Training men for ministry

Dear Editor,

John Brand’s ‘open letter’ in the June issue of en raises significant issues about the need for healthy training of committed men for the preaching and pastoral ministry.

He suggests that some young men enter ministry without a realistic view of what he calls the real world of ministry, particularly preaching twice a Sunday plus midweek. We need men who share Jeremiah’s sense of a burning fire in his bones that he couldn’t keep in (Jer.20:9) and Paul’s sense of compulsion to preach the gospel (1 Cor.9:16). This is a far cry from any go-easy-on-myself attitude, and if men are too busy to commit to such regular preaching, then perhaps they are too busy with other things.

Regarding evening services: most liberal churches gave them up long ago, but sadly some evangelical churches no longer gather on Sunday evening. In some cases they never restarted after the Covid lockdown – isn’t it time to rectify that? Is it not one of the signs of spiritual health that believers should have a keen desire to get as much teaching and fellowship as possible, and that pastors should eagerly grasp as many opportunities as possible to ‘preach the word’ (2 Tim. 4:2)?

Yours sincerely,
David J. Randall 
Forfar, Angus