Pr. Petersen hits the nail on the head. The internet age hasn’t improved the crafts. It isn’t helping the ministry either. Just yesterday my instructor reminisced on the men who were instrumental in his training as both pastor and seminary professor. The influence shows. Trades aren’t perpetuated through scribbles of internet chatter but through people. The Christian faith isn’t passed on by the catechism (gasp!) but by catechists. Think incarnation – Bible, yes, but Jesus.
Perhaps you didnt notice but Gourmet magazine has closed shop. Whether you noticed or not, you should care. The world is changing. Here is part of a reaction from my favorite food writer, Christopher Kimball:
Google “broccoli casserole” and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise — the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind. I like my reporters, my pilots, my pundits, my doctors, my teachers and my cooking instructors to have graduated from the school of hard knocks.
Julia Child, one of my Boston neighbors, epitomized this old-school notion of apprenticeship. . . . Her first question upon meeting a young chef was always, “And where did you train, dear?”
You can read the whole Kimball opinion piece at the NY Times.Kimballs words resonated with me in regards to the Ministry. Like Kimballs desire for trained and experienced doctors, teachers, etc, so also do I prefer my pastors to be trained and experienced. That idea is becoming less and less fashionable, falling prey to much of the same internet mentality that has afflicted Journalism and other professions. If youre like me and think seasoned pastors are trained, not born, and come about over time in classroom, field ed, and vicarage and not by simply wanting to be a pastor and through the internet, you can help that effort here at CTS. CTS is not quite in a crisis yet. They have done amazingly well in this market, not going into the red, being very faithful and careful with their money, making hard cuts and budgets. I think that should be rewarded, and our money should go there rather than where funds have been mismanaged. But in any case, if they have avoided a crisis thus far, a crisis is threatening. The good news, I suppose, is that CTS will not burden the synodical administration with debt or spend money they do not have. But the bad news is that the students will bear the burden and come out of school more deeply in debt.
Related posts:
- Siberian Church needs your help
- North Dakota Pastors Weigh In
- Weedon’s Blog: CID Pastors Weigh In!
- All the lonely people
- The Office of Holy Ministry