Abductive Columns

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Professional—>->Missional

an honest, insightful post by Mike Cope

One of my graduate school professors insisted that a preacher should spend one hour in study for every minute he preaches. That's great advice -- if the goal is to preach sermons. For much of my preaching life, I've preached two sermons a week. That would be 50 hours of study. While in Searcy, I preached three sermons a week. That would be 75 hours of study.

I was trained to do just that. With seven years of Greek and a couple years of Hebrew along with class after class of textual studies, I was prepared to do one thing: study. I had (for the most part) incredible profs. I don't regret most of the classes.

But I was never taught other things: like how to be missional, how to help form a missional church, how to pray, how to disciple people in the way of Christ, etc…

There was never any training and mentoring in how to connect with lost people, how to move Christians from consumer-demands to kingdom-service, how to start justice-based ministries, or how to plan worship that forms people and prepares to send them out in Jesus' name.

Read the complete post [link]

1 Comments:

At 1:55 PM, Blogger New Life said...

Hey brother I am with you. Nothing has changed. After 15 years in advertising and business development I came to seminary seeking to learn how to make the connections froma spiritual perspective. We learned how to prepare for sermons. It seems the entire seminary education centered around how to preach sermons. (I understand their rationale) That worked in 1950 when the church was packed. Now we are called to move beyond the wall of the church and can no longer rest on our laurels. I chose the particular seminary I attend for their Program in Christian Spirituality, yet even the commitment behind "forming" students is weak at best. We spend 20-30 hours a week studying Hebrew and perhaps 1 hour if we are lucky in formation. It is sad. And we wonder why the church is dying.

Ask me how I really feel about this! :)

Blessings,
Rick

 

Post a Comment

<< Home