Church-Based Theological Education

Today, the idea of "church-based theological education" is becoming increasingly popular. While this represents a major improvement over the traditional practices of disconnected biblical teaching in remote academic institutions, yet it is still not the New Testament paradigm. The New Testament pattern is more along the lines of "church-integrated leader development."

Here are two key contrasts:
First, true leader development is not merely a class lecture or a small group session that is sponsored by the church and that occurs in a room in the church building (and is thus "church-based") on Tuesday nights or all-day Saturday. Leader development needs to be integrated into the life of the church – truly owned by the church, occurring across the life of the church, all week long.
This is a difference of process. If our purpose was merely to get the right information into the heads of our emerging leaders, then lectures followed by papers and small group sessions to discuss the information (with degrees at the end to prove the information was mastered) would be sufficient. But if our goal is the building of the whole person, then a much more complex process is necessary – we need a transformational collage of spiritual, relational and experiential as well as instructional dynamics.
An effective leader development process is not a neat series of courses but a fiery immersion in real-life, real-time experiences, reflecting the complicated and fundamentally difficult nature of Christian leadership, bringing deep heart issues to the surface to be dealt with, and compelling the emerging leader to look utterly to God for everything in his life and ministry.
We need a culture of leader development – shared beliefs, values, attitudes and actions – across the life of the church, all week long. This is the healthy church: parents building their children (Eph. 6:4; Deut. 6:4-9; 11:18-21), existing believers building the new disciples (Matt. 28:19-20), older women building the younger ones (Tit. 2:3-5), mature men teaching the younger men (2 Tim. 2:2), people building people, leaders building leaders. Thus, church-based is not enough; leader development must be truly church-integrated.
Second, "theological education" of the mind is entirely insufficient. The whole person must be built, with broad and deliberate attention given to the nurturing of spiritual life, relational capacity (including marriage, family, and relationships with others), character, vision and calling, as well as practical ministry capacities. The leader himself or herself must be built.
This is a difference of goal. The goal of New Testament leader development is not merely intellectual mastery of some biblical ideas, but rather transformation of life – the holistic building of the leader.
The Transforming Power of Church-Integrated Leader Development
These are some of the many powerful advantages of this biblical paradigm:
First, in our experience, when local churches rediscover the organic New Testament pattern of church-integrated leader development, it affects the church as much as it affects the emerging leaders. Here is a recent testimony from an Asian church network leader:
When we followed Jesus’ leader development principles, the result has been a great flourishing of vigor and life in the church. All the members are functioning, building each other and growing together, thus bringing great growth and revival to the whole church.
Second, while church-based theological education is usually accomplished in a limited time of training, church-integrated leader development is an ongoing, lifelong commitment to growing, serving and building together.
Third, church-based theological education usually revolves around the set curriculum ("one size fits all"), whereas church-integrated leader development can effectively respond to the individual needs and callings of the emerging leaders.
We recognize that church-based theological education is a sincere and significant improvement over traditional leader development approaches; however, the New Testament model is not so much church-based theological education but rather church-integrated leader development.
If we can shift away from our Greek-rooted fixation on academic curriculum and instead learn how to create and sustain organic cultures of healthy people building within the life of our local churches, then, by God’s grace, we will be able to effectively address the current leader development crisis