Apologia for CS, Part 2

If there is indeed a need for rigorous, seminary-style education in Albuquerque, what guiding characteristics should that institution possess? We believe that there are four main traits that a seminary should have, ideally. A seminary should be:

church-based,

Word-directed,

Christ-centered, and

God-honoring.

I hope to give a thorough explanation of each characteristic and to explain how Christ Seminary was structured demonstrate it.

Beginning with the least important of the four, a seminary should be church-based. The primary purpose of a seminary is to train up church leaders, but the Bible assigns that role to the church. In Paul’s discussion of the church body in 1 Corinthians 12, he said that the Lord appointed teachers in the church (v. 28). Likewise, Paul said that the church was the pillar and support of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). The command of Paul to Timothy was to entrust truth to faithful men who would be able to teach others also (2 Tim. 2:2). This command, though it was given to Timothy, is binding for churches since it is in inspired Scripture.

Together, all of these Scriptures help to demonstrate that each church is to raise up leaders for itself. The church is responsible to support the truth, to train the leaders whom the Lord has appointed there, and to find faithful men to teach the Bible. This teaching is also for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ (Eph. 4:11-12). The mature teaching of the church should build up others into mature teachers. Sadly, the broad expectation today is that capable church leaders must have been trained at some seminary.

This erroneous expectation has several causes, no doubt, however, one of the foremost causes is that many churches are no longer capable of training men for the ministry on their own. If seminaries disappeared tomorrow, the training available for pastors and church leaders would drop drastically. This should not be. Churches have become dependent on seminaries in unhealthy ways since they have shifted the responsibility for training men. What is the answer, then?

The answer that we are pursuing is not to get rid of the seminary, but to bring seminary style training to the level of the local church. Christ Seminary is made up of several local, like-minded churches that cooperate to teach rigorous classes in matters related to church leadership. In this way, each church is over the seminary, providing training for members without having to ship them off to a far away place.

The churches in any area should have enough trained, willing church leaders to pursue a local, seminary-style institution. When the like-minded churches of an area get together, they can collectively accomplish much more than any one church could alone. These bodies already function as teaching entities, they have a ready stock of men who need training, and they will at some point need a new pastor, whether because of retirement or growth. For these reasons, it makes sense that local churches begin their own training school.

Each church should be raising up mature men. By the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, maturity should be the (super-) natural result of biblical teaching and discipline. Those mature men should be qualified to lead the church someday. A church in which there are no mature men has good reason to question its methods and teaching, to see if they are indeed biblical! If churches should already be producing mature believers, why not formalize aspects of that training and gather with other like-minded churches? That seems to be the best stewardship of the teaching gifts already present in each individual church.

Our goal at Christ Seminary, then, is to build up men to be mature teachers in churches. As a band of churches, we hope to provide more rigorous training than any one of us could provide alone. In providing these classes, we hope to fulfill the biblical mandates and, in doing so, honor our God and build up the church as a whole.

--Dean of Admissions