John MacArthur and Robert L. Thomas
This dialogue between John MacArthur, a seminarian of the 1960s, and his former seminary professor, Robert Thomas, emphasizes the crucial place of the pastor’s study in the total pastoral ministry responsibility. The impact of seminary training on how a pastor uses his study and the importance of diligence, discipline, and other qualities also receive special attention. Finally, the discussion turns to the relationship of the pastor’s study to other pastoral duties.
We have had the privilege of a long relationship dating back to 1961 when John MacArthur initiated his seminary training at the institution where I, Robert Thomas, was chairman of the New Testament Department. It was our privilege to learn together, one as a student and the other as a relatively new seminary instructor. This chapter, in the form of a dialogue, will probe how well we filled our roles at that time, how beneficial the training for pastoral ministry in the study has proven to be, and what improvements experience has dictated in the current emphases of the program at The Master’s Seminary.
As initiator of this dialogue, I will pose questions along with a few observations to which my former student, Dr. MacArthur, will respond with elaborations regarding the pastor and his study.
THE ROLE OF THE PASTOR’S STUDY IN PASTORAL MINISTRY
THOMAS (hereafter RT): John, on one occasion years ago I remember a chapel speaker—a rather well-known evangelical pastor of a prominent church—who emphasized the importance of the Sunday morning sermon for the total life of a local church. His opinion was that this message delivered to the largest number of the church family was the major factor in establishing the atmosphere that pervades every phase of life and service by a body of believers. Would you concur with this assessment of the importance of that one weekly message?
MacARTHUR (hereafter JM): Absolutely! The Sunday morning sermon is the crucial point of contact for the whole church. It is the one place where everyone hears the same thing. It is the driving force for a local body of believers. It is also the place where you teach your people uniformly. The rest of the week, they are fragmented in Bible studies, discipleship groups, Sunday school classes, and other smaller settings, but the worship service on Sunday morning is the greatest common ground that you have with your people. I have said that very thing through the years, that the Sunday morning teaching and preaching that I do is the driving force and the strongest influencing factor in the life of our church. Sunday night comes a close second behind that because we have always had such a large response to our Sunday night services. That figures in the picture, too. But the Lord’s Day morning service tends to be the number-one driving force.
RT: The pastor cited in the last question was one noted more for his attention to relational issues in Christian ministry. For that reason, his public acknowledgment of the importance of the Sunday morning message surprised me. Given the strategic importance of the Sunday message or messages in setting the tone for local church ministry, what responsibility does this put on a pastor’s shoulders regarding his attention to study?
JM: The answer to your question is obvious. If the Sunday morning message is the driving force in the life of the church and right behind it the Sunday evening message, if this is where people are taught, if it is the time and place for teaching the great truths around which the church builds and grows, then it demands the most rigorous kind of study. It also demands Bible exposition because you must give people the Word of God. You can talk about relational issues and whatever else at other times in the church’s schedule, but when it comes to that time on the Lord’s Day when you build the foundation for living, it has to come from the Word of God. To do this demands the greatest amount of effort in preparation and study and the greatest attention and devotion to the Scriptures so that you are, on Sunday morning and evening, propounding the Word of God, that is, letting God speak through His Word. Here you develop those principles that are absolutely foundational doctrines for the life of the church.
Through the years I have spent equal amounts of time on the Sunday morning and Sunday evening messages. I suppose that is because if you are going to deal with the Word at all, you must deal with it with the same level of intensity—an intensity that will yield the correct meaning of the truth. This has required the utmost in diligence.
THE INFLUENCE OF SEMINARY TRAINING ON THE PASTOR’S STUDY
RT: John, in helping you choose a seminary to attend, your father had as his primary desire that you become a Bible expositor, did he not? I know you had him as an excellent example to follow in many ways, but I am sure that one of those ways was his diligence in study as he prepared his sermons. How much influence did his hard work in the study have on your habits? How did seminary training add to or change your method of study compared to what you learned from your father?
JM: Yes, my father’s desire was for me to become a Bible expositor. His diligence in study has been a great influence on me. In fact, beyond his eightieth birthday he continues to read and read and read. He used to hammer into me, “Don’t ever go into a pulpit unprepared. Be prepared.” And he has always been totally and comprehensively prepared whenever he has preached.
My study methods are generally the same as my father’s. The major difference that my seminary training made lies more in the types of resources we use in our study. My father tended to study the more popular type of commentaries and to look at more of the apologetic task of defending the text against attack. My style is different in that I am concerned to explain what the Bible means—probably a result of my training—so I use commentaries and other tools that are of a more technical nature. In spite of this difference, however, I learned so much from him that I want to continue to follow the pattern of diligent study that he demonstrates even to this day.
RT: You have often spoken of your training in seminary as being one of the richest and most formative periods of your Christian life. Could you single out two or three areas in particular that you found to be particularly enriching?
JM: Obviously the intensity of biblical study in seminary enriched me. During college experience I had been involved in a myriad of extracurricular activities such as athletics, work, and student government. Those consumed a lot of time. Beyond this, many of my general education classes were not too appealing to me. My minors were in history and Greek, but my major was in religion; the courses in Bible and theology really grabbed my heart. I did well in these, much better than in the other courses.
When I entered seminary, however, everything taught in every class seemed crucial to me. I moved to a completely new level in terms of my commitment as a student. Even though I took between seventeen and twenty units per semester, I loved it because I was learning God’s Word and being equipped for ministry. My whole motivation changed dramatically. The higher level of expectation in seminary stretched me. I was learning so much more than in my undergraduate biblical and theological courses. Even though I had had four years of Greek in college, I found the Greek exegesis classes more exciting since I knew I was gaining proficiency needed to do the work of ministry.
Another area of enrichment would have to be personal relationships I formed with the seminary faculty. I came to know these men personally and to love them. They made me a part of their lives. Many of them spent hours with me privately, challenging me, answering my questions, and building real friendships. The value of knowing them is beyond estimation when you see their lives, their integrity, their virtue, and the zeal they have for spiritual things and for biblical truth.
Another aspect of seminary I appreciated was the discipline of completing the program in three years. This caused everything to be interwoven and overlapping. The educational process was not a long strung-out process that seemed to last forever. It was all bunched up in a condensed amount of time, with everything interrelated and one kind of information interacting with another kind. For me it was the most dynamic learning format to take the program in as brief a period as I could.
A further value of seminary has been the friendships I made with fellow students. The sharpening that went on as we bantered about doctrine, theology, and ministry strategies and styles as well as the shaping that accompanied the interchange have been invaluable. My fellow students challenged me to read books that the faculty had not mentioned. All those relationships were part of the shaping process. All in all, I could not do what I do apart from my seminary experience.
RT: I can sense your deep appreciation for your seminary training in general, but more specifically our dialogue pertains to how your training has benefitted your ministry in the study. Your program of study devoted a major portion of its curriculum to what some have called the cognitive or substantive areas of study. These are areas of concentration on Bible content, the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek, systematic theology, and church history. What has been the relative contribution of each of these to your ministry of study during your twenty-six years in the pastorate?
JM: The specific areas you mentioned are all vital. In fact, as I have already stated, there is no way I could do what I do without them. It is crucial to have a basic working knowledge of the Hebrew language. Even though we are ministers of the new covenant and I spend most of my time in the New Testament, it is still important to have enough of a grasp of Hebrew to be able to evaluate commentaries and to make critical judgments on what others say about a given text or doctrinal issue.
The same is true about Greek. It is impossible to be sure whether what you are reading is accurate unless you know the language. Without such knowledge you are stuck with what the commentators say and cannot go beyond that because you do not know the language. You cannot be certain whether or not they are accurate. So if you are going to be a serious student and an expositor of Scripture, the original languages are a tremendous enrichment. Furthermore, much of the literature written about Scripture refers to and builds on those original-language texts. To be able to deal with that material requires you to have facility with the Hebrew and Greek.
Systematic theology is absolutely crucial as a framework. To think systematically and analytically, to see a framework on which you can hang various teachings and see them come together, and to grasp the uniformity of that framework from the perspective of each faculty member is most fulfilling. I cannot imagine what it would be like to attend a seminary where each instructor had a different theology. The seminary I attended had no such problem. The systematic theology taught was the conviction of the whole faculty, so each class reinforced the others. The framework was there, a framework erected on a foundation of an exegetical understanding of the biblical text. I have always said a person has no right to be a theologian until he has been an exegete. As I have systematically exegeted Scripture through the years, I have found my exegesis has sharpened, enriched, modified, and clarified, but never violated the system of theology that I learned in seminary. That is because it arose from an exegetical understanding in the first place.
An understanding of church history is critical to seeing the flow of doctrinal development and the progress of dogma through the centuries. An awareness of the ecclesiastical battles over doctrine is beneficial in knowing how to respond to similar challenges in the present. Knowing how church-related issues resolved themselves in the past is a lesson that helps us keep from repeating the mistakes made earlier. I think the best part of church history is studying conflicts and conflict resolution—doctrinal discussions and debates and their settlement. It is helpful to view how various elements of the church deviated into this or that kind of error, how the rest addressed the problem and the deviators were brought back into the mainstream again. This kind of study of the past has continued to shape my ministry. I also love biographies of historical leaders in the church.
RT: Your study of Scripture in seminary was from two perspectives, one more of an overview approach and the other more a scrutiny of small details of the original languages. As you review your experience since seminary, has the bird’s-eye or the worm’s-eye emphasis proven more valuable, or does each have an equal contribution? Is either of the two dispensable in preparation for ministry?
JM: I would have to say that the worm’s-eye view is more valuable to me, because it allows me to scrutinize the details, to get right down into the original text and really search it out and dig deeply. I do think the bird’s-eye view is helpful. It is important to understand an overarching flow, including a bird’s-eye view of a whole book, of the New Testament and of the Old Testament, and of general redemptive themes running throughout Scripture—in other words, theological themes. Those are important, but most important to me—since I have spent all the years of my ministry digging into the text—has been the ability to handle the details of the language and dissecting the text to discover what God intended. I think you need both, but if you had to choose between the two, you would want the ability to handle the details of the text. On that basis you can conclude what the bird’s-eye view should be, but the opposite would not be true.
RT: My observation of your preaching and teaching ministry has convinced me that you have a proclivity toward systematic theology. Could you furnish a couple of examples of how you responded to this field of study while in seminary and what benefit it has brought to your study in pastoral service?
JM: It is true, my teaching and preaching does tend to be theological. I want to principlize the text so that it comes across as clear, theological truth. In other words, I believe that truth is simply a series of principles. The process of exegesis should yield those principles. Some of those principles you may find in a variety of texts. For instance, a given theological principle may appear in fifty different passages. It is our job in expositing a passage to find that principle and then to demonstrate how it fits into the larger context. If it is a principle about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the question is, how does that principle fit into the larger context of the Holy Spirit’s ministry, and how does His ministry fit into the larger redemptive context? I always try to trace categories of meaning as far back as possible and eventually fit a teaching into the big picture.
With this kind of inclination, it is easy to tell why, as a student in seminary, I did enjoy systematic theology. Yet I never want to say that I preach systematic theology. I prefer to say that I preach one aspect of biblical theology—theology that a study of the text yields. This theology does, however, fit into a sweeping understanding of all of Scripture. Understanding the categories of systematic theology provides a framework into which you can fit various teachings. This framework that I received in seminary has stood the test of years of study and proven to be, with minor adjustments from my own study, quite accurate.
RT: If I may return to the subject of church history once again, for me the benefit of this field of study was not apparent while I was pursuing seminary training, but since seminary days my appreciation for the value of the field has grown immensely each year I have been in a teaching ministry. How has it been for you? Did you appreciate it while in school, or has your appreciation for lessons from the history of the church been a late bloomer?
JM: My appreciation for church history has been slow in coming too. When I was in seminary studying church history, it just seemed like an endless string of dates and events that had some significance at the time but did not have much significance to my situation. However, as I have continued to preach and teach the Word of God, church history has become more and more of a great benefit. This is true because as I live out my ministry in this contemporary setting, I increasingly see that the battles and controversies that face the church today have historic precedent. So I continually refer back to church history to see how the controversy arose, what the components of that controversy were, and how it was ultimately resolved. Reading the literature about past generations and how they handled similar issues is important in providing guidance for my present ministry. These are days when issues facing the church seem to be escalating at a dramatic rate. This makes church history that much more valuable, because none of these controversies is new. They may wear new clothing, but they are basically the same old animal.
SPECIFIC LESSONS FROM SEMINARY FOR THE PASTOR’S STUDY
Diligence
RT: Your earlier comment about diligence leads me to note that you probably agree with me that study is hard work. Did you learn this lesson during your theological training or later?
JM: I do agree. Study is hard work. I have been doing it for over thirty-six years now, and it is still hard work. Did I learn this during my theological training? I began to learn it then, but I really see the relentlessness of it now. When I was in seminary, it was hard work, very hard work, but I always had the sense that it was going to end. After the first year I said, “Oh, just two more years.” After the second it was “one more,” and after the third, “I’m done. All that hard work is behind me.” As soon as I started in ministry, however, I realized the hard work was still there, only this time I was never going to graduate. Thirty-six years later, it is still hard work, and twenty-five from now, Lord willing, it will still be hard work.
RT: Your seminary program was a demanding one. Have you ever thought that an easier program would have prepared you for the study phase of pastoring just as well as the harder one did?
JM: No, because there are certain things you have to learn, and there is only one way to learn them—that is by diligent study. You cannot learn a language, you cannot learn theology, church history, apologetics, and all that goes along with them without the discipline of study. An easier program would not help at all because one would not learn the same amount of material. A student would not be forced to think deeply about issues and learn the very, very helpful rigid discipline that it is going to take to be effective when you get into the ministry. I mean, if a student is allowed to float his way through seminary, he is programming himself for doing the same thing in his ministry. I think doing hard work in seminary prepares you to do hard work when you get out.
Discipline
RT: Dr. Charles Feinberg was dean while you were a student in seminary. I know that as I served with him on the faculty, the disciplined character of his life had a strong impact on me. Did it rub off on you as a student?
JM: It certainly did. I think more than anyone else in my seminary experience, Dr. Feinberg influenced me in the matter of discipline. He pounded into me the necessity of being on time, of being prepared, of diligently dealing with Scripture and making sure I got the point that Scripture was trying to make consistent with what the writer intended. His disciplined reading schedule, his disciplined study schedule, his reading through the Bible four times a year, his tremendous commitment to putting the Word of God into his heart and being accurate—all of that rubbed off on me. Even his polemical nature made a great impression on me—he was a battler and a fighter for truth. Then, of course, I just loved him as a man because of his devotion. He had so much devotion. I mean, he was so one-dimensional—totally consumed by the Word of God. It was one great driving force of his whole life. I certainly loved and appreciated that level of devotion.
RT: You mentioned Dr. Feinberg’s practice of reading through his English Bible four times a year. He did this by setting aside one hour each afternoon to do his reading. Have you followed any such practice in your reading and study of the Bible?
JM: Well, the truth of the matter is, off and on. In recent years, I just have not done that. I have not really taken the time to maintain such a consistent pattern of reading. I wish I could sustain that kind of ongoing reading pattern, and I did it for a time, after Dr. Feinberg’s example. I also got into the habit of reading the New Testament over and over, one portion every day for thirty days. I did that for a number of years early in my ministry. I continue to do a tremendous amount of reading, but I read many books and many manuscripts that I am involved in writing. In the midst of all this, I do long to have time just to sit down and go repeatedly through the Scripture.
One of the things that challenges me, though, is that I have a hard time doing that because as soon as I hit something I do not understand, I stop and reach for a book or resources and tools to help me understand what I just read. So, it is not easy for me to sit down and read continuously. I need to grasp everything I am reading. I am driven to understand as I read and that bogs down the process a little bit.
RT: John, did the example of your professors have an impact on the way you approach your studies as a pastor? Were there any lessons you learned from their diligence, intellectual and academic integrity, honesty about areas of ignorance, and the like?
JM: No question about it! What shocks every first-year seminary student, of course, is the depth of knowledge possessed by his professors. They have read widely and are expert in the areas of their respective disciplines. They are conversant in areas the new student has not even thought about. So he is just overwhelmed by the intellectual and academic ability and the deep knowledge of these men. This makes them models of what a student needs to do, not for the sake of earning a doctorate necessarily, but for the sake of having a ministry of integrity. I think one of the most important lessons that seminary professors teach is this: to be profound, you must give your whole life to the discipline of study. You have to keep it up; you can never quit. That is obviously an important lesson.
Integrity
RT: Is there such a thing as pastoral intellectual integrity when standing before a congregation to preach? If a pastor has not had time to prepare Sunday’s text, should he confess this to his audience, or should he pretend that he has put in the proper study time?
JM: You never pretend anything. Pastoral integrity is crucial. The issue here is not your sermon. God’s Word is at stake here. If you have not had time to prepare, then preach something you have had time to prepare. Just tell the folks that next Sunday you will come back to the text you had planned to preach on, that you need more time to work it through. There is never any virtue in preaching for the sake of preaching. The only virtue is in proclaiming truth—truth that you cannot preach until you know what it is.
Obviously times will come when you will study and find it impossible to reach a dogmatic conclusion on an issue. At that point you must make a decision, the decision you believe is consistent with what you believe the Word of God teaches elsewhere. Teach it and then just move on. Maybe years down the road someone will write a journal article and give you more light on the passage. But right now, you need to do the best you can with the time you have. Make sure that what you say represents a true understanding of the text as reflected by the most careful study possible. Yet observe this caution once again: If you cannot come to an understanding of a text, do not preach it until you do. This is a good reason to start your preparation early in the week or even weeks before, so that you have time.
RT: Were there any cases of doctrinal stability or instability among your instructors that may have tended to influence you? Some of those men are present with the Lord now, but of the remaining ones, are there any who have changed their positions on any key issues?
JM: I do not think so. And that, again, is very encouraging. I think as I look back on my seminary professors, I do not know of any who have changed their views, though they may have refined them. I can’t think of any who have deviated from what they taught me. That says so much for the integrity of their scholarship and their devotion to the Word of God. They were immovable. Even though the tide may have changed and people may have written with the hope of changing them with their new ideas here and there, they have remained consistent. I believe that is because their foundation was so strong.
Accuracy
RT: We have touched on Hebrew and Greek and the importance of accuracy a couple of times already, but please permit me one other observation and question related to them. Individual Christians have differing abilities and differing spiritual gifts. I attest, however, that in thirty-five years of teaching, I have never encountered a student who could not learn the original languages of Scripture if he had a strong desire to do so. I have come to the conclusion that if God calls a man to preach His Word, He also provides him with the capability to learn the Hebrew and Greek languages in which that Word was inspired. Do you feel that a facility in these languages is important in study for a preaching ministry?
JM: I think they are essential. As I have already observed, obviously someone could preach without them. He can be mentored and can read good source material. But to have confidence and boldness and to really know what he is reading when he reads commentators and other reference tools, it is really indispensable to have a knowledge, particularly of the Greek language. It is good to know the Hebrew language, but the New Testament is where all the Old Testament doctrine finds its culmination and refinement. To be able to grip the text of the New Testament in its original language is really crucial for accuracy and boldness in preaching. Effective preaching does demand a high level of intelligence, an ability to think clearly, relate data, analyze, synthesize, and present logically. That kind of ability certainly equips one to learn biblical languages.
Efficient Use of Time
RT: You were very active in ministry as a staff member in a local church while you were in seminary. You had to scratch to find time for studies. Did this experience help you learn how to use your study time more efficiently once you finished school? Have you ever wished that you had more time for preparation while in school?
JM: Yes, it did help, and no, I would not change it. I am glad for the way circumstances worked out. I am glad I was involved in ministry because it expedited the learning time. By the time I graduated from seminary, I had already had three years of ministry in a local church, so I was just that much farther along. I had also begun to preach quite extensively during my seminary days. That gave me a running start. I felt like I was able to give to the study what it needed and at the same time be involved in using what I learned in ministry. I really recommend that as the way to do it.
RT: John, since your student days were very busy, I am sure you must have had many a night that you did not get much sleep. Did you ever doze off in class while you were in seminary? What would be your advice to students who periodically experience all-nighters because of an upcoming exam or a paper that is due?
JM: Well, I rarely dozed in class. One of the things I always did to avoid sleeping in class was to sit in the front of the room so that I would be conspicuous. This motivated me to stay awake. Then, too, I have always been a quizzical kind of guy, and the teacher could pull me into a discussion easily. I could always think of questions to ask, so any time I could ask a question or engage in a dialogue and get stimulated that way, I would try to do it. And I always took careful notes.
I know there were times when I kind of blanked out. Mentally I might have been tired, having studied all night. My daily habit was to get up about 3:30 or 4:00 every morning, and sometimes if I did not get to bed until late, getting up that early to study before driving out to seminary would make me tired. But once I arrived at the classroom, I was able to make it through class.
My advice to students who periodically experience those all-nighters is to sit up in the front of the room where they are conspicuous. That makes it a little tougher to fall asleep. Also you could ask the guy next to you to keep you awake.
THE PASTOR’S STUDY AND OTHER PASTORAL DUTIES
RT: If you have to work so long and hard on study—which seems to be the message coming through loud and clear—what does this do to the important responsibility of getting along with people and meeting their personal needs through social interaction? Must you fit your study around relational-type ministries, or must you fit relational matters around your study needs? Which comes first?
JM: Well, there’s no question about it. Study comes first. What meaning is there to my relationship with people if I am not helping them understand the Word of God? As one who has been in the same pastorate for twenty-five years and lived my life with many of the same people throughout those years, I have not been able to be a part of every backyard barbecue and socialize with people by going here and there with them and doing this and that with them. But I know this: I have devoted myself to teaching them the life-changing truths of the Bible. This has built between them and me the deepest kind of relationship. It is a relationship in which their debt to me is great and my responsibility to them is great. I discharge my responsibility by giving the Word to them, and they repay their indebtedness to me with love, devotion, and faithfulness. That is the kind of relationship that I think really matters and satisfies.
RT: Would you say that your seminary training provided the proper balance between cognitive study and developing practical skills such as how to preach, how to counsel, how to administer, how to visit, how to perform marriages, etc.? If not, what received too much attention and what did not receive enough?
JM: I think my seminary training was pretty well balanced. Yet as I reflect, most of the practical courses that I took were relatively useless, to be honest, with the possible exception of the homiletics or preaching class. I took a course on counseling that was sort of meaningless. The same was true of some courses on administration, in which I received a little book on performing marriages and that kind of thing. All of that material is available without taking courses, so those were not too helpful. Most of these techniques are learned through practice, through the struggle of working with people’s lives, and through being mentored by an older, experienced pastor.
When I came to Grace Church, I was not very skilled in any of those administrative or practical processes. But through the years, experience has refined those skills. The world does not take a college graduate in business administration and make him the president of a corporation immediately. They bring him in on the lowest level and he learns, even though he has had courses in management. He develops management skills through applying what he has learned and works his way up the ladder. The same is true in the ministry. The best use of the seminary years is to load them heavily on the cognitive side and learn from a mentoring pastor, then sprinkle in a few practical courses to give some direction. The practical courses can be helpful, but the process of ministry after seminary will develop these skills to the greatest degree. Through this developmental process, it is extremely advantageous to have someone available to serve as a model.
RT: You formed your biblical and theological study habits while attending classes on a traditional seminary campus. Does it matter one way or the other that students of The Master’s Seminary are forming their habits of study in a local-church environment? Why?
JM: It matters tremendously! It matters because it centralizes the local church in the life of the student. Obviously one can learn on a seminary campus that is not a church campus. One can learn the truths and be involved in church ministry, and the two can dovetail wonderfully as has happened in my case. But when the seminary is right on the church campus, the focal point of life there is the church. I think this sends out great signals. It also allows the pastoral staff to interface with students so that what they are learning has application, not several years down the road, but now! It also gives students opportunity to have immediate involvement in the life of the church and to put into immediate practice the things they are learning.
RT: Of course, you have had opportunity as president of The Master’s Seminary to implement some of the changes you would make in a preparatory program. Are there any differences in particular that distinguish this program of study from the one you experienced in your preparation?
JM: I think there is a group of differences. One would be that here we have fewer of the pragmatic kinds of courses. I do not think those had any lasting value. In those days we had emphasis on how to counsel alcoholics, how to speak correctly, educational administration, and various things like that. Our program at The Master’s Seminary has replaced those with more profound and more theological courses that are very important and that have lasting value.
Second, I think that the approach to the preaching process here is more integrated than it was in my seminary program. Our current faculty places a great amount of stress on the whole exegetical process that lies behind expositional preaching. Throughout the curriculum the approach is uniform, with everything funneling right down to the preaching. I believe the way it is laid out produces a much more effective end product. The proclamation that results at the end of the training hooks up with all that goes before it. In my preparation there was a gap between the exegetical method, the theological study, and the homiletics that I learned. In sermon preparation the emphasis was on the sermon outline, preaching without notes, the big idea in the text, and such mechanics as these. Exegetical methodology received very little attention in those classes. The training was not anti-exegetical; it just was not emphasized nearly as much as it is in our seminary now. Our homiletics faculty has achieved the necessary emphasis on exegesis by making a close connection between sermon delivery and what is done in other classes preparatory for it. This kind of preparation results in expositors who are more concerned with accuracy than with the form, outline, and cleverness of the message they preach.
THE PASTOR’S STUDY IN PERSPECTIVE
RT: In reflecting on our dialogue, John, I am more impressed than ever with the crucial function of the pastor’s study in the life of a local church. This is where the generative force in church life originates. What happens in the study determines what happens in the lives of people as they attend the Sunday services, particularly the Sunday morning service, which is so strategic. A fruitful study will eventually become a fruitful body of believers as the Spirit uses the Word transmitted to mold people into the image of Christ.
In your experience, as in the experience of so many others, one cannot overestimate the importance of the right kind of training to make the pastor’s study what it needs to be. This is the rationale for the existence of seminaries such as The Master’s Seminary. Seminary training is a life-shaping experience. It was for me; it has been for you. Besides affecting our broad outlook on life and ministry, it teaches many specific lessons. Among these are the importance of diligence in study, discipline in establishing priorities, integrity in preaching the Scriptures, accuracy in interpreting the text, and the efficient use of the precious time given us to serve the Lord.
Contrary to what others may claim, adequate time spent in the pastor’s study will enhance the performance of other responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of a local church leader. Through learning the meaning of the text so that he can communicate it to others, the Bible expositor will find his relationships to others greatly enhanced. His ability to help them understand the Word of God will deepen his personal relationships with those whom he serves, even though it may mean he does not have as much time to spend with them individually.
Thus, vigorous application in his study will play an indispensable role in the pastor’s overall ministry, a role that cannot be filled by anyone else or by any other way he may chose to apply himself.