Moving from leading a local church to joining the staff at Oak Hill has produced a number of changes in our pattern of life. A week no longer concentrates on Sunday as its apex, and the sermon as its spiritual centre; evangelistic Bible studies have ended, to be replaced by an apparently ceaseless demand for lectures - with handouts. My diary used to fill up evenings first, but now the structured part of my day is the 8.30-5.30 part. It's an odd feeling, to lose a seventeen-year-old pattern of life. What hasn't changed, and I hope never will change, is where I think the primary work of God is done, which is within the local churches, week by week. The task of theological colleges is to serve the local churches by producing pastors who will feed and lead them, under the rule of God's word. We must fight the temptation to see coming to college as being a reward, or an entry point into a more senior or spiritually significant role. Students come because they want to serve God by serving his people, and the role of staff is to serve the churches by serving those students. To misquote someone famous, the staff at a Bible college are the servants of the servants of the servants of God.
To understand what we're supposed to be doing we need to keep our eyes on the ultimate end point, which is that in churches all over the world, men and women will repent, believe in the Lord Jesus who died for them, and reorder their lives under his Lordship so that they in turn become evangelists. Nothing less than this will fulfil the Great Commission to "make disciples", because a truly discipled disciple will be one who disciples others.
All too often in the UK we shorten the task at both ends: we don't seriously search for the really lost, but stay working within the church's fringe members (an ever-diminishing fringe); and having converted some we seem to keep them at a low level of knowledge and a high level of dependence, so that they can't reproduce their conversion among their pagan friends.
The task of the colleges is quite clear. First, we must make sure that all the future pastors we train are themselves converted, then we must make sure that they have the passion, knowledge and skills they need to turn atheists into evangelists, and thirdly we must make sure that they are able to communicate that passion, knowledge and skill to the converts. In that way the churches should have more people with a high level of knowledge and a low level of dependence who can evangelise and disciple with confidence. In other words, if the task of the church is to make disciples, the task of a theological college is to make disciple-makers. Our focus must be the effectiveness of ministry within the local congregation, and our goal to make the local church a centre of evangelical excellence.
I have spent the last few years working on 2 Timothy, and Paul's vision for the future task in 2 Tim 2:2 encapsulates our work completely: "What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well." That is, Timothy's role is to communicate the teaching and ministry style of Paul to a group who will be able to teach others the same. 2 Timothy gives a range of those tasks, including teaching truth, refuting error, evangelism, and suffering for the sake of the truth of the gospel. The people Timothy selects and trains must have ability (able to teach) and reliability (faithful, i.e. of the faith). People with ability but not reliability become theologically loose and dangerous, people who have reliability without ability are solid but ineffective and boring. Paul's vision lay on the potential disciples of those Timothy was to train; our vision must lie on the potential disciples of those our students are to train. Nothing less will do.
Chris Green.
Chris worked in local church ministry for 16 years before his appointment as Vice Principle of Oak Hill College. He has recently joined the executive committee of 9:38