Three reasons for formal training

There are at least three reasons we need formal training:

1) Some of our beliefs may be in error. We would not hold those beliefs if we knew they were erroneous, but we just don’t know, simply because we haven’t learned every fact about every topic. For example, we may think that Emperor Constantine told the Christian church which books should be in the New Testament. We picked this idea up from someone else, and not knowing any better, we assumed it was true.

None of us has perfect knowledge, and all of us have a certain percentage of our “knowledge” that is actually erroneous. If we knew which parts were in error, we’d fix them right away. But the problem is that we don’t know which parts are problems, and the only way to fix that is to seek more education in all of the relevant areas, and to be willing to examine our own beliefs. In this case, our mistake might be corrected when we studied church history, or read an Introduction to the New Testament. We might learn the truth in a lecture, or in a textbook, or while doing research on our own.

2) The second possibility is that some of our beliefs may be true, but we just need to learn more about them. The day may come when we, as a church leader, will be asked for more evidence, for a defense of what we already know. Someone may question our starting assumptions, or they may have some spurious “facts” of their own.

The problem here is that we may not know ahead of time what people are going to ask, or which topics we need more information on. Again, the best preparation for this is a survey of all the major topics relevant to being a leader in the church. Rather than just reading books that are about our own favorite topic, we need to be exposed to other topics, too. At the start, we may not even be aware of what topics we need to study, so we need some guidance even to get started.

3) Third, some of our beliefs may be neither true nor false – they are simply missing. For example, we may not have any belief on the difference between soul and spirit, because we just never thought about it. We don’t know whether it’s important, because we have never thought about it. But for all we know, somebody is going to ask us about it next year. We are simply unaware of all the things we are unaware about. If we are human, there are gaps in our knowledge, and the only way to discover where they are, and to fill those gaps, is to have a well-balanced, systematically designed series of studies.

On other matters, we  may be quite aware of where our gaps are. We realize that we don’t understand the relationship of the church to the nation of Israel, and we’d like to know more about it. Or we realize that we don’t understand what Paul is trying to teach in Romans 9-11, and we’d like someone to teach us. Or we find ourselves in a position of leading other people, and we realize that we don’t quite know what we are doing, so we’d like a little advice – or maybe a lot of advice – about what to do and how to go about it.

We are not saying that people without formal training are going to start a cult. Most people are not gifted enough or persuasive enough to form their own cults. And we are not saying that people without formal training are going to make serious errors. Thankfully, most do not. We are not even saying that self-taught dentists cannot do anything right. History has given us a lot of self-trained people who have done pretty well at what they have done. But the path of history is also littered with the victims of other self-trained people.

In general, it is better to be educated than not – and it is better if our training has come from people who are also trained. That is, there is a system in place for people in one generation to pass on what they have learned to the next generation. Paul described this in 2 Timothy 2:2: “The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” There is to be a chain of instruction, so that every generation does not have to learn everything from scratch. The truth will be passed on to others. Those who reject the pattern, and insist on training themselves, are mavericks who may end up in another corral.

So why do leaders in the church need specialized training? Because leading others is a serious responsibility, and we don’t want to make any more mistakes than we have to.

Or on a more positive note, it’s because we are so thankful about what God has done for us, and what he has in store for us, that we want to learn more about it for ourselves, so that we can help others share this joy. We might compare it to a person who has fallen in love, who wants to find out as much as possible about the beloved. Jesus has touched us, and we want to learn as much as possible about him, what he’s done, what he’s doing now and how we can be part of it.

The early church called it “faith seeking understanding.” We have learned enough to believe; now we want to learn more because we love the One we are learning about. He has given us a desire to learn more – and this is often true for laypersons as well as leaders. We want to learn more about God and the good things God has given us.

One of the first things we need to learn is that we cannot rely on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). We cannot save ourselves, and we cannot teach ourselves into all truth. The Holy Spirit uses people to teach people, and in the church, we learn from other people in the church. Many denominations require pastors to have a degree before they can be employed as a pastor. GCI does not require that, but in the United States, GCI does require that pastors be involved in some sort of training program.