Assembly line preachers

In light of a comment I received on one of my other posts I’ve decided to delve a little deeper into a certain topic. When I write I don’t do it for any reason other than the fact that a certain topic has come to me and the words are just there. Often it is a topic that I am thinking on and those thoughts are brought together through my writing.

The topic of preachers came about through different means this time. I wrote the first of this very recent series of posts as a result of a request. When I sat down to write that post I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. Not because I didn’t think I could write it but because the person that asked me if I could had a specific thing they hoped I could say with it and I wasn’t sure I could make my own thoughts and feelings turn into the beliefs this other person wanted conveyed. And so it was with more than a little trepidation that I began to write that post (http://journeyingtochrist.blogspot.com/2015/08/peddling-christ.html). In the end I was able to write what the person had requested and do it in a way that conveyed what the person had wanted pointed out.

But it was in the aftermath of that post that I found myself writing a couple of other posts. They came about because of the things I learned while writing that post and now…with this post…as a result of conversations spawned from those posts.

In a comment on one of those posts a very kind reader said: May the Lord guide you as you seek to reveal the insanity of seminary 'pastors'.

It got me to thinking a bit on exactly what I was doing through my recent posts. You see…I never set out to reveal anything. I was simply writing a post that had been requested of me, and in so doing find myself writing much on seminary preachers as a result.

I’m going to take this topic a bit further. How much so, I don’t know. I’ll write on this topic while I’m being led to write them and then I’ll move on to something else when I need to.

For right now I’d like to point to the things said in the comment that prompted this post:

 If men have to be coached on how to preach, and churned out of seminaries like some type of assembly line, that tells me these men have not been called by God to preach. To many, it isn't a calling, it's a career choice made by them and NOT by God.

I couldn’t agree with this more. I fail to see how anyone that is supposedly ‘called’ by God to do anything would need a man-made education to do what they’ve been ‘called’ to do. If the Lord truly has planned for you to do something you will need help from no man to do it. 1 john 2:27 tells us that if we are anointed we will need no need for man to teach us.

And yet preacher after preacher gets turned out of seminary claiming to be ordained and that somehow gives them great authority over the many ‘churches’ in our country.

Years ago, when I was in junior high, I took a class on choir…never mind the question that comes to mind on why choir should be a class…and in that class we were taught a song about all the houses being the same, all the people being the same, all the education being the same. At the time I enjoyed the song, it was fun for me, but as I think on that song now I see the very ‘assembly line’ mentality in that song that the above comment spoke of. In that song it said people went to university to become a doctor or a lawyer…but I’m going to add in that they went to become a preacher too.

And why?

We can look to the disciples, to the apostles, to Christ, to see the model for how preaching should be done. Were any of these men going to school to learn how to preach?

          "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." Acts 4:13

The above verse clearly says that Peter and John were ‘unlearned men’, they were uneducated. They were common, ordinary, men. And yet they taught of Christ. And taught well.

But today our society barely acknowledges someone as a preacher if they don’t hold a degree from a seminary. I’ve been in ‘church’ buildings where they wouldn’t allow anyone to preach if they weren’t seminary trained.

Why?

What were they afraid a common man might teach on their stage?

I’ll be the first to say that I’ve met a lot of ‘nice’ preachers. I’ve stayed in their homes even. I’m not saying these aren’t nice men. Some of them are, some of them aren’t. Some would do anything for anybody, some wouldn’t lower themselves to the point of doing for anyone they saw as beneath their position.

After receiving the comment I referred to above I did a little research. The first seminary in America started in 1808. Before that there was a seminary prototype at a University that began in 1636 that taught from reformation patterns. Think about what that means…if the first seminary of any type began in 1636…what did preachers do before then?

Even if we go to the first official seminary in 1808…what did preachers do before it opened? Think of the numbers of ‘preachers’ that/those seminaries could have taught. What of the preachers that couldn’t afford to go there? What of the ones that chose not to?

I have a book that calls Sunday sermons ‘shows’. It refers to these sermons as entertainment. When I think of the ‘church’ I sometimes attend I can clearly see what this writer is talking about. When I think of other ‘churches’ I’ve attended in the past I can see it. So much goes into pulling the people in and keeping them coming back. Why? If the purpose is to give the gospel could a preacher not get in front of a crowd week after week and say the same exact thing and never need worry over any repeat visitors?

Would he not be reaching the people in the crowd with the most important message there is? Would those interested, those that are truly being drawn, not come back…either to the sermon or to talk to the preacher?

Why do we need to put on a ‘spiritual’ circus every week complete with a new show?

The Puritans certainly didn’t do that. Neither did the reformers. I’d have to hazard a guess and say most of the ‘churches’ of the 18^th and 19^th centuries didn’t either…whether or not these were teaching Truth is a different matter.

So I looked a little deeper. I turned my thoughts and my attention to the Puritans. These were…after all…people that gave up just about everything to search for religious freedom. And I discovered something rather interesting.

The Piligrims, left Englad because of persecution. They found religious freedom in Holland but that was short lived as they soon discovered their children were in danger of loosing their religion. And so they set sail again…this time for what would become known as America.

Before ever stepping off the Mayflower, the men wrote out their beliefs and created not just a government document but a written covenant between themselves and God. This covenant was the basis for the Bible commonwealth they planned to establish…and at its foundations was the Lord.

There is so much more I’d like to go into here. So much more of what these Pilgrims stood for and what they hoped to gain by moving to a place where they could live out their beliefs. But I’m going to stick to the topic at hand.

The Pilgrims greatly valued the education of their children and put much of their money toward the furthering of their education. Calvin had stressed the importance of learned clergy and the Pilgrims created schools that could create these men. As a result in only 17 years the Pilgrims put in place an education system that taught their children from primary school all the way through University.

            On the surface it may seem that what the Pilgrims did with education completely goes against the point I’m trying to make, after all I used these men as examples, but let me explain. You see, these men came from one country seeking the freedom to serve God the way they believed…in freedom. And they found it.

            They made a covenant with God on how they would run their new country. They instituted schools that taught their children based on those beliefs. And this was good. But the trouble comes in that they, as they sought to teach their children of those beliefs, to educate them further, followed a man into that teaching and set the foundation for the system that would eventually become the seminaries as we have them today.

            I do, however, highly doubt that the Pilgrim university looked anything like the University teachings of today. But even if it did, did these men not take their own ideas of what knowledge should be, take another man’s ideas of what it should be, and create a system that completely disregarded what we’re taught in Acts 4?

            These founding fathers of our country, that so valued their religious freedoms that they moved across the world to gain them, quickly put into place a complete system of man-made education. These were men that wrote out a covenant with God as to how they would run their new home…and they instituted man-made teaching within 17 years of that covenant.

            Why not just teach their children of the Bible that they had given up so much for?

            Why not teach their sons how to preach by using Paul as an example?

            Why not start their new country, their new home, their new religious freedom, by knowing nothing but Christ?

            Whatever their reasonings were, they set the foundation for the many educational systems we have in place today. And those systems today, although vastly different…I’m sure…from the Pilgrims schools, have so infiltrated our country to the point that our society places education above all else.

            Last week my five, nine, and twelve year old children were asked by a seven and ten year old what college they were going to. These two children seemed shocked when we said we weren’t college bound and then they went on to tell my children which college they intended to go. Can I point out that these are children? What happened to play? What happened to which doll is your favorite? What happened to playing house…as I did as a child?

            These two children that spoke so much of college are but an example of what our society has become. We now value education to the point that preschoolers are questioned on what they want to be when they grow up. They’re spoken to of college when they’re barely out of diapers.

            There is someone that has offered to pay my daughters way through college. Nice as this is, this person is so set on my daughter going to college that every conversation between my daughter and this person always winds up containing a discussion of college. This person is pushing my daughter hard to go to college even though she has said many times that she doesn’t want to go.

            This same person holds a belief that education is the beginning and end of everything in life. Education, for this person, is put above all else. It is the measuring stick through which this person measures the world and all that’s in it. You’re either a business person or you’re uneducated. So much so that I’ve heard this person say that those that aren’t educated (meaning college) can’t carry on a conversation because they have nothing to talk about.

            It would seem that whether or not you hold a degree from a college has a direct impact on your ability to think and talk…at least by this persons standards.

            Sadly, that belief has taken hold of our society to the point that everything gets measured through that lens. Even our preachers. In 99% of ‘church’ buildings a man must hold a degree from a seminary to be able to preach.

            And those seminaries are teaching things like ‘the art of preaching’. Now I’m sure they’re teaching other things too but anytime a ‘school’ that should be teaching Biblical truth and nothing else starts teaching preaching as an art…and as I understand it they also teach how to target your audience so that your preaching appeals to whoever is in front of you…then you no longer have Biblical truth but man-made ideas.

            And we gain yet another group of ‘assembly line’ preachers that can do nothing but play to their audiences enjoyment.