; as some must be instructed meekly, so others must be rebuked sharply, that they may be sound in the faith; there must be wisdom to rebuke some with long-suffering and there must be courage to suppress and stop the mouths of others.

The apostle tells Titus of some whose mouths must be stopped, or else they would subvert whole houses (Titus 1:11). Where this courage has been (lacking), not only whole houses, but whole churches have been subverted. And Paul tells the Galatians, that when he saw some endeavor to bring the churches into bondage, that he did not give place to them, no not for an hour (Galatians 2:5). If this course had been taken by the rulers of churches, their peace had not been so often invaded by unruly and vain talkers.

John Bunyan, Exhortation to Unity and Peace.


Leadership matters in Reformed colleges and pastors colleges...

As expected, Brian Chapell will be leaving Covenant Seminary. This coming Lord's Day he plans to be voted on as the new pastor at Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria. Grace is one of the few tall-steeple PCA churches north of the Mason-Dixon line and Brian's roots are deep in Illinois, so this seems a good fit.

Much like Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, historically Grace has been a mainline Evangelical church with roots deep in the sort of Reformed dispensationalism popularized by Wheaton, Moody, and Campus Crusade. For forty years Grace was served by Wheaton grad Bruce Dunn who spoke regularly at Winona Lake, Bibletown (Boca Raton), Cannon Beach (Oregon), Moody Founders Week, Moody Keswick, and prophecy conferences.

Which brings us to the subject of dead and dying institutions...

Close to ten years ago, I was speaking with a brother much respected across the PCA to express my concerns over Covenant Seminary's toxic influence. What I saw of Covenant grads, I said, had convinced me Covenant would preside over the death of the PCA, and the only way to turn it around...


The need for pastors in our pulpits and session meetings...

Someone commented under the previous post, "Pastors and their sinecures...," that the Reformed church today needs reform in the area of restoring Calvin and Luther's teaching on birth control. To which I respond:

The problem with the Reformed church today isn't our failure to teach or preach on this or that issue—even the refusal of the people of God to propagate for their Lord a godly seed—so much as it is an almost complete betrayal of the pastoral office. And this is true in our session meetings as much as the pastor's office and the pulpit. Sadly, it's true of our marriages and families, too. Men don't take responsibility for the souls God has placed under our care and we aren't vigilant in protecting the honor of our offices because we don't exercise our offices. Which is to say that our churches have no fathers. They have readers and debaters and curators and featherbedders and teachers, but no fathers.

Abortion and feminism are simply the best labs to observe how vacuous we have made the pastoral office today. Take abortion, for instance: lots and lots of loud condemnations within the Reformed world and church with not a word of...