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Training Pastors: The Non-Negotiable of Biblical Missions · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I'm really glad you are sitting
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  down with us today. We have we have a stack of
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  documents on the desk here that, frankly might change the way you
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  look at that map of the world hanging in your church hallway.
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  Yeah, it is good to be back and you know, you were right to set
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  the tone this way right off the bat.
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  The material we are looking at today is it is heavy.
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  Very heavy. We are looking at a topic today
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  that sits right at the center of what the church is supposed to
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  be doing, yet based on the data we have, it is something we are
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  neglecting at an alarming rate. Alarming is the word for it,
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  yeah. Yeah, we usually like to start
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  with a bit of encouragement, but today, I think today we might
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  need to start with a bit of a wake up call.
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  I agree because it deals with a Great Commission, but it
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  challenges the popular definition of what that actually
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  entails. We are digging into the book
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  Biblical Missions, Principles, Priorities, and Practices.
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  Specifically, we are focusing on a chapter by Brad Klassen that
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  acts as a well, a pivot point for the whole discussion, right?
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  And we also have some very compelling case studies from
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  South Africa and East Asia that put flesh on these bones.
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  So if I were to walk into a typical evangelical church this
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  Sunday and ask what is missions, 9 out of 10 people would
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  probably say evangelism. They would say it is crossing a
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  border, learning a language, and getting people to make a
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  decision for Christ. And they would not be wrong
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  necessarily. But our sources today are
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  arguing that they would be woefully incomplete.
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  Incomplete is spot on. If you stop there, you have not
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  finished the job. In fact, you might have started
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  a job that is doomed to collapse.
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  The central argument here revolves around a Latin phrase
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  that the authors use right upfront, sin kwanan.
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  I always appreciate a good Latin phrase.
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  It reminds me of our similarities.
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  Sin kwanan. It translates to, without which
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  nothing. It refers to an indispensable
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  condition. If you lack this element, you do
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  not have the thing itself, like. Oxygen is the sin kwanan of
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  human survival. Yes, and the argument Brad
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  Klassen makes in his chapter is that rigorous theological
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  training for indigenous pastors is the Sen Kwanan of biblical
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  missions. Without it, you are not really
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  doing missions. You might be engaging in
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  religious tourism or temporary evangelism, but you are not
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  fulfilling the mandate given to the Church.
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  That is a bold statement. Religious tourism?
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  That stings a little bit. It is meant to sting, I think.
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  Yeah, but as we go through this, I think you will see why that
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  distinction matters. We are not just talking about
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  Westerners going over there to teach, we are talking about the
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  desperate need to train local indigenous leaders to do the
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  work themselves. Because they are the ones
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  staying. Exactly.
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  Or rather, yes, that is the whole point.
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  So let's start with the diagnosis.
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  Classen argues that the modern church has largely failed in
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  this area. Why have we dropped the ball on
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  training? Classon identifies 3 main causes
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  and they are uncomfortable to look at because they act like a
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  mirror for the western church. The first one he calls anti
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  intellectual mysticism. OK, let's unpack this anti
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  intellectual mysticism that sounds like a contradiction in
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  terms for a show that prides itself on holding to the
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  Westminster Confession. But break it down for us.
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  It stems from a mood in broader evangelicalism that views head
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  knowledge as the enemy of heart knowledge.
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  There is this pervasive idea that if you study too much Greek
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  or get too focused on systematic theology, you'll become
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  spiritually cold. You'll be a dead Orthodox
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  believer. So the preference shifts toward
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  emotional experiences, simple messages, and spiritual
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  feelings. I see this all the time.
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  The idea is that the spirit moves in the moment, not in the
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  library. It is almost a pietistic
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  reaction against structure. Precisely.
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  And the logic follows. If we do not value deep
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  theological study here at home, if we do not think our own
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  pastors need to know Hebrew or church history, then we
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  certainly are not going to export that to the mission
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  field. We reproduce what we are.
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  That is a scary thought. If we are shallow, we plant
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  shallow churches. And Classen connects this
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  directly to a low view of scripture sufficiency.
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  If you think the Bible is enough, you study with
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  everything you have right. If you think you need a mystical
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  experience to really know God, you leave the books closed.
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  That makes a lot of sense, and that leads right into the second
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  cause, which I found even more disturbing.
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  He calls it deep rooted partiality.
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  To be blunt, this sounded a lot like a subtle form of racism, or
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  at least a very arrogant paternalism.
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  It is difficult to read without flinching.
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  Honestly, the partiality lies in a double standard.
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  The assumption is that established churches in the West
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  need meat. We expect our pastors to have
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  master's degrees, we expect well stocked libraries, and we expect
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  nuanced answers to hard ethical questions.
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  Yes, but when we look at the mission field, specifically in
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  the global South or developing nations, we assume they only
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  need milk. We think, oh, they're simple
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  people, just give them the simple gospel.
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  They do not need to worry about the hypostatic union or the
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  intricacies of justification by faith alone.
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  Correct. We assume that less educated
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  cultures cannot handle systematic theology.
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  It is an implicit bias that suggests they are intellectually
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  inferior or that their spiritual needs are less detailed than
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  ours. Which is just insulting.
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  It is insulting and frankly, it is unbiblical.
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  The problems of pastor faces in a rural village in Africa
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  involving syncretism, ancestor worship, and polygamy are often
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  more theologically difficult than what a pastor faces in a
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  suburb in Ohio. I had not thought of it that
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  way, but you are entirely right. They need sharper tools, not
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  duller ones. Yes, if you are fighting witch
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  doctors and centuries of Pagan tradition, you need a heavy duty
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  theological weapon, not a flannel graph Sunday school
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  lesson. Spot on.
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  You need the full armor of God, which includes the belt of Truth
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  and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God
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  understood correctly. So what is the third cause?
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  The third cause is 1. We are all addicted to
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  pragmatism and speed. The need for speed in missions.
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  Missions has become a race. We want to reach unreached
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  people groups and we want to do it yesterday.
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  The metric for success is often how many people raise their
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  hands or how many churches were planted this year.
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  Right, we want the numbers for the quarterly newsletter.
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  And training a pastor takes time.
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  It is not an overnight process. It takes a huge amount of time
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  to take a man, teach him how to interpret the Bible, walk him
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  through history and shape his character.
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  That is a three or four year investment.
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  It is slow. It is expensive.
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  And it does not look impressive in a newsletter update.
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  It is much cheaper and faster to hold a crusade, take a photo of
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  a crowd and claim you reached a village.
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  David Sills, whom class and quotes, points out that
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  traditional mission tasks like translation and theological
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  education are being jettisoned because they slow down the
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  results. It is the difference between
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  building a tent and building a cathedral.
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  You can throw a tent up in an hour, but it blows away in a
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  storm. A cathedral takes a lifetime,
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  but it stands for centuries. We seem to have traded longevity
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  for immediate gratification. And that brings us to the actual
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  mandate. We have diagnosed the problem,
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  but we need to look at what the master actually said.
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  We need to look at Matthew 28. The Great Commission go
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  therefore, and make disciples of all nations.
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  We know the verse well. We know the English translation,
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  but classen zooms in on the Greek verb mathatouche.
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  It is the imperative verb make disciples.
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  It does not mean get decisions, it means to create a learner.
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  A learner, so the very root of the word, implies education.
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  Yes, a disciple is a student, and Jesus clarifies what that
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  curriculum looks like. He said teaching them to observe
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  all that I commanded you. You cannot obey what you do not
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  know. This implies A quantitative body
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  of knowledge. It implies a curriculum.
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  So the Great Commission is not an evangelistic altar call, it
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  is an educational mandate. It is the founding charter for
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  theological education. Think about the immediate
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  audience. Jesus was not talking to a
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  random crowd. He was talking to the 11.
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  He has spent three years with these men.
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  They were, in effect, the first seminary students.
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  They lived with him, they debated with him, they were
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  corrected by him, and they heard his sermons explained in
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  private. And that is the model.
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  If Jesus, who had the Spirit without measure, thought it was
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  necessary to train his leaders for three years before releasing
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  them, who are we to send men out with a two week crash course?
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  It is arrogance to think we can bypass the method of the Master.
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  It really is. So Jesus sets the precedent.
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  But then we have the Apostle Paul and this is where the
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  sources really dig into the strategy.
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  I was struck by the reference to Romans 15, where Paul says from
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  Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the
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  ministry of the gospel. And then he says he has no more
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  room for work in these regions. That is a staggering claim.
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  He covered 4 provinces of the Roman Empire in about 10 years,
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  Galatia, Macedonia, Akai, Asia. And then he says I'm done here,
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  time to go to Spain. How could he say that there was
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  still millions of pagans in those regions?
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  Right. He did not preach to every
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  single person. That would have been physically
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  impossible. But he had established a hub.
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  He had planted the church and more importantly, he had trained
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  the leaders who had finished the job.
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  Roland Allen, a missiologist cited in our text, points out
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  that Paul could leave because he was confident the work would
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  stand. Because he was not leaving a
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  leaderless mob, he was leaving a structured church with qualified
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  elders. Let's look at how he did that.
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  The text brings up the Crete model from Titus chapter 1.
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  This is a crucial case study. Paulie's Titus on the island of
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  Crete, Now Crete was rough. It was an unevangelized Pagan
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  island known for liars and brute beasts.
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  Paul tells Titus I left you there to set and order what
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  remains. Set in order.
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  That implies things were messy. Very messy and the solution to
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  the mess was to appoint elders in every city.
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  But look at the qualifications. It was not just find a nice guy
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  who loves Jesus. Titus 1.9 says the elder must
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  hold fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the
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  teaching. In accordance with the teaching,
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  that sounds like doctrine. It is doctrine, and the reason
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  is given explicitly so that he will be able both to exhort and
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  sound doctrine, and to refute those who contradict.
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  You cannot refute A heretic if you do not know theology.
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  You cannot dismantle a false argument if you do not
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  understand the text. There is a quote here from John
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  Chrysostom, the early Church father, that I thought was
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  brilliant. He says the Church needs men
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  with strong minds and skill. In the scriptures he says
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  generalship is not enough, you need to be able to beat down
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  reasonings. Chrysostom understood that the
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  spiritual battle is an intellectual battle.
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  If a wolf comes in teaching that you need to be circumcised to be
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  saved, or that Jesus was not really human, a sincere but
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  untrained leader will be eaten alive.
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  He will not have the categories to spot the error.
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  Paul knew that for the church and Crete to survive, it needed
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  warrior theologians. Even if they were rough converts
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  from a Pagan background. They had to be trained.
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  Then we moved to the Ephesus model in Acts 19.
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  This is the part where I actually stopped and did the
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  math in the margins of my notes. It blew my mind.
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  It is one of the most overlooked passages in mythology.
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  Paul goes to Ephesus. He starts in the synagogue, gets
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  kicked out, and then moves to the school of Tyrannis.
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  Which sounds like a place where a gladiator would train, but it
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  was a lecture hall. Is a lecture hall and Luke tells
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  us Paul reasoned there daily for two years now.
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  In the western text of Acts there is a manuscript edition
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  that says he taught from the 5th hour to the 10th hour.
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  That is roughly 11000AM to 4.00. PM right?
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  That was the siesta time when people were not working.
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  So let's run the numbers on this five hours a day.
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  Let's be conservative and say strictly 4 hours daily.
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  Let's say 5 or 6 days a week for two years.
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  If you calculate that out, say 4 hours a day, five days a week,
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  for 50 weeks a year, for two years, you're looking at 2000
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  hours of instruction. 2000 hours.
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  I looked up what a modern Master of Divinity degree requires in
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  terms of actual classroom contact hours.
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  A typical 90 credit Mdiv is often less than that.
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  Paul essentially put these Ephesian disciples through a
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  graduate level program. Precisely.
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  And look at the result. Acts 19.7 says all who lived in
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  Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.
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  Paul did not go to every town. His students did.
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  Epifres, who likely said in that lecture hall, went and planted
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  the church in Colise. Others probably went to Smyrna,
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  Sartis, Philadelphia, the Churches of Revelation.
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  This is the multiplication model.
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  You train the leaders thoroughly and they reach the culture.
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  That is the strategy, but sadly that is not what we usually do
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  today. And class and moves on to
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  discuss the consequences sequences of neglecting this if
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  we ignore the Paul model and the Jesus model, what happens?
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  The first consequence is what he calls missional infidelity.
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  He references First Corinthians 3 where Paul talks about
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  building on the foundation of Christ.
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  You can build with gold, silver and precious stones or you can
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  build with wood, hay and straw. The fire tests the work.
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  Yes, and if we build churches with wood, hay and straw,
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  meaning shallow teaching, emotionalism, lack of doctrine,
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  those works will be burned out. The missionary might still be
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  saved yet so as through fire, but the work is lost.
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  There's a terrifying reality here.
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  We can work really hard for God, but if we do not do it His way,
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  we lose the reward. That is a sobering thought.
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  We want to hear a well done, good and faithful servant.
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  Not while you tried hard, but the structure collapsed.
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  The second consequence is stalled evangelism.
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  We think evangelism ends when the hand goes up.
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  But if you do not train leaders, the church stays anemic.
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  It stays on milk. And eventually anemic bodies
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  die. A church that cannot feed itself
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  from the Word will eventually wither or turn into a social
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  club. So by neglecting training, we
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  are actually sabotaging future evangelism.
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  We are wasting the initial harvest and.
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  The third consequence is the spread of heresy.
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  This connects back to the global theology movement.
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  This is a touchy subject. Very touchy because we are
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  talking about impartial reporting here and we have to
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  represent what the sources say without taking sides, but the
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  sources are very clear on this. Yes, there is a push today to
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  say let each culture interpret the Bible their own way, and
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  while we want to respect culture, truth is not culturally
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  relative. When you do not have trained
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  elders to guard the deposit of faith, syncretism floods in.
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  In Africa it is the prosperity gospel mixing with animism.
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  In other places it is legalism or liberalism.
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  Class and quotes Edward Jensen here, the son of the famous
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  missionary Adoniram Jensen. He says it is a mistake to
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  suppose that a dull and second rate man is good enough for the
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  heathen. The worst off need the very best
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  we have. That is the quote.
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  It challenges the arrogance we spoke of earlier.
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  If the mission field is the hardest place to work, why do we
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  think we can send untrained men or leave the indigenous church
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  with untrained leaders? We need the special forces of
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  theology on the front lines, not the new recruits.
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  This brings us perfectly to our first case study.
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  We're going to zoom in on the Limpopo region of South Africa.
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  The year is 1997. It is post apartheid.
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  A-Team from the Masters Seminary lands in Poliquin.
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  This story is a perfect illustration of the principles
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  we just discussed. David Beakley and Charlie
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  Ramphamezzi tell this story. The American team arrives, and
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  honestly, they are discouraged. They visit churches and hear
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  preaching that is weak. It is full of prosperity.
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  Theology give money to get money and focus on miracles rather
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  than the text of scripture. They almost packed their bags
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  and left, right. They did.
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  They thought there is nothing here for us to work with.
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  But on the last day, a local pastor grabbed them.
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  He pleaded with them. He said This is why we asked you
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  to come. Our men have had no training.
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  We need help. That is the Macedonian call
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  right there. Come over and help.
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  Us it was. So they stayed.
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  They established what became Christ Seminary.
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  And this is where we meet Charlie Rampfamidzi.
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  I love Charlie's story. He was not a pastor initially.
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  No, he was a lawyer, a vendor man that is a specific tribe in
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  the North with a law degree, on track to be a state prosecutor.
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  A sharp mind, but God called him to ministry.
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  He enrolled in this new tiny seminary.
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  And there was a language barrier.
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  A huge 1C spoke Shavenda. The seminary was in a region
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  that spoke Sapeti. The classes were in English.
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  So he is navigating 3 languages to learn theology.
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  But he had that strong mind Chrysostom talked about.
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  He graduated and eventually became the principal of the
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  seminary. The sources talk about how
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  Charlie handled contextualization, so it's not
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  about watering down the truth, it was about applying it.
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  Right. Contextualization often gets a
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  bad rap because people use it to excuse compromise, But Charlie
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  did it right. He taught Christology the
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  doctrine of Christ, specifically addressing the African context
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  of ancestor worship. How does that look practically?
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  Well, in that culture, the ancestors are seen as the
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  mediators. You pray to them to get to God
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  or to get protection. A Western systematic theology
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  book might not address that directly, but Charlie could show
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  them that Christ is the supreme mediator.
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  He is the better ancestor, so to speak.
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  Yes, He holds the keys to death and 80s.
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  He showed them that Christ fulfills the longing for
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  protection and connection that they sought in the ancestors,
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  rendering the old practices obsolete not just because they
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  are sinful, but because they are inferior to Christ.
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  That is brilliant. That is using the meat of
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  theology to solve a specific cultural problem.
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  But it was not all smooth sailing.
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  There was conflict with the Baptist Union of South Africa.
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  This goes back to the wood, hay, and straw issue.
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  The Baptist Union was the established denomination, but as
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  Christ Seminary grew more rigorous, more doctrinally
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  precise, and, frankly, more reformed, the Union got
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  uncomfortable. They criticized the strictness.
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  They wanted a broader tent. They wanted to keep the peace,
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  but Christ Seminary wanted to keep the truth.
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  Essentially, it led to a painful split.
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  Christ Seminary had to stand independent.
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  But here is the fascinating outcome.
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  The alumni became the network. The graduates of Christ Seminary
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  went out, planted churches or revitalized old ones, and they
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  started sending their young men back to the seminary.
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  It became a self-sustaining ecosystem of theological
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  fidelity. It became ambassadors.
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  Yes, and now you have men from Kenya, Uganda and Ghana coming
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  to Limpopo to get trained because they know they will get
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  the real thing there. It proves that indigenous
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  leaders crave meat. They do not want the milk.
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  That is the African context. Now let shift gears to East
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  Asia. The chapter by Jimmy Tan paints
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  a very different picture because of the political situation.
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  East Asia, and we are speaking generally here, to protect
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  identities as the source does, presents a high security
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  challenge. You have communist or
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  authoritarian governments, you have state sanctioned churches
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  that are often puppets of the regime, preaching a diluted
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  politically correct message, and then you have the underground or
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  free church. And the numbers tan sites are
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  terrifying. They are overwhelming.
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  In the US, the ratio is roughly 1 trained leader for every 70
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  believers. 1 to 70 that seems manageable.
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  In East Asia, the estimate is 1 trained leader for every 60,000
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  believers. 60,000 That is a stadium 1 pastor for a stadium
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  of people. Imagine the pastor load.
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  Imagine the counseling issues, the weddings, the funerals, the
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  theological questions. It is impossible. 10 estimates
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  they need 7 million trained men just to reach parity with the
• 19:18
  West. 7 million So how do you train 7 million men when you
• 19:22
  cannot even have a public seminary building when Bibles
• 19:25
  are being removed from e-commerce platforms?
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  You go back to the Bonheffer model.
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  Dietrich Bonheffer. Yeah, Nazi Germany.
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  Yes. When the German state church
• 19:34
  compromised with the Nazis, Bonhoeffer started an illegal
• 19:38
  seminary at Finkenwald. It was not a big campus.
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  It was a house, a small band of men living together, eating
• 19:45
  together, studying the Word intensely.
• 19:47
  It was low visibility but high intensity.
• 19:49
  Tan argues this is the future for East Asia small bands of
• 19:52
  men. It sounds like the School of
• 19:54
  Tyrannis again. Small, focused, intensive.
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  History rhymes. When the church is under
• 19:59
  pressure, it returns to its roots.
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  But Tan gives 3 very practical ways we in the West can help,
• 20:04
  and one of them is a serious critique of our current habits.
• 20:07
  Let's hear them. First fund in country Do not
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  spend $50,000 to bring one student to America.
• 20:14
  Spend that money to support 10 students in their own context
• 20:17
  where they can stay connected to their local church.
• 20:19
  Makes sense, more bang for your buck and they stay grounded in
• 20:22
  the culture they're trying to reach.
• 20:24
  Second, send teachers to them. If they cannot come to the
• 20:27
  library, bring the library to them.
• 20:28
  Western pastors and professors should go for short term modules
• 20:32
  or long term stints to transfer that knowledge.
• 20:35
  And the third one, this is the one about the brain drain.
• 20:37
  This is the hard truth. Ken called it sheep's tailing.
• 20:40
  Here's the scenario. A brilliant young man from East
• 20:44
  Asia comes to a Western seminary.
• 20:46
  He excels. He loves the theology.
• 20:49
  He loves the resources. And then a wealthy Western
• 20:52
  church says hey we need a pastor for our Chinese speaking
• 20:56
  ministry, we will pay you AUS salary.
• 20:59
  Stay here. And he stays.
• 21:01
  He stays and the church back home, the one with the one to
• 21:04
  60,000 ratio, loses a general. We extracted their best talent
• 21:08
  for our own comfort. Wow.
• 21:10
  Tan pleads with Western churches.
• 21:12
  Disciple them, love them, but send them back.
• 21:15
  Support them financially there if you want, but let them go
• 21:17
  back to the front lines where they're needed most.
• 21:20
  That really flips the script on how we view international
• 21:22
  student ministries. We think we're being generous by
• 21:25
  hiring them, but we might be crippling the global church.
• 21:28
  It is a strategic error. If we want to win the war, we
• 21:31
  need the best officers leading the troops in the most difficult
• 21:33
  sectors, not filing paperwork in the safety of the rearguard.
• 21:37
  So bringing this all together, we have looked at the diagnosis,
• 21:41
  our own anti intellectualism and partiality.
• 21:44
  We have looked at the mandate, Jesus and Paul demanding deep
• 21:47
  training. We have seen the consequences of
• 21:49
  neglect, heresy and dead churches, and we have seen the
• 21:53
  solution in action in South Africa and the desperate need in
• 21:56
  East Asia. It circles back to that Latin
• 21:59
  phrase seen a qua non. Without theological training,
• 22:02
  there is no mission. We are not just trying to get
• 22:05
  people into heaven. We are trying to build the
• 22:06
  Church of Jesus Christ on earth as a pillar and buttress of the
• 22:09
  truth. That requires architecture.
• 22:12
  It requires engineering. It requires blueprints.
• 22:15
  It requires Reformed thinking. Quite literally, we need to
• 22:18
  recover the mind of the Church. We do, and it starts with
• 22:21
  realizing that the man in the mud Hut in the Limpopo Valley
• 22:24
  needs the Westminster Confession, or the truths
• 22:26
  contained in it just as much, if not more, than the man in the
• 22:29
  coffee shop in Seattle. Yes.
• 22:31
  Here is a thought I want to leave you with, listener Think
• 22:33
  about your own church's mission budget.
• 22:36
  When you look at the missionaries you support, ask
• 22:38
  yourself a hard question. Are you supporting spiritual
• 22:42
  tourists? Are you supporting people who
• 22:44
  are just doing stuff? Or are you supporting the
• 22:47
  builders? Are you supporting the people
• 22:48
  who are laying the foundation of doctrine that will allow that
• 22:52
  church to stand 50 years from now, long after the Westerners
• 22:55
  have gone home? That is the question.
• 22:58
  The legacy of a church is not how wide it grows, but how solid
• 23:02
  his foundation remains. Thank you for diving into this
• 23:04
  with us. It is a heavy topic, but a
• 23:06
  necessary one. We hope this challenges you to
• 23:09
  look at the Great Commission with fresh eyes, not just as a
• 23:12
  call to go, but as a call to teach.
• 23:14
  Ideally to teach them to observe all that he commanded.
• 23:18
  That is the goal. Until next time, keep thinking.