12 Witnesses

In the previous installment of of church staffing I discussed, briefly, the difference between the desire of education versus experience. I asked more questions that inspired a few really good comments, but let me go ahead and give my full thoughts on the subject.

First of all, I admit that I took an incredibly complex subject and reduced it to “this or that” in hopes of generating some discussion, which it did. This blog existed for so long as a personal opinion piece that the community aspect has not rooted well. The longest discussions we had here, though they were mostly genteel, were also adversarial. Without controversial subjects, discussion here has struggled since I turned the blog from SBC politics. So… I have been pretty excited to get some fairly good responses on these last couple of posts on Church Staffing.

Still, I have some thoughts on it myself and would like to give those to you. I would love for you to respond, though these types of pieces don’t often generate as much response. Nevertheless, here goes…

The education v experience formula is not an issue of balance, or if it is balance it is not the kind of balance that one might find on a see-saw, with a fulcrum at one mostly central point and two things holding the tension from opposite ends. There are not two things here: Education and Experience.

When we speak of experience, what kind of experience is that? Mission field? Youth Ministry? Children’s Ministry? Senior Pastor? Lead Pastor? Volunteer?

Likewise, when we speak of education, what kind would that be? Bible College? Seminary? MDiv? ThM? PhD? DMin? Which Seminary? SBC better, or worse? What about self educated men? What about online education?

I have known people with formal educations that were not the brightest. They merely jumped through the hoops. On the other hand, Marty Duren is self educated. There is a difference between uneducated and self educated, you know. Having a degree is not always the test of mental capacity.

And then there’s experience. I postulate that my 10 years of experience as Associate Pastor of a County Seat FBC, was definitely prepared me for the position of Lead Pastor in many ways better than serving as the Senior Pastor of a 25 member church in a smaller town. Yet, in some ways, it surely would have taught me different things.

I think the particular job, church, town and vision for the future all create a mixture of need
that also needs a particular balance of backgrounds and much, much more. In short, the staff position is like a recipe that needs just the right balance of this, that and the other. The next question is, how do you determine that recipe?

That’s up next.

PS - Marty is about to wrap up his Bachelor’s Degree and I think it is onward and upward from there.  I feel sorry for all the twenty something kids that are getting the bell curve busted by him.

Posts with related content

• July 9, 2008 -- Church Staffing: Mis-Matched by Malcolm Gladwell (0)
• June 3, 2008 -- Church Staffing: The Resume (5)
• May 29, 2008 -- Church Staffing: The Search (4)
• May 22, 2008 -- Church Staffing: Education v. Experience (11)
• September 30, 2008 -- The Church, Preaching, Politics and Christiandom (1)

Church, General Christian

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