It’s moments before surgery, and the patient hears the doctor saying, “Don’t worry Rupert, it might be your first surgery, but there is nothing to worry about, you’ll be just fine.” Alarmed, the patient shrieks, “I’m not Rupert,” to which the doctor replies, “I know. I am!”
We must invest in training pastors during the early years of their ministry.
Through the centuries, pastors have been compared to doctors. As medical students get to the end of their studies, they begin to be involved in more and more practical work. On completing their studies, they don’t immediately become fully-fledged medical professionals. Instead, they spend at least a year in community service, gaining practical experience. By the time a surgeon operates on you, they have years of formal training and hundreds of hours of practical experience. Perhaps there’s something for us to learn here as the church. This article has one purpose: to persuade you to consciously invest in training pastors during these early years of full-time ministry.
Train Them—Don’t Just Stop Gaps
After a pastor has completed his theological studies, he is most often brought onto a church staff as a trainee of some sort. This stage of ministry may be more or less formal, depending on your church context. Either way, pastors-in-training typically have more flexibility than “regular” ministers and can therefore be involved in several different areas of ministry. The temptation at this stage of ministry is to make our pastors-in-training exclusively responsible for the areas in which we are weak or lacking (whether in time or giftedness).
They gain experience in the areas we’re weakest and are deprived of our wisdom in those where we’re strongest.
The issue with this is that getting ministers-in-training to merely fill the gaps creates equally deficient mirror images of our own shortcomings. All of us have areas of weakness, and when we bring a trainee on board, it is tempting (and extremely logical) to direct them to focus on those particular areas. But we must think this through. This means they are gaining experience in the areas where we are weakest, and that they are deprived of our wisdom and input in the areas where we are strongest. We may indeed be training them and building them up while failing to expose them to a full range of ministerial responsibilities. This imbalance will not only weaken their ministry but will likely be perpetuated when it is time for them to train the next generation of ministers.
Serve Them to Serve the Church
Of course, we must be realistic: we do need pastors-in-training to help us cover the ground. To be even more practical, to justify a minister-in-training on the staff team, we often need to give them a specific area of responsibility, and this is often (and rightfully so) a ministry need that we are unable to meet ourselves. No matter the size, all churches feel the pressure of being short-staffed: the harvest is plentiful, and the workers are few.
We must balance our genuine needs with the good of the broader church.
Still, as with student placements, we must balance our genuine needs with the good of the broader church by asking: “how might we best serve and equip our ministers-in-training,” instead of “how might they best serve us?” We may well assign them to cover one particular area which needs reinforcement. But we should also seek to expose them to varied ministry opportunities and to ensure that they are being trained in our own areas of strength. We shouldn’t be afraid to equip ministers-in-training to fill even our own roles. Consider how much Paul poured into Timothy and Titus’ training, and how he encouraged Titus to set up elders in every town (Titus 1:5). This will give us workers for the growth of the gospel.
Prepare Them for Greater Work
Training is also needed because there are many ministerial tasks and responsibilities that pastors are first exposed to only when they are required to perform them competently. Surely, we want our pastors to have some experience leading a church council, preaching regularly, and counselling the needy, before they are responsible for these tasks? Our ministers-in-training should be included in our ministries so that they are equipped for well-rounded faithful service.
We should give trainees a broad range of responsibilities overlapping with our own.
Rather than encouraging them to fill a particular niche according to our own needs, we should give trainees a broad range of responsibilities that overlap with our own, work alongside them, and only then allocate specific responsibilities to them according to outstanding needs in our congregations. Even specialists in the medical field first do general studies. Shouldn’t it be the same for pastors? For those of us who are ministers of churches, we can serve Christ’s church by providing such training; we should not neglect this opportunity.
Putting It All Together
This article has a simple goal: to persuade you of the urgency and importance of deliberately training pastors during early years of ministry. Just as medical professionals should have varied training, so too should pastors. We must resist the natural temptation to view our pastors-in-training as mere gap-fillers—though to some extent both definitions are accurate (1 Corinthians 3:5)—and rather prioritise their training to present them as well-rounded ministers of the gospel.
Well-rounded ministers with practical experience will be a gift to God’s people.
We may well feel inadequate to the task, but as with all our duties, should we not serve the Lord, as we are able, depending on him to complete our feeble efforts? To be sure, providing this kind of ministry training to young pastors will be costly to us and our churches, but it is worth it. Well-rounded ministers with practical experience in a multiplicity of areas will be a gift to our congregations, our denominations, and to the broader body of Christ. Defend this rigorously before your congregation and council, count the cost, and give this gift to the body of Christ, who himself counted the cost and gave himself as a gift for you.
