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Preparation for Ministry
From a Flunky to a Junky |
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By Bob Cheney
Pastor Stratton Church of God, Stratton, CO
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I am a learning junky. However, I was not always this way. My freshman year of high school I collected a stunning 1.0 GPA. I am still unsure as to how I made it to a sophomore year of high school, but I did. You see, I was the youngest of six siblings, none of whom had graduated from high school. But, by the grace of God, I did in fact manage to graduate with a final cumulative GPA of 2.0. My grade point average reflected my lack of passion for learning and for traditional education. At my worst I loathed school, at my best I endured it.
That is, until I met Jesus. At the age of twenty-one life took a dramatic turn when I yielded to Jesus’ unbending love for me. In those first few weeks of faith I was surprised by many things, not the least of which was the love God poured into my heart. But one of the most unexpected changes that happened within me was a new-found love of learning. This love for learning began with the Word of God, evidenced by the color-coded tabs for each Biblical book I placed on my first Bible. I was a sponge, and I couldn’t get enough of the Scriptures. But this unquenchable passion for learning quickly and simultaneously spread to many other areas of interest including history, anthropology, theology and more.
Today, I pastor a small church in eastern Colorado (Stratton Church of God). My love for learning continues to this day, some twenty years since I met Jesus. It has led me to many firsts, including the first of my siblings to graduate high school, the first to graduate college with a Bachelor’s degree and the first to complete a Master’s program.
Through becoming an omnivorous reader, and through formal Christian education, I have found a wealth of benefits to my ministry efforts over the past ten years. For these reasons and more I want to ask if you would take a few moments of your day and explore with me why I believe education is so valuable to everyday ministry.
Much like many areas of the Christian life, formal education is a mode of discipline. When people decide to go the route of formal education they are willingly placing themselves under this discipline. The discipline of education, and its accompanying educators, often requires voluminous reading and writing to be done by a deadline—reading and writing which would otherwise not likely be undertaken. Reading and writing are in and of themselves forms of discipline. John Wesley was an avid reader, writer and learner. To suggestions of “I read only the Bible,” Wesley would reply, “This is rank enthusiasm [an old term meaning fanaticism]. If you need no book but the Bible, you are got above St. Paul: he wanted others, too. ‘Bring the books’ says he, ‘but especially, the parchments.’”
I have had a multitude of helps brought into my ministry through the discipline of reading and writing that formal education require, Christian education in my case. An example of this is a message formation method that I use for my preaching. This method came from a course I took in my undergrad work called “How to Teach the Bible.” Not that I am looking for pats on the back, but people often comment on my preaching and teaching, saying it is easy to understand or that it “makes sense.” This is largely due to the method I learned in college from a former pastor turned professor. He still uses the same method he taught to us every week in a Sunday school class of over 100 people.
Another example of how the required reading and writing of my formal education has helped me in my everyday ministry is found in the area of ministry models. When you lead a church you find that you need models or methods to help you carry out the ministry you feel God is calling you to put into practice. One such model I learned how to implement was in the area of hospitality. The first day I walked into my current church I realized that one day we would need to change the lobby. It was a small cramped area just outside our sanctuary which was connected to our dining area by a long narrow hallway. Well, after doing much reading and writing in a class on welcoming new people to the church, I led our church to undertake a number of initiatives to become a more hospitable church. Some of those changes included gutting the previously cramped lobby and opening it up. We put in a coffee bar and snack area, and we trained our people in better hospitality practices. All of these things have helped create a space where people can now interact with one another and where relationships can deepen. Not only does the space look far better, but it functions far better, and is it housing ministry! These positive changes and so many more I would attribute to the required reading and writing I willingly submitted to in my undergrad and graduate studies.
Now, I know what you might be thinking at this point: “That is all fine and dandy, but I could just as easily do the same kind of reading and writing you did in college on my own. I am self-taught and I do not need formal education to cause me to learn.” Well if that is true then you are a rare bird indeed, and to you I say well done!
I want to be clear that I am by no means intending to discourage anyone from being self-taught and self-motivated in your continuing education. I too am self-taught in many things and am in many ways a “do-it- yourselfer” (just ask Home Depot; they know me by name). But before you write off the benefits of formal education to ministry I have one more area for you to consider. The benefit of which I am speaking is people.
God brings many kinds of people into your life through formal education. The first kind of people God brought into my life through my undergrad work was two guys who became my lifelong friends. Before I ever stepped foot on the campus of Mid-America Christian University, the Lord had been preparing me for what was coming. In a number of unusual and repetitive ways the Lord kept bringing the idea of a “circle of friends” into my thought life. I was not really clear what He meant, or if it even was God speaking. That is until the day I moved into a dorm room of this little school in Oklahoma City. On my first day at MACU I met Justin Key and Nathan Heady, along with a number of other guys. Those two men are my closest friends to this day. And several other guys I met at MACU have become dear friends over the years. But not only have some of the former students become my friends, many of the faculty and I are still on a first name basis and have a very good relationship to this day. Were it not for formal education, I would not have the friends I do today.
God brought other kinds of people into my life through my schooling, people that I would call a constellation of mentors and peers. The LinkedIn app is one of the most popular apps for business networking. People use it to get to know other people in their particular field of work with the intention that they may be of some help to one another in a variety of ways as time goes on. My time in college and seminary have functioned in part in a very similar way. Through my schooling I have gotten to know pastors, state leaders, professors, school presidents, missionaries and so many more types of people that I now have a constellation of mentors and peers I can call on. The best part of all this is I have seen God work in and through this constellation of people to bring blessings of all kinds into my life, into theirs and into the lost world around us.
God works through people, and formal education is set up to help people interact with one another and form relationships. This even holds true in unlikely areas like online schooling. I did my masters work with Wesley Seminary which is on the campus of Indiana Wesleyan University. However, I only visited the campus two times—first in my orientation, and last when I walked as a graduate. The rest of my three years were all online. And the odd thing is, I felt like I got to know a wider group of people in a more significant way through my online cohort than I did through my traditional on-campus experience at MACU. Yet both forms of education yielded meaningful friendships and relationships, through which God has worked great things.
I hope you have found a compelling reason or two to consider higher education as a possible benefit to your particular ministry, whether yours is a vocational ministry role or not. I for one am convinced that formal education is of tremendous benefit to ministry for the reasons I have expressed above and for many which I have not the time or space to express. Jesus lit a passion in me to learn and to grow. The reason I have pursued higher education, is due to the much higher pursuit of knowing Him. So, thank You, Lord: You are the true joy of my life, and where I am today is evidence of your grace.
Wesley, John and Outler, A. C. The Works of John Wesley: Vol. 4, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987) 380 See the article in this issue by Jeannette Flynn about the use of this technology in the credentialing process for the Church of God Movement.
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