Episode Details

This is one of the free posts that goes out every three weeks or so to everyone on the Payneful Truth mailing list (i.e. ‘partners’ and those on the free list). If you’re a ‘freelister’ and wondering what you’ve missed over the last few weeks, we’ve had posts on:

* ‘masculinism’ (a follow-up to that post about feminism)

* a discussion of the nature and value of gospel outlines, and whether Two ways to live is worth renovating after all these years;

* plus a draft new version of the Two ways to live outline for comment.

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The Bible verse that still kills me

In my part of the Christian hive, the bees have been buzzing recently about an apparent shortage of senior pastors—the ‘minister drought’ as it’s been dubbed. Various theories have been put forward. It’s the system. It’s the selfish materialism of the current generation. It’s the ridiculous burden of administration and compliance that senior ministers now have to bear (and about which they loudly complain). It’s our failure to cast a positive vision. It’s that Phillip Jensen was a savant and we don’t have a replacement. And more besides.

I’m not going to try to untangle the spaghetti of factors and influences that are at play in regard to this particular question.

But the discussion has prompted me to think again about something that has been on my mind for a while.

Why is it that some churches have the happy knack of recruiting a steady stream of people for full-time gospel ministry, and other churches don’t? Even accounting for demographic, socio-economic and other contextual factors, some churches keep sending keen, gifted, godly men and women off to theological college and into full-time ministry; and others not so much.

Why is this?

Reflecting theologically on my own experience of being ‘recruited’ like this, and of seeing it in action in various ministries for the past nearly four decades, I can identify at least four key factors. Perhaps there are more. But in my observation, when these four factors or drivers are all present, people with full-time ministry on their hearts somehow keep bubbling to the surface and heading off to Bible college.

Over the next few posts I’m going to explore these factors—not so much because doing so might help solve a particular current problem, but because these four factors are an indicator of good health for any church. In fact, if they are not present in your current ministry, then the failure to recruit people for full-time ministry might be the least of your problems.

The first key factor is that the radical call of the gospel to die to self and live for Christ is being boldly preached, taught and exemplified.

I still vividly remember when this happened with me.

I was about 20, a keen but still very green young Christian, fresh from the country and a misspent youth in high-church, charismatic Anglicanism. I was discovering for the first time the heart-expanding delights of expository Bible preaching. I never knew that so much profound truth could be found in a Bible passage, if you took the time to really listen to it. And I never anticipated what wonderful spiritual carnage could be wrought by concepts like ‘election’ and ‘propitiation’ and ‘biblical theology’, when they went off like colour bombs in your head.

All in all, it was dawning on me that this Christianity caper was a deeper and more profound thing than I had realised.

Then,