welcome to this episode of real Christianity my name is Dale Partridge reach week I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough the illogical and pastoral question this is 100% listener support audio Ministry of relearn. Org and for those who don't know our mission a tree learn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical confessional and missional house churches for more information just visit relearn. Org for cows
 alright so what's your perspective on Seminary lots of Christians argue that Seminary is a waste of time and a distraction from the real Kingdom work that God has before them they say that nobody in the Bible had a degree and no where in the Bible requires a degree so why we built this system that implies that it does ultimately question is it Seminary biblical or is it a distraction in the church through be discussing all of this and more but before we dive into that I just want to take just a minute to make two quick announcement the first is
 you know that our core Ministry at reload out of work is educating and equipping folks to find and plant biblical house churches but a healthy church is simply only healthy church members meaning that if you don't have health insurance members you can't have a healthy church and for that reason we developed a program for marriages at ultimate marriage.com and a program for quitting pornography at stand in Victory. Org I want to talk about this just for a second did you guys know that six out of ten self-identified Christian men look at pornography at least two times per month did you know that four out of ten self-identified Christian women look at pornography at least once per month pornography you know use is is really attached it to all types of church-related trouble and if you're looking at pornography and you're ready to be set free I want you to check out a powerful Gospel Center Ecorse that I put together at our companion Ministry stand in Victory
 not work it's short it's cheap and it's changed literally hundreds of life not through my words but to the words of the Gospel that the words of the Bible the words of truth again go ahead and you can roll over there today at stand in victory.org the second thing is do you follow our ministry on social media WE Post powerful useful content for Christians really living in confusing times especially now and we are active there each week on Instagram Facebook Twitter and YouTube just search for relearn. Org on any of those platforms and our you'll find our community and we have a great community of biblical Christians and such as a good place on the internet to find great content for us to connect with each other so again please join us on Instagram Facebook Twitter and YouTube so today's question is from Christina in Asheville North Carolina she asked
 hey Pastor Dale I've been attending my church for several years but recently noticed my pastor delivers very shallow sermons that tend to be more like motivational messages rather than a breaking down of the biblical texts I began to realize that the pastor's I admired online tend to have Seminary degrees or some sort of rigorous theological training unfortunately my pastor did not go to Seminary Dale do you believe that men should be required to go to Seminary before pastoring a church or a Christina this is actually a really great question I think that I can answer it objectively and and his wife about eight years ago I created a video titled for brilliant reasons to not go to college it's been since removed from the internet but it had probably a hundred thousand views on it but I was the most Anti higher education guy out there and some of my reasons
 in a video are still valid college for medic people is a bad idea and I never went to college and I don't have an undergrad degree but we're not talking about college were talking about Seminary and so I mean before we begin explain the difference between College and Seminary lots of Christians have gone to Bible College or maybe the major door minored in theology at a Christian University however this can't be confused with Cemetery Seminary is different Seminary is a theological school I specifically designed to produce dr.lee sound church leaders and think about pastors Missionary Church Planters and maybe biblical counselors a seminary is also if usually it's not undergraduate it's it's graduate and post-graduate work and historically they were four men who were going to be in full-time Ministry
 the most of you know that I personally have gone to Seminary I finished my 2-year Graduate Studies program at Western Theological Seminary in Oregon and since I didn't have an undergrad degree I was accepted under what's called an academic Exception by way of ministry experience in Ida pass a class or an example of the GRE at The Graduate record exam but I did attend Seminary I was actually recently accepted at the Master's seminary in Los Angeles under the teaching of men like John MacArthur and dr. Steven Lawson to finish my master of divinity degree which by the way is not a master's degree in the in the in the common sense it's a it's about double the length of a master's degree and it's a it's a four-year graduate study program at luckily I'll be able to transfer some credit card a few years off of that from my previous Seminary experience to say I'm absolutely Pro Seminary
 your your question I want to specifically answer because it's important I have a I think I've a strong biblical case for for what I'm about to say and you asked do you believe men should be required to go to Seminary before passing the church so I'm going to answer that with another question do we like the doctors go to school before they work on our bodies do we like that lawyers go to school and before representing Us in legal matters do we believe the souls and hearts of human beings are more valuable than our bodies or the laws of our land I hope so pastors are sold doctors we deal with the most delicate part of the human body is Human Condition also let me ask another question
 can a lack of theological and pastoral training put you at a higher risk of of hurting or harming the hearts of others absolutely right that this is probably my number one reason for why I am so pro-education when it comes to pastoral Ministry every young Pastor including myself can look back to a time where his undeveloped Theology and ignorance to pastoral wisdom has harmed somebody and I noticed that I said harmed and not hurt a good theology can hurt people are the Bible says that true things are of the Bible says that you know somebody's true things are very difficult for us to understand their hard they hurt or Flash but just because they hurt us the scriptures will never harm us bad theology can hurt and harm us and that's my pastor's have to be willing to become exhaustive students of scripture just like doctors are our motto should really be Do no harm
 and I believe strong rigorous theological and pastoral training like what's offered at Seminary is a great place to get them now do I believe Seminary should be required no absolutely not Charles Spurgeon was never you didn't never had a seminary degree aw Tozer never had a seminary degree but I do believe a rigorous academic and Theological Education and Training is required prior to go into the ministry and I believe I can offer you a Biblical case for that in just a moment but I I need to before that I need to make a a rant okay so will you guys just bear with me for a second cuz I really need to rant on something in Matthew 22:37 Jesus said
 that the first and greatest commandment is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind that the modern Church does the heart and the Soul Thing pretty well but sadly we do the Mind thing quite poorly for about a hundred years the western church has like this pendulum swung experience from the Scholastica Landon Lichtman eras of the church to today's simpleton era and we wanted the gospel to be simple accessible approachable so we shortened it up we watered it down we diluted it and discounted it we stripped intellectual reasoning from it we paddled it to people's emotions we took off our suits and ties and traded it for a t-shirt Pastor in a rock band over the pastor has a heart for people and forgot but he's never been theologically trained and people this is a big deal with it when Christians have Sloppy theology you get sloppy churches and back
 I seen this before to you begin to Birth Church cultures who are anti-intellectual and anti theological they say things like Theology and Doctrine or divisive to which you know I know men like John MacArthur would respond yeah Theology and Doctrine are divisive they divide truth from are basically what I'm saying is that we have way too many churches and pastors who are detached from historic evengelical Theology and it's evident now more than ever the western church is Sleepy fat and lazy and the average Christian couldn't complete the kindergarten catechism for children in the 1700s okay and as a result we have pastors and Christians who grabbed their Bibles and interpret a passage in isolation from the rest of the scripture build an entire doctrinal position from it a position that they are unaware has historically
 I've been called a heresy but in their ignorance they build an entire church Community around it is it exactly what's happened in the health and wealth Prosperity Gospel move in here in America it's a bunch of untrained pastors preaching a nun biblical theology did the man centered and pleasure focused and then they yell at the seminaries and said you don't need a degree to preach okay so we have a problem here there's something wrong here and we need to we need to go back to not just a heart and soul and emotional relationship with God but a mental relationship with God with his word I'm going to say this next day but with conviction in the Bible false teaching is viewed as the most Reckless and damaging of sins of the church all spent most of his time
 fighting off the false teachings of people who who didn't have a proper understanding of the scriptures and the Bible strongly warns against us Jesus and Matthew 18:6 says but whoever causes one of these little ones who believed in me to stumble it would be better for him to have a heavy Millstone hung around his neck and he drowned in the depth of the sea they can take us a few different ways here but the idea is it apps false teaching is absolutely a way to call somebody to stumble especially little ones can be referred to as people who are young in the face time circus is absolutely applicable in principle to to false teachings on acts 20:28 Luke record as saying to the elders in Ephesus he said be careful pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock of God and what's the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the Church of God which he obtained with his own blood put the sense of weight
 attitude on top of these pastoral figures of that day to be careful watch out for the flock watch out for the wolves in sheep's clothing we're going to bring you false ideas because this church is the very church that Jesus died for 2nd Peter 2:1 through to pee towards the church is his but false prophets also arose among the people meeting the people of the Old Testament just as there will be false teachers among you people of the New Testament who will secretly bring in destructive heresies even denying the master who brought them bring it upon themselves with destruction and many will follow their sensuality and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed this is this is big deal Steph Colossians 2:8 it says see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy to empty the seat according to human tradition according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ 2nd Timothy 4:3 through 4 says for the time is coming when people will not end
 or sound teaching but have itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myth okay so these are just some of the Bible's warnings against false teaching but I want you to just pay attention to this and I'm actually going to be really practical example of why training so critical and why we need to be willing to be trained why we need to guard ourselves against false Doctrine and guard ourselves against heresy in the church and I'm going to use an example that I think it's probably the best and most compelling the little example for why pastors should be trained before entering the ministry and I want to look at Jesus just real quick Jesus and the Twelve Apostles when did Jesus send them off
 right well it wasn't in your 10K he sent them off at the Great Commission to enter into Ministry it was 3 years ago maybe a little more three years I means the Jesus spent over a thousand days this isn't like an hour here but he was with them all day long 1000 days training these men before they started preaching and shepherding if that doesn't convince you that Jesus is pro education and pro theological training prior to pastoral Ministry then I'm not sure what will but our job just to kind of close up this episode I wish we could talk about these things forever but there's lots more to discuss but we want to keep his episode short our job as pastors is really wrapped up nicely and 2nd Timothy 2:15 it's a verse that I have memorized the verse that I really encourage other
 people who are called into Ministry to memorize it says do your best to present yourself to God as one approved a worker who has no need to be ashamed rightly handling the word of Truth some translations say rightly dividing the word of Truth and can you properly interpret the texts can you mix posit the text are you stuck doing eisegesis where you're putting yourself into the Bible instead of an exegesis and pulling out the original intended meaning of the tax and bring it out application for the audience of today that there's a big difference there and this is again in the practice of hermeneutics and other thing that you learn in seminary how to properly interpret the texts of scripture but again that's 2nd Timothy 2:15 do your best to present yourself approved to God want a worker who is not need to be ashamed rightly handling of the word of Truth
 do seminary in my opinion it's a great place to accomplish that skill to grab that experience to prepare yourself before you're actually handling hearts and shepherding Souls II in a congregational contact or in a missionary field it's such a great opportunity to take if you can take it before you enter into Ministry that answer your question Christina I'm going to leave you guys with two resources that you can find on the post page for this episode the show notes basically and you can find that relearn. Or if you just go and type in episode 107 the title of this episode actually might even better way to search for it it should pass Stars be required to go to Seminary the First Resource I'm going to offer and I'm going to leave you guys a list of five trusted and proven seminaries for those of you who feel the call into Ministry and want to get trained before you do that
 the ministry for a few years before I went to Seminary so that it could be you as well I'm really glad that I have gone to Seminary and I'm going to enjoy the next several years of Seminary as well the second is an interview with Doug Wilson titled call to call to the ministry and this is a short video that will help potential pastors discern if they're actually called by God or not to go into the ministry all the scriptures for the show are also listed on the show notes of this episode so if you wanted to go back and reference some of those scriptures that I used today you can do that they're beautifully laid out a tree learn.org on the show notes for this episode if your regular listen to the show we would just love it if you would leave us a review you can just tap the stars in the podcast app you don't even need a ride anything but if you do write something I will absolutely read it we are encouraged and appreciative of those
 if you have left something kind to say we read those as well my name is Dale Partridge and we will see you guys next week
 thank you for listening to this episode of real Christianity if your regular listener to this show would you perfectly consider making a donation to support our ministry effort simply visit relearn. Org donate again that's relearn. Org forward slash donate and for those looking to explore the idea of joining or planting a church in your home you can download our free pdf ebook titled the basics of biblical House Church by visiting relearn. Org house Lafley do you have a few logical question you would like answered on the show The Mayor question a tree learn.org for question thanks for joining us on this episode of real Christianity will see you next Wednesday