Paul Brennan tells us about the Cornhill Scotland approach
In the May edition of en the editorial raised some of weaknesses in traditional methods of ministry training.
Yes, preaching is a real focus, but often, beyond the bounds of the academic institution and in the real grind of ministry, failings in managing the household of God become apparent. How to address those shortcomings?
The article really struck a chord with me, as the ministry training I’ve experienced does take a very different approach and does address the shortcomings John identified.
Cornhill Scotland has developed a training model that addresses some of the traditional failings and focuses on the church as the real place of training men for ministry. The Cornhill Training Course (CTC) and the Pastors’ Training Course (PTC) exist to help churches raise up the next generation of gospel workers for Scotland.
College and congregation
Andy Gemmill, Director of the PTC, outlines the approach: ‘Two convictions drive the training offered at these two courses. One is that the means of gospel ministry is the prayerful teaching of the Bible. The implication then is that equipping prayerful Bible teachers is essential for ministry. The second conviction is that the focus of gospel ministry is the local church. The implication then is that the local church should be the primary focus for ministry training.’
Andy makes the observation that ‘historically there has been a significant disconnection between these convictions and their implications, especially with the second conviction. There is general agreement that the local church is crucial in God’s plans, yet local churches have rarely been active training centres, and many churches view ministry training as something that happens primarily in theological college, rather than in congregational life.’
Real-life ministry
The consequences of this have been profoundly negative, resulting in men entering the real world of ministry, in real churches, dealing with real people, having not had much real exposure whilst in theological training. That in turn leads to major issues in the early days of a ministry and surely is at least one contributing factor to Mike Ovey’s observation that many men were dropping out before lasting a decade in ministry.
The approach of Cornhill Scotland has been to consciously address that failing and to build long-term resilience in those being trained. It does this through a model of on-the-job training where stretching theology and everyday ministry are brought together as closely as possible.
For this to happen, Cornhill Scotland has developed its own ABC approach, which I set out below in reverse order:
Churches
Churches are the first priority and the ultimate goal is to have growing numbers of training churches throughout Scotland. It is the conviction of Cornhill Scotland that pastors who will excel in ministries which equip churches for mission can be trained effectively only in churches which:
• Exemplify real expository ministry, and
• Embrace a culture of training, and therefore
• Entrust those in training with significant preaching and ministry work, so as to gain
• Experience so they grow in competence and confidence, whilst on-going
• Evaluation of such ministries gives everyone confidence to send such trained and experienced people into senior pastoral roles.
Brothers
Through the PTC the aim is that pastors in training will be wrestling with theology and ministry issues as they:
• Engage with peers, and
• Experienced working pastors, to sharpen thinking and practice,
• Encourage one another in learning together, and in their various ministries, and so
• Establish a network of deep ministry relationships for life-long friendship and accountability.
Academy
Through regular teaching days and residential weeks over a total of five years’ formal training, that aim is to pool resources to teach leaders in such a way that they will:
• Excel in ministry – which is centred on
• Exposition of the Scriptures, which in turn is geared towards
• Equipping others (all the saints) for the tasks of ministry.
This is very different from the traditional model of theological education, where excellence is often defined merely by academic and institutional standards rather than by what will equip the church for its ministries.
It is this inseparable link between the training institution (in this case Cornhill Scotland) and the local church that is so key. Churches will, over time, be looking out for men who are not only able to teach the Bible, but have also demonstrated in their lives an ability to ‘manage a household’. Those men are then encouraged into training whilst at the same time are engaged in ministry in the local church which already knows them so well. Over the years of training (five in total if you follow the CTC and PTC model) those men will not only receive lots of excellent teaching themselves and develop their preaching gifts, but will also be putting the very things they are learning into practice in the local church.
It is there, in the local church, that a preaching gift is developed and fanned into flame; but it is also in the local church that those ‘managing the household’ issues are going to be best learnt. It is all very well to consider such things in the classroom, but nothing can prepare a man for long term ministry better than actually having to deal with people and to do so with the oversight and support of a senior minister. That at least has been my own experience.
Flexible and affordable
In addition, this approach is both flexible and affordable, for the church and also the individual being trained. The local church, who in reality raise the money for those being trained, gets to see and benefit from the investment being made, and the amounts required are significantly lower with this approach. Speaking personally, it has enabled me to continue in ministry while raising a young family and also allowing my wife to complete medical training. That is not to say that these things are impossible in a seminary or institutional setting. Plenty of folk do exactly that. But it has been an affordable route for us, enabling us as a family to remain rooted in the church and giving me the opportunity to get stuck into real pastoral work at the same time as learning with others.
That has the experience of many others who have studied at Cornhill Scotland. Garry Brotherson, the pastor of Bishopbriggs Free Church comments that ‘the PTC does what it says on the tin. It wasn’t training people to be great theologians or anything like that, it was training people to be pastors, which I think Scotland and the UK needs more than anything… it’s not just theoretical stuff that you can learn in a seminary, it is actually the real thing that you’re going to face… That’s what I found most helpful about it and that’s what’s helping me in pastoral ministry now’
Willie Philip, the Senior Minister at The Tron Church has seen the fruit of this approach: ‘As early adopters, and therefore among the principal beneficiaries, we have seen first hand how the PTC model of training has delivered excellence in precisely this way. The vital partnership of churches, training brothers in ministry, supported by the academic rigour of the continuing curriculum (the basic ‘ABC’ of training) has enabled us to ordain pastoral staff with confidence that they are ‘match fit’ from the starting whistle, but also that they have been trained to be on-going trainers of themselves and their churches, and so to multiply ministry-multiplying ministries. Without this kind of ministry formation, the churches in Scotland have a bleak future; with it, who knows what the Lord could not do in the years to come?’
If men are going to be trained in such a way that they stay the course and are equipped not only to preach well, but also manage the household of God with real wisdom, then the model of training within the local church must be a major answer to the failings that Mike Ovey observed.
