The major problem with our churches, as Paul stated in his previous post, is the (potential) unhealthiness of the churches. If this is true, there is a maxim you can count on: unhealthy churches, left unchecked, produce unhealthy pastors and ministers. People who grow up in unhealthy churches will carry that unhealthiness to other churches as they serve on staffs, pastor churches or serve in other capacities. Also, unhealthy pastors make unhealthy seminary professors and presidents. Unhealthy professors and seminaries make unhealthy pastors who then make unhealthy churches. Dysfunction breeds dysfunction. It is a horrid cycle. How can we change that?

Change theological education
Seminaries claim that their role is to train people for ministry. They train people to do: teach, preach, evangelize, education, counsel, parse verbs and uncover systematize theology. These are not unimportant. We should consider Christology and Pneumatology. However, Jesus trained people to BE: followers, disciples through relationship. One is functional and pragmatic. The other is ontological. Since you can only act out of who you are (the ontological), which one do you think is more important?

• Seminaries teach knowledge. Jesus modeled a relationship with God and others.
• Seminaries impart information. Jesus mentored.
• Seminaries embraced an enlightenment-based modernity that transitioned teaching from investment and mentoring to imparting knowledge. Jesus did theology in relationship or theology in mentorship rather than theology in lecture.

Seminaries need to focus more on spiritual formation within theological education. More emphasis needs to be placed on helping those that come through their $5 million seminary entrances become whole and healthy Christians than simply imparting systematic theology. Those students from unhealthy churches need mentors to walk along side them and speak into their lives, to invest time and energy with them and help them see areas that are lacking in wholeness. Unfortunately, we assign that to a class or two and expect them to get it.

The church has adopted a seminary-like format. The church has educational systems not formation systems. We lecture. We impart knowledge. And we call that discipleship. The church needs mentors, not lecturers. The church need coaches, not teachers. The church needs relational disciples, not professors.

The church is not as much functional as it is ontological. It is a community of faith. It is the bride of Christ. It is the body of Christ. It can only do out of who it is. But we expect the church to do, and in doing become. We have our doing and our being backwards. Even the language of the GCR is frame through doing language, not a being. The GCR is framed a something to be done. The failure of even the language is that we cannot do apart from being formed by God. We cannot love others with a white-hot passion without loving God with that same passion.

Change the scorecard for success
I have been writing on ministry success since 2008. I wrote a whole series of posts about. I have written an ebook about it. Success isn’t about the numbers. It’s about 3 things: obedience, investment and reproduction. Unfortunately, the SBC measures success in numbers, specifically attendance, money, and baptisms. This is a false measurement of success. Let me demonstrate.

One of the recent presidents of the Pastor’s Conference pastors a church that, when this man was nominated, was hailed as a great evangelistic church. The previous ten years they had averages 140 baptisms per year. In those same ten years, their attendance grew from 700-1100. Does anyone see a problem with that? This church, over a ten year period, baptized 1400 people but their attendance only grew by 400. Where are the other 1000? Maybe they started 5 churches out of that growth. Maybe they counted baptisms from their multi-cultural church partners. Maybe this is a huge transient area and all those people moved. But if those maybe’s aren’t true, this church is not a success. In fact, it is a failing. Yet that is who we celebrate. And who and what we celebrate gets repeated. What we celebrate gets emulated.

If we want to be successful pastors in the SBC we have to pastor large churches. That is what is celebrated. That is what is modeled. No wonder we have pastors hopping around and moving up the ladder, hoping to find that one church where they be celebrated as successful. Why? Because we have unhealthy pastors seeking an unhealthy standard of success.

Success comes as a result of being formed by the Spirit into the imago christi, the human we were created to be. That means success is found through obedience, investment (mentoring), and reproduction. That’s success – being formed by the Spirit, leading to obedience. We then invest in others and see the imago christi reproduced in others through our obedient investment and partnership with the Spirit. It has nothing to do with numbers.

If we want to bring change to the local church we need to celebrate obedient, Spirit-formed people who are investing in others. And we need our theological education to help people become, so they can do. Otherwise, the church will continue to be weak and unhealthy.