00:00:23.040Pre-order it today at newchristendompress.com slash longhouse.
00:00:26.600And as a thank you for pre-ordering, you'll get 10% off automatically.
00:00:30.900We'll also be signing the first 1,000 copies, so pick yours up today.
00:00:37.500Princeton theology was a tradition of conservative, Reformed, and Presbyterian theology
00:00:42.920that thrived at Princeton Theological Seminary
00:00:46.500and lasted from the founding of the institution in 1812 until the 1920s.
00:00:53.640After that point, due to the increasing influence of theological liberalism at the school,
00:00:58.840the last Princeton theologians left to found Westminster Theological Seminary.
00:01:04.460The school was shaped by several theologians, including Jonathan Edwards, and later Princeton
00:01:09.700theology included men like Archibald Alexander and B.B. Warfield Hodge, and their particular
00:01:16.620blend of teaching, which together with its old-school Presbyterian Calvinist orthodoxy,
00:01:21.720sought to express a warm evangelicalism and a high standard of scholarship.
00:01:28.020William Tennant of the Log College, Gilbert Tennant and William Tennant Jr. of the College of New Jersey,
00:01:34.260and Jonathan Edwards of Princeton University are considered predecessors to the Princeton theologians.
00:01:39.840Archibald Alexander, as I said, Charles Hodge, A.A. Hodge, and B.B. Warfield were major figures promoting Princeton theology.
00:01:47.660Gerhardus Vos, J. Gresham Machen, Cornelius Van Til, Oswald T. Alice, Robert Dick Wilson, and John Murray were also notable successors of the Princeton theologians.
00:02:00.480Of these, only Machen and Wilson represented the American Presbyterian tradition that was directly influenced by Princeton theology.
00:02:09.840Vos and Van Til were Dutch Reformed, Murray was a Scot, but a student under Machen at Princeton who later followed him to Westminster.
00:02:17.660Murray and Van Til were both ministers in the OPC, which Machen founded.
00:09:06.180So we're going to be delving into that, and I think it's key to an idea we've been espousing, which is building Christendom over several generations, right?
00:09:16.320Because it means that no single one of us can complete the necessary work of building Christendom, particularly in this case regarding the church sphere.
00:09:25.500This can't be done in a single generation by just us, which means we're going to have to pass this work on building Christendom to our sons and other qualified men.
00:09:35.340Now, currently, most research data shows that the average pastor lasts between three to four years at a single church before moving on.
00:09:43.740And you notice in the data usually that first-time pastors at first-time churches tend to wash out a ministry at a pretty high rate as well.
00:11:05.780They want someone to come and preach and perform ministerial rites.
00:11:09.120They do not want to be challenged or led into deeper Christianity.
00:11:12.720A pastor who preaches a gospel that confronts complacency or apathy or other sins
00:11:17.660may find he is not welcome in that church.
00:11:21.240A minister might wind up in two or three of these types of churches within a 10-year period.
00:11:26.320end quote. So it's worth pointing out that a pastor in this situation is kind of caught between a rock
00:11:32.400and a hard place. Number one, you can throw in the towel, as many do, regarding ministry, and you can
00:11:37.180say, I'm just not prepared for the meat grinder that this is. Or number two, you can jump churches
00:11:43.540every few years, if you're lucky, you climb the corporate church ladder, and then eventually the
00:11:49.100goal would be to be a pastor at a big, fast and famous David Platt style church. And with this
00:11:56.320whole model, we know there's, you know, I've called it a meat grinder, pastoral wood chipper.
00:12:01.300There's a lot of problems, but I want to ask you guys just teeing this off when you're thinking
00:12:06.760about multi-generational works and rebuilding Christendom as the legacy project that we've
00:12:11.840envisioned. Why is a three to seven year pastoral tenure so problematic? Yeah. I mean, there's
00:12:17.320really a few reasons but first of all when you said he has two options i think they actually
00:12:22.800have three options yeah so the first one you said he throws in the towel you know and just
00:12:27.520goes to work you know in in the secular world somewhere yeah or the next is to jump around
00:12:33.420churches try to like essentially job hop like you would do also in the corporate world yeah every
00:12:39.040two three four years you get a new job to get more money get a better position i think the third
00:12:43.680option that was popularized some years ago is church planting as well. Oh yeah, that's a good
00:12:47.580point. Just like, well, I'm just going to start over. Because quite honestly, to reform a church,
00:12:50.880we've talked about it before on the podcast, is really difficult work. If you get into a situation
00:12:55.680like this, especially if you're going to only hang around for three to seven years, getting back to
00:12:59.440your question, there's really not a whole lot you can accomplish in that short of time. Maybe seven
00:13:04.440years, you'll definitely have a good pulse on what's going on in the church. But in three years,
00:13:10.820I mean, it's going to take you, you know, two years just for people to start to trust you a lot of times, especially if they're used to someone else.
00:13:19.780You know, you've got probably a lot of baggage from previous leadership, even if it's good, like they trusted the previous pastor.
00:13:27.860And they're like, well, you know, the guy before you, he did a really good job of doing X, Y, or Z.
00:18:19.760It'll be eight years in November, I think.
00:18:23.260And I had been a pastor at this church before that in many different roles.
00:18:28.180So I had been involved in it since it was a core group.
00:18:31.040And even still, I think about two years ago, I started to feel like I was pastoring the church, like actually pastoring the church.
00:18:40.700People were, in the sense that to pastor somebody requires them to consider you to be a spiritual authority, an elder that they truly respect and want to follow.
00:18:51.540And that's a really tough ask when you're 25.
00:18:53.820Again, the way that this all happened at our church, you can see previous episode where we talked about listener inquiries, I think is the beginning of that title.
00:19:08.480I mean, it just, it'd be very, very unusual for that to happen now because of this issue. And then it just takes a long time for people to change. It takes a long time to move a herd of sheep somewhere. Ideologically, you have to think about the work of pastoring is, if you're doing it well, it's continually telling people to change.
00:19:31.440or to stop changing. You know, like, hey, no, stay stable. Stop going whatever crazy
00:19:40.280harebrained direction you got because you read a book or whatever you want to do.
00:19:43.200Your sin's tempting you. Or, you know, men, your households aren't strong. You're not leading for
00:19:49.100your family. You're not discipling your children. Repent of this sin. Grow in grace. If you think
00:19:55.120about a herd of sheep in the work of a shepherd, you're continually protecting, calling, like
00:19:59.540the sheepdogs are like, stay here, sheep, quit wandering off. It's a recipe for people to be
00:20:07.360frustrated and annoyed with you. And so the way that you gain credibility in that system is that
00:20:14.000it's impossible to microwave it if you're pastoring properly. It's from them, the ones who do stick
00:20:20.400around, taking your counsel and it working. And then bearing even generational fruit, right?
00:20:28.040Yes. And then them telling their children as they grow up, respect Pastor Sauvé, respect Pastor Kahn. When they speak, listen to them. Because let me tell you, son, when I was here, their preaching and teaching let us not, we were going to go this direction in our family. And instead we went this direction. It bore much fruit because they were, no glory to them. They were saying, this is what the Lord God would call you to do.
00:20:51.800And it just takes time for that to play out and to earn the credibility of that.
00:20:56.520Men and women have to be able to see the fruit of faithful preaching and pastoring over the course of many years in their life before it's not just faith.
00:25:06.180You had to have a guy who was like, I'm going to do this my whole life.
00:25:09.380Dan, we were talking, I think, with one of our friends at a scotch tasting.
00:25:12.380And I think it was talking about a distiller where some of these, I don't remember if it was what type of liquor it was, but they were saying basically like in his lifetime, this batch won't even come out.
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00:32:21.860To me, the way that I would want to answer that question is by describing the ideal
00:32:27.300in our context, and that for me, this is like a high bar, but what it would look like for us is
00:32:32.800that, okay, this young man has grown up in our church. His parents are members in good standing.
00:32:38.820We've known his parents and him for multiple decades. He's been educated in our school or
00:32:44.900in a homeschooling context in the church, so we know that he's Christianly educated. He's born
00:32:50.080good fruit in his participation. He's shown years of stability theologically in his character that
00:32:55.340we have observed. He's known by the congregation and they love him. He's expressed a desire and
00:33:02.020call to ministry and sought out training and experience from the existing pastorate,
00:33:07.180who've then given him theological education, pointed him to resources and overseen that
00:33:12.480to some degree. He's been through a candidacy process where he's been tested in the church
00:33:17.800for a year and the people affirm him and they say, yes, this man is a pastor.
00:33:22.340then he's ordained and he intends to live in this community and build it or to maybe go and plant,
00:33:28.660you know, like I think churches should plant in concentric circles as they're establishing and
00:33:33.580particularizing new churches out of a mother church. He's like, yeah, I'm going to get some
00:33:37.700experience in this church. And then one day, Lord willing, I'm going to go plant a church in Salt
00:33:41.740Lake City or in the next county over. And we're going to maintain relationship. And to me, that's
00:33:47.420the absolute ideal, what I just described, it's not the low bar. There's lots of other ways to
00:33:54.960become a pastor in our church that didn't look like that, but the degree of confidence and
00:34:00.140competence and authentic pastor-sheep relationship that would come out of something like that,
00:34:06.880and then if that guy pastors for 20, 30, 40, 50 years in this church or in establishing other
00:34:13.460mother-daughter church i mean that's the type of thing where that's stonework that guy's life is a
00:34:19.060big solid square cut stone in the wall of a cathedral and you need a lot of them to build
00:34:25.760the cathedral over hundreds of years but that guy's life absolutely is going to hold the wall
00:34:32.440up in the intergenerational work yeah that you're right that would be the ideal none of us
00:34:38.280none of us had that option so to get to your question eric that the model that we have now
00:34:45.740is flawed because of it's a ripoff of the corporate world you know because you're trying
00:34:50.560to get results quickly almost like i'm going to be the ceo type uh i need to to be a good order
00:34:57.400uh having a marketing and brand mentality in order to grow and and and so what do we do then
00:35:05.960that's different than that. And if you look at the scriptures, what are we emphasizing in our
00:35:14.540seminaries? And I know we're going to critique seminaries a little bit more, but what is the
00:35:18.540emphasis in a seminary? It becomes desire is king. I desire to be an elder or a pastor,
00:35:24.840and I'm going to go pay for an education where then they train your intellect. But most of the
00:35:32.780qualifications for elder are not intellectual, although there are, but they're actually character.
00:35:39.120And so you want to talk about tight-grained, straight-grained, strong, godly men are men
00:35:47.240of character, not just men of talent, not just men of education, but are men that are principled
00:35:54.600on the right principles that have a solid home. They have a solid family. They have a solid
00:36:00.900understanding of the word. And quite honestly, most of those men, the best pastors are going to
00:36:07.680be somewhat boring or obscure in history. They're going to be forgotten because they're going to be
00:36:15.300doing the ordinary work of a pastor. Not the glamorous, like American idol sort of version
00:36:21.340of the pastor, like who can make it big? Who's going to be the next rising star in the big evil
00:36:27.300world, who's going to replace John MacArthur, you know, or something like that. But instead,
00:36:32.480it's going to be doing the work of charactered and principled godly men. That's what we should
00:36:39.460be looking at. It's the character of men, not just the desire and the intellect.
00:36:44.380And it's so hard to, like you said, the seminaries are selecting for not that,
00:36:51.340at least in its proportion. I know they have things where they're like, yeah, pastoral
00:36:56.060reference and they would say, well, we do assess character, but the grain of the training is 90
00:37:03.260plus percent intellectual theological training that by the definition of the thing is very
00:37:09.740difficult to observe the true character of a man because he just got here from somewhere else and
00:37:14.480he's going to leave. Well, and that's the thing. So it's like when you do the entrance portion of
00:37:19.520you got to write a thing, answer all these questionnaires about your character and stuff
00:37:24.980like that. Yeah. Your church has to sign off on it, but yeah. I mean, it's fundamentally like
00:37:29.520it would, it's easy for people to fake. And I would just say from anecdotal evidence,
00:37:34.920one of the biggest, most disillusioning things about going to seminary was we, I got there and
00:37:41.020I was like surrounded by dudes who were like, I just talked to you for 30 seconds. And I know
00:37:46.080without a doubt in my mind, you should not, you should not be qualified for ministry.
00:37:50.280And here's the other thing. Think about, so this is something that we talked about in our schooling
00:37:53.740model, where we built our school, to not depend on getting enough students to come so that we can
00:37:59.320pay our bills. Seminaries, I know they have big endowments and there's other ways they fund them,
00:38:05.000but think about what would happen if they got twice as choosy about their applicants.
00:38:10.760Most of them would go bankrupt. It incentivizes them to take more students.
00:38:13.660To take students, yeah. And also to spin off degree programs that are designed for people
00:38:20.860aren't going to be pastors. So they have mission drift as well, educating women in seminaries in
00:38:26.180certain contexts or with pastoral degrees. So when you build a model that depends for its
00:38:31.760continued existence on fundraising from getting enough butts in your students, in your classroom
00:38:36.620seats, you have a structural problem there that is not the same. The church does not have this
00:38:43.460misaligned incentive structure. The church, when it's developing elders locally, it has a high
00:38:49.380degree of incentive to make sure they're qualified in their character. Yeah, because they have to
00:38:52.580live with them. They're going to be partners and pastored with this guy. He's going to be
00:38:57.840their problem. But think about how many churches. I know this is cynical a little bit. How many
00:39:04.380guys have expressed a desire for the pastorate to their local church pastor and saying, I want to
00:39:10.380go to Southern. I want to go to some seminary. Will you give me a pastoral reference? And the
00:39:16.080pastor's thinking, I could get into a big argument and cause a lot of waves with this family, with
00:39:20.740his parents, or with this guy by saying, no, I genuinely cannot imagine you being a good pastor.
00:39:26.600And instead, like maybe it's not even character. Maybe it's just like low EQ, not good at talking
00:39:31.940to people. Like you're not going to be a good pastor. How many pastors have just gone, you know
00:39:35.860what? Maybe he'll wash out in four years or he's not my problem anymore. Signed a thing, didn't
00:39:42.680want to make waves, gave the reference. Instead of really thinking, would I let this guy pastor
00:39:47.680my kid's church? Yeah. No, I think that happens. It's a very real thing. And I think it's a good
00:39:52.160transition into what we'll talk about next, which is really getting into the seminary
00:39:55.360and unpacking why I think in many ways the academy has failed us and it's become a problem.
00:40:01.640So as I mentioned earlier, my own experience in the OOs going to Southern Baptist Seminary in
00:40:06.460Louisville, Kentucky, Al Mohler was there. And the reason I went there was really because it
00:40:11.260was regarded as one of the most conservative options for a Baptist-minded person, of which
00:40:16.160I was at the time. So I went there, got recommendations. I looked at Covenant and St.
00:40:21.020Louis. But there was a lot going on positively for Southern Seminary at the time. So we're not
00:40:27.100very many years removed from that. You've got a lot of missional drift, as Brian has already
00:40:31.180alluded to. Al Mohler has changed his position on homosexuality, which was problematic. And then
00:40:38.360the CRT wokeness stuff in their midst. Of course, the seminary spawned Russell Moore and unleashed
00:40:43.520him, uh, this political operative on the world. Thank you very much. Unleashed is the correct
00:40:48.060one. Unleashed. Yeah. And, and, and there's been no correction offered either. Russ, when I was
00:40:52.580there, he was the Dean of the school of theology. What? Yeah. No wonder, Eric, all of your problems,
00:40:58.120you can blame on that. Uh, basically. Yeah. If you ever have one, that's the escape. If we discover
00:41:02.660the first flaw in you, that's what we'll attribute it to. We haven't yet to be clear listeners.
00:41:07.320That's right. I mean, come on. It's Eric Kahn. It's funny, too, at the time. When I was there, I thought Russ was great. He delivered some chapel messages that were really superb. Good orator. He was a great orator. He was actually, at the time, he was talking about patriarchy. He was one of the guys who really pushed the whole Christian adoption movement.
00:42:21.620I learned a lot of things in seminary.
00:42:23.160But actually, when I look at my life now and where I am theologically, the things that have driven, say, like the King's Hall Hardman podcast, the core doctrines that underpin my life were not learned at seminary, which I think is kind of weird.
00:42:36.680Like you'd think you'd get them at seminary.
00:42:38.200Seminary was largely like, yeah, this is not right.
00:42:41.420And we'll start to unpack some of those problems with the seminary model.
00:42:44.880But what I did learn is that what you really need is mentors and fathers in the faith, men in the local church who can teach.
00:42:52.420One of the things I'll say about the CREC, left seminary, eventually became part of the CREC.
00:42:58.100We're not saying your pastor shouldn't be trained.
00:43:01.780We're just saying most seminaries are probably not the option.
00:43:15.960So one of the beauties of the CREC is that they have really emphasized the importance of academic training of some sort for pastors.
00:43:22.920As a result of that, almost every pastor that I've known in the CREC is more than qualified to teach you systematic theology, at least get you into the languages somewhat.
00:43:37.000And because of the connection with classical Christian education in the CREC, many of them have a high degree of rigor in the old paths, in reading the classics of theology and Reformed Protestant thinking.
00:43:50.380And actually, that's one of the reasons that some of the CREC guys get in trouble is because they actually sound like the Reformers, which in our modern antinomian quasi-Lutheran law gospel obsession, they sound very—what's the word?
00:44:06.860They stand out because they have an often historic theology of the law and the gospel and of these things.
00:44:14.580And so I think that's another example of why the answer to this isn't just going to be change the seminary a little bit or whatever.
00:44:22.000It's like we're talking about a total interlocking of education with then vocational training, theological training, pastoral training.
00:44:36.340So I want to kind of do two things. One, first, to go over some of the problems. We've been doing that. So some of these we've already taken care of. And then move into what Brian has alluded to before, this better model and what you're talking about now, getting to a better model.
00:44:51.320So some of the key problems that I've seen, and get your take on this from the seminary model,
00:44:55.620number one, incredibly expensive, as I mentioned, debt, working nights. And number two, tied very
00:45:01.840closely to that, it's not family friendly. I remember early on at orientation, Russell Moore
00:45:06.980was making a joke and he said, yeah, when you come here, we're so rigorous. He goes, I told my
00:45:12.140wife when I started my PhD, I'll see you in a few years. I'm just going to get an apartment at the
00:45:17.580library. And it was like a running joke that you're not going to see your family for a few
00:45:22.480years. Your wife's going to be working. One of the things that I eventually left over was
00:45:27.380this whole model, but the primary qualification is how I treat and take care of my family
00:45:32.960for ministry. So I felt like if I abandoned my family for four years to go hard in the pain
00:45:38.760on a seminary education, I've actually disqualified myself.
00:45:42.000first timothy three four and five right yeah a man who doesn't manage his household well
00:45:47.820that's one household how is he going to manage this household of households with 20 or 30 or
00:45:52.80050 or 100 households he's answer he's going to manage it the same way he managed his household
00:45:58.000not not well so structurally a lot of the time the the idea successfully going to seminary will
00:46:06.780mean failing? Well, I mean, just with those first two issues, having that much debt coming out of
00:46:14.620school. And then I don't know if people are aware of this, but most pastoral callings don't pay
00:46:21.120very much. And so you have to get a house or some sort of apartment. And in our membership
00:46:27.640interview, just with members of the church, we asked about their finances, I mean, specifically
00:46:32.820debt uh and some spending habits if there's if there are issues there and man that i mean not
00:46:39.700managing your finance as well it with debilitating debt could be a massive problem well think about
00:46:47.020even just the stress it puts on a marriage and a relationship where i mean one of the pastoral
00:46:53.260jobs that when i was pastoring um was actually one of the better paying jobs that was available
00:46:59.400and pastoral ministry for small-town stuff, I got paid $40,000 a year.
00:47:03.820Most guys were significantly less than that.
00:47:07.560And so a lot of churches, especially in the SBC, you would hear this.
00:47:10.860They would say, we will keep them poor, and God will keep them humble.
00:47:51.080And now they're in a position to where compromise is a massive temptation.
00:47:56.820I mean, just even not having debt and having a somewhat well paying as far as pastor, you know, pastoring is concerned. And you're in a counseling situation with maybe someone that tithes a larger amount. And you're like, the sin of partiality is on the forefront of my mind right now. And I have to be able to just speak truth and say, you know what, if I lose my job, so be it. Let God's will be done.
00:48:22.920But if you have just debilitating debt and you don't have a lot of income, you're in a hard pastoring situation, you haven't had the grain of your character tested and strengthened, that's really setting up pastors, young guys, for failure and to compromise.
00:48:38.200And you've got to think like a guy that compromises like that.
00:50:14.700I think it's beneficial for guys to at least be able to have some sort of tent-making skill that they can actually make serious living off of.
00:52:45.900That was sort of the final straw for me.
00:52:49.020Do you think that as you look at that sort of thing happening, what do you think it's – you're training your future pastors for something.
00:52:58.320Yeah, what you're doing is you're training them for people-pleasing, you're training them for compromise, you're training them for fragility, you're training them to be beholden to interests that are not—what you're doing is you're—the goal should always be to align the incentives to righteousness and to the mission of the thing, like to the mission that God's given the church.
00:53:19.400so the incentives should should align on that level where a good pastor who pastors well
00:53:25.380qualified doing a good job there should actually be a financial incentive to the degree the church
00:53:30.860is capable to say we are going to make sure we take care of this man's family yeah we're going
00:53:35.640to make sure we give him enough money because we want him to be a qualified man we want him to have
00:53:39.840children be a model family all that stuff um we the seminary should also be aligned that way
00:53:45.240where the funding of the seminary shouldn't be aligned with getting as many people through as
00:53:49.420possible regardless of their qualification. Right now, if you think about the way that
00:53:53.480the incentive lines up with the finances for that guy, it's like, when can he start making
00:54:00.220money in this career? When he finishes the degree is the idea. Well, what if to finish the degree
00:54:07.780really quickly is going to make him disqualified because of his family, neglecting his family?
00:54:12.000The incentives don't align properly. So this is the difficulty, I think, is that you have seminary completely not just not aligning with the proper incentive structure towards righteousness. It's actually incentivizing a lot of unrighteous behavior. So the exception would be people. I think it makes it easier for the exception to be righteousness in a lot of cases.
00:55:14.180No, that's problematic because, again, it just reinforces the entire idea that they'll take whomever, you know, just to make sure that they have enough tuition.
00:59:07.140Man. Well, we do need to build seminaries and training centers that are different from this.
00:59:13.060Yeah, yeah, absolutely. One of the other, we're still on pitfalls, number four that I have on here is academic elitism and the tie to academia, which in today's culture is hard left-leaning, runs rampant.
00:59:25.680Yeah. So one of the problems you have in this professorial world is like their bread comes from getting getting the right books published by the right Crossway publisher, getting on the conference tour, getting in with the right people who approve of you and also being approved of by other academic elites.
00:59:44.580the fruit of this is like in broad daylight now. And what it is generally bred is cowardly men
00:59:52.140who will bow to whatever the current thing is. And the thing about academia and the work of
00:59:59.160academic theology, really any precise academic discipline is that it's often the world of
01:00:06.560nuance is very important. The world of precision, nuance, et cetera. And so what that can tend to
01:00:12.480make is very careful men in the, you know, the Doug Wilson quote, the history will not be written
01:00:18.380by the careful men, but you know, by the courageous men. So when you come to issues where actually the
01:00:23.580past, the correct pastoral response is a brawl is that guy's a wolf, get him out. And he's going to
01:00:29.500give all kinds of soft words to pretend like he's not a wolf. And he's going to be able to, he's
01:00:33.240going to, wolves are going to figure out how to play the fiddle of bureaucracies and, and manipulate
01:00:38.440those and talk the right things to the right people and keep the right things behind closed
01:00:42.420doors. Wolves are good at that. And what you don't need are men who are obsessed with nuance
01:00:47.500in an academic sense, who are in charge of watching over the gates. You need men who will
01:00:54.660shoot, like who will actually shoot the bow and pull the sword out sometimes.0.97
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01:02:14.520So you're saying because they emphasize this high academia, they're allowing wolves in because they're not measuring character?
01:02:23.520Or just simply like they produce academics that don't shoot the wolves?
01:02:27.620I think kind of both. But you see, take the female eldership or homosexual issue in the church today. You can find extremely rigorous, quote unquote, academic defenses of female eldership with sources cited that have been published in peer-reviewed journals. And then people will be like, go engage on that level. You need to go engage on that level. You need to write a calendar paper.
01:02:54.080And a lot of the times the answer is like, no, you need to laugh at it, mock it, and damn it, and anathematize it, and just don't engage with it.
01:03:00.880And the academic model is built on this back and forth precisionism, bureaucracies often, and it creates a certain type of person sometimes, I think, who is like the classical academician who won't make a firm statement ever because he always wants to make sure that it's qualified perfectly
01:03:23.260and can never be assaulted on any side, and the reality is sometimes you need to say all Cretans0.68
01:03:28.020are liars. Sometimes you need to say that without footnoting and saying, well, actually, some of
01:03:35.080them aren't, but it's more of a generalism that I'm speaking in right now, and I'm going to defend
01:03:39.020that now, and then I'm going to give you a developed theology of rhetorical devices like
01:03:44.500hyperbole and how they're permissible because of the prophet Ezekiel, and it's like, yeah, we do
01:03:49.920need people to produce precise theological work, but pastors, while they are required to give an
01:03:57.700account for all of their words, pastors also need to be able to pull the sword out and speak in0.99
01:04:01.860generalisms and attack wolves and say, I don't believe you, you're a liar, you're a charlatan,0.99
01:04:08.460that kind of thing. And I think academia isn't the best setting to create that.0.94
01:04:13.000Yeah. And I think one of the things that we've seen in the local context is if you have local
01:04:16.900courageous men, particularly your pastors, you get the opposite of this. Because really what
01:04:21.780it comes down to is training that muscle that when you're in counseling or you're dealing with
01:04:26.600a difficult person and you know the difficult thing that has to be said, it's just training
01:04:30.920the muscle of doing that. Whereas what I found the result of a lot of seminary trained guys was
01:04:36.760is they learned how to be bureaucratic. So you'd say, hey, that's a problem that such and such
01:04:42.560his daughter came in with you know a tube top and you know no bra and they said oh i absolutely
01:04:47.880agree agree with you but you know in this situation i just think we just need to give
01:04:53.180them space we have to have a long leash um we we just have to let them grow in love you know let
01:04:58.920them sit under good preaching it's the kindness of god that leads they'll eventually get it so
01:05:03.040there's all these like all these different ways of being a coward yeah and really the the fundamental
01:05:08.640muscle of pastoral ministry is seeing with your eyes and responding in courage to difficult things.
01:05:16.000With hard words where they're needed, soft words where they're needed, thick skin, unbought,
01:05:22.640all of these really important character qualities. And a lot of the time, the model of seminary is
01:05:29.420actually incentivizing men to not have those. Yeah, you're actually rewarded. It goes back
01:05:35.500to incentives, what you said, and this is point number five and six on my list here. Seminary has
01:05:40.040trained a generation of soft effeminate pastors who lack spines. Again, a lot of the fruit is
01:05:45.620there. And then the last thing, number six, was it abstracts you from the local church. We've
01:05:52.620already touched on this one, but it's not a good thing to be dislocated from your people in place.
01:05:57.520So in the closing minutes, closing conversation that we have here, I want to go toward a better
01:06:01.500model. Brian, you mentioned this, local training in local churches, but I wonder if you would just
01:06:08.100start to spell out for us, what would be some of the components? If, say, we were to train people
01:06:13.660locally here, the ideal situation, what would be some of the component parts of that? What would
01:06:19.480it look like? You know, number one, it has to be virtue-focused first, and the incentive structures
01:06:27.120have to align with that. Virtue first. Character is the foundation. Seminaries will say that
01:06:33.660in their statement of faith, but then not act like that's true by incentivizing rhetoric,
01:06:41.020academic ability, those kinds of things. Politicking, that sort of thing.
01:06:45.400And even when they try, they're not really geared to do it. So the first year I was there,
01:06:50.600we had shepherding groups. So you'd meet with a professor and it was basically like
01:06:55.420cocktail hour for a Baptist who don't drink. And, uh, so like twice as boring, but you know,1.00
01:07:02.840I remember going to like the first one and there was a guy in our group and the guy, you know,
01:07:06.180the professor asked him, he said, so, uh, you're new to seminary. What's a, what are your thoughts
01:07:10.040so far? And he goes, well, he goes, I don't know. It's confirmed two things for me. I know I was
01:07:15.280called to preach cause I am so good at it. And number two, I cannot stand people. And I remember
01:07:21.940thinking like oh boy how did this guy get let through and the professor was like wow huh that's
01:07:26.440that's interesting wow i would definitely rethink that okay uh who's next and that's that's what i
01:07:31.480mean it's like that in a local church that it should have been like you are not qualified
01:07:35.800you just have to admit to yourself like we really have to admit that in order to know somebody is
01:07:44.160qualified in their character for the office of pastor you need more than a reference letter from
01:07:50.160somebody. Like the training of that person needs to be connected to a vital relationship of
01:07:58.180authority and submission training. I need to be able to observe them over long periods of time
01:08:02.740in contexts where they're not incentivized to hide their true self. It's very difficult to
01:08:08.240hide your true self over a period of years in an actual community. People figure out who you
01:08:13.960actually are. It's really easy to present a false front on an application, on social media,
01:08:20.460and in small concentrated environments where you know the discreet beginning and end point,
01:08:25.800like a class, a small group. Or even serving in a church as you're attending seminary.
01:13:40.140And then really, it comes down to a couple of things.
01:13:42.240first is uh constantly reading being a self-educator being curious i i remember uh brian
01:13:51.440and i it was some years ago brian had said i gotta figure this eschatology thing out this
01:13:57.700end-time theology like really gotta nail it down and and so he was reading i started reading some
01:14:05.220books because i'm like yeah you can't just have a huge theological category where you're not really
01:14:10.960settled, you know, and lead people effectively in it. Yeah. When you're like, yeah, I'm a pan
01:14:15.000millennialist, you know, it'll all pan out in the end. I hate that joke. I know. Well, yeah. Cause
01:14:20.420it sounds like pantheist, which is a different thing. Also bad. Very bad. Way worse. Was this
01:14:25.600your 200 books a year a year? No, I don't know. I think it was the year before it. Yeah. Yeah.
01:14:30.800Or after, I can't remember. So anyway, a self educator is very important, but also just like,
01:14:37.140Hey, you need to figure out like covenant theology. So here's a book. We give our elders a book
01:14:44.020budget. Go buy books. And it's hundreds of dollars. It's not a $20 a year gift card to
01:14:49.520Barnes and Noble. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And then there's another thing that you figure out,
01:14:54.800like you can read the books and you could take the classes and you could think you've got something
01:14:59.080nailed down. And then you actually like rubber meets the road. You have to actually convince
01:15:03.420people of a thing. And, and that's a different, that's different, you know, trying to convince
01:15:09.540someone of a theological position, especially when it, when it actually like has visible fruit,
01:15:14.860you know, or it really comes down to connecting the vision of the church and the direction you're
01:15:21.200going, you know, cause like Calvinism does that and post-millennialism does that. A lot of,
01:15:26.340quite honestly, a lot of the systematics do that. And so that's really where the, the point of
01:15:32.420testing comes. And so I guess my vision for some of that in, in the church is going to be in
01:15:39.460preparation for the office, but then it's beyond the office as well of, of the church. When you
01:15:45.300get into these decision points to where you have to lead actual people and convince them of an
01:15:52.620actual thing, you have to have your homework done. Yes. Yeah. Well, Dan, it's really interesting.
01:15:57.660i was thinking about how our circle at the church works like you know we work here at the church
01:16:02.700uh we're together most days pretty much all the time all the time so it's this combination of
01:16:09.400like we're continually being like have you read this you should read this like we're continually
01:16:12.740pushing each other to yeah i feel like we read a lot so that's number one making sure you have a
01:16:18.140gang of men that you can do that with and then number two you're wrestling with those things
01:16:21.740together yeah because you're also applying and living them yeah you're applying and living you
01:16:25.520say, hey, we tried this in our home. Did it work? Did it work in yours? Whatever. I've talked to
01:16:30.140this person in counseling. What do you say to them? Counseling families. Oh, yeah, that's another
01:16:34.200one. How do you deal with this situation? So that's where I see the education thing is really
01:16:38.600twofold where, yes, you're reading, but while all this is happening, something you cannot get,
01:16:43.840generally speaking, in seminary is you're in the midst of counseling. You're in the midst of,
01:16:48.920come sit with us through this elders meeting. Come learn how we dealt with this difficult
01:16:54.260situation with you know loss of a loved one or whatever it is and a lot of that too is
01:16:59.660even for us like what do you do in a funeral what do you do at a wedding yeah i never learned that
01:17:06.140at seminary they're not telling you like how to preach a funeral it's really especially southern
01:17:12.360when i went there it's how to be a preacher yeah how to be a preacher how to give a really good
01:17:19.380message in chapel that would be like, Ooh, ah, that guy's really good. It wasn't until
01:17:25.700pastoral ministry. And then I'm doing things like when I have tough situations, I'm sure we all do
01:17:31.120this. I would call Bill Smith or I would call Rich Lusk. And I would say, Hey, I know you've
01:17:36.920done dozens and dozens and dozens of weddings. What do I do? Yep. Like these are the guys who
01:17:42.100are going to help you. That's where you're going to learn it. Yeah. And I think when we're talking
01:17:46.060about the academy, it might sound so far like we're saying academia is dumb, precision theology1.00
01:17:52.240is dumb, like you don't need it. Just be a good blue collar guy and theology doesn't matter.0.99
01:17:58.920That's absolutely not what I'm saying. What we need to do is properly situate the work of theology0.98
01:18:04.040with the work of pastoring and in the local church. And I think we've talked about that a lot.
01:18:08.860But I also envision and do think that there should be institutions of higher education where we do have elite theologians and where we have the most gifted, talented, intelligent, these top 5%, top 1% guys who are writing and directing the theology of the church and guarding the deposit of faith and all these things.
01:18:36.580we need the experts there and the guys who are willing to devote their life to learning about
01:18:44.220this one really narrow area of interest because they're interested in it and it's the glory of
01:18:48.420kings to search a thing out. All of that's true. We just need to, I think, disentangle some of that
01:18:55.760from making pastors in the local church in this process and making that the normative path where
01:19:02.380guys go through and they get 120 credit hour degree as the mark of, I'm ready to be a pastor.
01:19:09.060I'm ready to pastor a church. People are going to follow me because I have this thing and I can
01:19:14.140do all that. No, we should have a mechanism where we can recognize men who are incredibly
01:19:20.360intellectually gifted. They could James B. Jordan or some other- Peter Lightheart.
01:19:25.780Guys who are just really smart, they rise to the top in the academic pursuit, in that rigor, they are really clear thinking and clear writers, and God blesses their work, and people are naturally listening to them and asking them for their analysis.
01:19:42.240And then we need to say, yes, let's figure out a pathway for those guys in established institutions where that kind of learning can be preserved and carried on.
01:19:49.940And and part of the key secret sauce to that, to me, really, a lot of it comes back to money, the way that they're funded.
01:19:56.860Well, you think about something like maybe Theopolis, you know, you're able to have a venue where those guys can teach James Jordan and, you know, Peter Lightheart.
01:20:05.680We just mentioned those. So that's one thing. But, you know, you can train men without it being this extravagantly expensive thing.
01:20:12.900You know, you have a couple seminars a year, whatever you produce material, you have somebody who's writing books and researching and all those sorts of things.
01:20:20.180So I think some of it, too, is this is so true of institutions in the last century.
01:20:26.340We get used to things like say, say, like grocery stores, say public education.
01:20:31.220We just can't imagine what it would be like other than that, because we think, well, that's the world we grew up with.
01:20:36.440Yeah. But if you go to like read history from like 1900 and beyond, there were no grocery stores.
01:20:40.380there were no public schools so i think some of it is just reading your history and having an
01:20:45.380imagination that like some of the greatest thinkers of all time weren't trained the way we train people
01:20:50.520today and so we got to start thinking outside that box dan do you do you agree yeah i think so
01:20:55.460what brian said to piggyback on that because it was really good to have these uh academics these
01:21:00.800really intelligent men that are specialists very important but i think some of the mistake is when
01:21:06.900you try to make the pastor a specialist. Yeah. Because he's not, he's a, he's a generalist.
01:21:12.140You have to have so much range as a pastor. You have to be able to speak to a lot of these
01:21:16.180theological issues. Um, but most of the time, and I don't know what young guys picture when
01:21:20.820they're going to be a pastor, if they're having like theological debates or something like that,
01:21:24.380but most of the time it's a large crowd. Yeah. It's like, there's some guy who's like, Hey,
01:21:28.460I'm looking at porn and I, I don't know how to stop. I'm sleeping with my girlfriend. I don't
01:21:32.700know how to stop. What should I do with my life? How should I earn a living? Or like, hey, I made
01:21:37.080a mess of my marriage. What do I do? That's so much of the past oral work. Or like my spouse
01:21:44.020died. What now? Why? How do I parent my kids? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the questions you generally
01:21:50.760don't get are like, hey, I got a question on how to parse this verb in Hebrews 9.
01:21:56.580I'm wondering how the infralapsarian, superlapsarianism thing kind of shakes out.