The Proclamation Trust’s Cornhill Training Course celebrates its 20th anniversary this autumn. Here Adrian Reynolds interviews Christopher Ash, the current course director, about the success of the course and why it continues to serve local churches.
EN: Why did Cornhill originally start?
CA: In 1991, Dick Lucas and David Jackman were talking about the need to train young men in the expository Bible teaching that the Proclamation Trust was just beginning to bring back into the mainstream of British evangelicalism. They felt that the colleges of the day were not equipping future pastors with these core skills.
So David Jackman took an enormous risk, left his pastorate at Above Bar Church in Southampton, and moved to London to start Cornhill, not knowing whether this idea would fly or crash. In the goodness of God it flew.
EN: What numbers and types of students have you had over the 20 years?
CA: We don’t keep a running total, but I’m reliably informed that we’ve had about 850 students over the 20 years of Cornhill.
Students need to know and love God, be utterly committed to evangelical truth, and to teaching and (if appropriate) preaching the Bible. They must have the support of their church leaders who confirm that they have the godliness and gifts for ministry.
Every year-group includes men and women from very different cultures, academic backgrounds, ethnic groups and ages. All share a commitment to the trustworthiness and sufficiency of Scripture for evangelistic and pastoral work. Some have a few GCSEs, others high degrees from top unis. Most are between their mid-20s and mid-30s, but every year we have some in their 40s, 50s, even 60s. In a typical year, about three-quarters are men, because our primary aim is to train preachers. About half belong to Free churches, and half to Anglican evangelical churches. Considerable interest and spice is added by our wonderful overseas students from Africa, Asia, Australasia, continental Europe and South and North America. My wife, Carolyn, and I have a world map and we stick pins in for every student from overseas. It gets more like a pincushion year by year and each pin represents someone we have all got to know and love.
EN: Why is Cornhill still needed today?
CA: It takes time to get expository skills and priorities into the bloodstream. You can learn some basic principles in a day or a weekend, but actually to learn to put them into practice is a much slower business. We often find a student has something of a breakthrough after 12-16 months on the course. This kind of intensity is only possible when a course is really dedicated to this as its priority. Even the best formal theological training course or college has so many other (often worthwhile) things to cover that, with the best will in the world, it cannot do this intense expository Bible training.
EN: Why is it so important to have training focused primarily on preaching?
CA: Our theological conviction is that the public preaching of the Word is the critical God-given enabling ministry that unlocks all other ministries in the local church. It is not the only ministry. It is not the goal of ministry, for the goal is godly lives in a godly and outgoing church. But it is the God-given means to that end. My little book The Priority of Preaching is a kind of theological manifesto for the Proclamation Trust and all that we do.
EN: It’s an intense course! Do students actually enjoy it?
CA: Yes! We have a lot of fun. We take God very seriously and therefore we take the Bible seriously. But we do not take ourselves too seriously. There is something of the camaraderie that comes from a common enemy (the staff — well, not really!). The students seem to enjoy poking fun at my eccentricities, although personally I don’t think I have any. We laugh at ourselves when we get things wrong and there is much good-natured banter and the forming of friendships, some of which will last through years of future Christian service.
EN: Have all ex-students ended up in full-time ministry?
CA: Not at all. Probably 80-90% of a typical year go straight into either formal theological training or full-time paid Christian ministry. Others end up there after a period in the secular workplace. Still others decide (and we help them decide) that, although they may be very godly, they do not have the character and gifts for this, and we are delighted to see them serve Christ wholeheartedly in the secular workplace and being valued and useful Bible-teachers in a voluntary capacity in their churches.
Many end up as elders or church council members. Although our aim is to train preachers and Bible teachers, we certainly don’t subscribe to the quasi-Catholic fallacy of thinking that paid Christian work is spiritually superior to wholehearted discipleship in the secular workplace.
EN: Training courses abound. What’s so special about Cornhill?
CA: I guess the main thing is the sheer intensity of two days a week over two years focused so strongly on exposition, with 20 or so opportunities to practise (and several hundred opportunities to hear your fellow-students practise, some better than others!). I am not aware of other courses that are able to offer such a focused intensity. If there are, I am delighted to hear it! But it’s also a great plus to have such a wide mix of students, and they learn much from their peer group. And we are grateful that in the middle of London we are able to have such a gifted mix of visiting speakers as well.
EN: Why are church placements such an important part of Cornhill?
CA: We want to serve the local church and to equip men and women to serve their local churches. We are grateful for the (often superb) mentoring and encouragement our students receive in their churches and we hope they, in their turn, serve in a godly and sacrificial way and are good advertisements for the course.
EN: Can preaching really be taught? Surely you either have it or you don’t?
CA: God gives the gifts for all kinds of Christian service, and he is sovereign in giving them to whom he chooses. But when gifts are recognised, they need to be stirred up and sharpened. Iron sharpens iron. Just as Apollos was taken aside and helped with his preaching, so with preachers today. It is a false spirituality that denies human means as God’s instruments to build up his church.
EN: Some people criticise Cornhill for producing preaching clones. Is that a fair comment? If not, why not?
CA: Well, I guess the proof of the pudding is in the preaching! Some mischievous person once substituted identical photos of David Jackman for the photos of the former Cornhill students in an Oak Hill rag! But I hope the reality is that we do not flatten personalities, accents, styles or cultures. We certainly try not to. God forbid that they should all come out preaching like me!
For more information about the Cornhill Training Course, please visit: http://www.proctrust.org.uk, http://www.cornhillscotland.org.uk (Glasgow) or http://www.cornhillbelfast.org (Belfast).
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