“He Desires a Noble Task” The Erosion of the Evangelical Pastorate

The evangelical church has a problem. We’re going to run out of good pastors. For a variety of reasons, we are failing to sufficiently prepare the next generation of church leadership. I doubt this particular problem will ever feel like a full-blown crisis, given the many influences on church health and the wide diffusion of the effects, but it’s a trend with costly consequences. All things being equal, eventually there will be fewer churches than there could be, and on average they will be weaker.

This message is different than the common doomsday alarms. American evangelicalism is not in perfect health, but it’s strong in many respects. More 20-somethings are currently attending evangelical churches than any year since 1972. Enrollment in Christian Colleges is also up, as is diversity. The problem is not that there aren’t any young people in church; it’s that not enough of them are planning to lead.

Why think this?

First, the numbers. While Christian colleges are growing, seminary enrollment has either plateaued or declined at mainline and evangelical seminaries. Don Sweeting, President of Reformed Theological Seminary, told the Lausanne Consultation on Global Theological Education a few months ago in his plenary address, “We have more seminaries and fewer students.” It’s not just an enrollment issue. As anyone who has recently spent time on seminary campuses can tell you, more and more seminarians are not planning on leading churches. They are there for counseling, or para-church ministry, or simply to learn more about Scripture. Quite a few don’t know why they are there.   Continue at Jeremy Mann

The Demerit System is Ungodly and Anti-Gospel

If you've never been to Bible College,  you may not understand what the Demerit System is. In Christian schools, it is a common way to enforce the rules of the school. A demerit is a negative point against your record as a student. If you reach 150 demerits in a semester, you are expelled from the school and lose all your credits for the classes you have taken for that semester. Certain lighter infractions will earn you smaller amounts of demerits, and infractions that the school deems as more serious will get you a greater number of demerits per infraction. For example, if you don't make your bed in the morning before going to class you might get 1-3 demerits (if you live in the dorms). If you are late for class you may get 1-3 demerits, if you miss chapel, you may get up to 25. If you hold hands with a girl, you might get 50-75 demerits for inappropriate touching between the opposite sex. If you listen to music that's not approved by the school, you may also get 25-50 demerits...no, I'm not kidding...there are schools that do this. When I was in Bible College, our VP told us that we may not like the demerit system, but someday when we are running a Christian School, we can do what we want to enforce the rules and we'll probably return to it after we see its value. 

Well, I don't agree. In fact, after having gone through many years of school under this system, I have come to see it as ungodly and anti-gospel. The Demerit system doesn't promote godliness, but rather lawlessness and hypocrisy. However, it's not the Demerit System that needs to be ultimately changed in Christian schools and colleges...it's the gospel-less environment of the school that mandates the need for it. In a gospel-void Christianity that is promoted by so many schools, the demerit system is an absolute necessity. There is no other way to restrain the passions of gospel-less students. The problem with many of these schools is that there are many unconverted posers that attend and are allowed in with nothing more than a very flimsy profession of faith.  Continue at Reforming Baptist