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One controversial area of the Church of Jesus Christ today is the calling, training or preparation of pastors for ministry.
While many want pastors prepared and t,rained in seminaries, others prefer that they sit at the feet of Christ Jesus for their preparation through personal Bible studies and regular prayers.
In this article, I wish to present to you contrasting views expressed by Pastor Mensah Otabil and Pastor R.T. Kendall on the subject.
In a video trending on social media, Pastor Otabil, who has reportedly been in ministry for close to 40 years suggests that young pastors attend seminaries or Bible colleges to receive training, preparation and qualification for ministry.
He wondered how someone can call himself a lawyer when he has never trained in a law school or a medical doctor when he has not been to a medical school to study medicine. Can you imagine what will happen to the legal or health profession?
Dr Otabil, therefore, makes a passionate appeal, saying, “If you are a pastor here, go to school; if you sense that God has called you, you have to go to the seminary.”
However, Dr. Kendall who has been in ministry for 70 years, in another trending video on social media, thinks otherwise. He says he will not recommend seminary education to young pastors.
“I will not recommend seminary. I think of Acts 4:13, when the Sadducees saw the boldness of Peter and John, they were amazed. Notice they were uneducated, but they had been with Jesus”, he said.
Dr. Kendall recommends two things for anyone who discerns God’s call upon their lives to do. First, they must know their Bible, and second, they must pray a lot.
“What worries me is that people do not know their Bible. Many preachers, the only time they read their Bible is when they want a sermon. And they do not know the Word. People do not know the Word”, he stressed.
The man of God continued, “If I had legacy, my deepest desire is that I would have this legacy that people will start taking their Bible seriously. And when we pray, we get to know God’s ways.”
“Two things God wants us to know: His Word and His ways. His Word is the Bible. How do you get to know anybody’s ways? By spending time with them. And so my advice is: know your Bible and pray a lot.”
“And God will use you to exceed all the PhDs and seminary degrees”, Dr. Kendall said.
By James Quansah
