Is Voddie WRONG About Churches? | Pastor Reacts

The Seminary Is Not the Church’s Discipleship Engine

And I'm afraid that in this culture where we have the luxury of so many seminaries, what that's done is it's put us in an environment where we believe it's the seminary's responsibility to train the next generation of ministers.

That's a lie from the pit of hell.

Shots fired. Seminary students often profess with sadness, like, how much their time in seminary did not properly prepare them for being a pastor. Did the disciples of Jesus go to seminary? The church is the most natural mechanism through which leadership is cultivated.

We all desperately need to understand discipleship and what it looks like today. That's why I'm making this video. Hopefully, some of you are picking up what I'm putting down, what Voti's talking about.

It's, boy, it's a real problem. Voti Bakom has some ideas about discipleship, and he's getting it from 2 Timothy chapter 1. But the question is, is he right or wrong? Does he properly teach discipleship or not?

Do we even get some helpful principles so that we can disciple folks in our own circles? We're going to get into all of that in just a moment. If you're new here, welcome to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be.

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I'm afraid that in this culture where we have the luxury of so many seminaries, that guys come with a list of six different places and ask, what do you think? Maybe this one has this strength and this one has that strength.

I'm afraid that what that's done is it's put us in an environment where we believe it's the seminary's responsibility to train the next generation of ministers. That's a lie from the pit of hell.

Shots fired. Shots fired, right? Right out of the gate, he's cooking. Seminaries are not the sole producers of pastors and church leaders. If it were, then only the ones who can afford it would be ministers, right?

What about those who can't? You know, did the disciples of Jesus go to seminary? Or did they spend time with Jesus who discipled them for three years? Love how this is starting.

It is not the seminary's duty to train the next generation of ministers. Praise God for seminaries. I'm not against seminaries.

Amen.

How could I be against seminaries?

Huh?

With me and my seminary training, and now I'm a dean. Come on now. I'm not against seminaries. And there are things that we can do. But the idea of training ministers is a local church idea in the New Testament.

Regardless of whatever tools and help there is out there, ultimately, this is a local church idea. And so even if men are doing this training, ultimately what they need, what they must have is a local church that watches them, that knows their life, that invests in them, and that ultimately sends them out.

Seminaries aren't designed, weren't created to send out church planters. Local churches are designed to do that.

To make matters worse, seminary students often profess with sadness, like how much their time in seminary did not properly prepare them for being a pastor, for being a church leader. You know, I can't remember how many pastors I've talked to that have said that exact same thing to me.

They wish that seminary would have prepared them to love people well, to be more intimate with their heavenly Father, and to allow the Father to pour into them so that they could pour back out to their own congregations.

You know, their seminaries did not prepare them for stuff like that. So what is the solution? Biblical discipleship. Somebody might be thinking, but wait a second, discipleship is a class that I took at seminary, Nate.

So, you know, what's the problem? The problem is discipleship is not merely transmitting information to people. It's not. And so, therefore, it's not a class that you can take, you know, for a semester.

That mentality is an outworking of our Western Greek-influenced society that loves learning new things. You know, many of us are like the Athenians in that sense. You remember the Athenians in Acts chapter 17?

Here's verse 21. Now, all the Athenians, look at this, all the foreigners, they lived there. They would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. Today, we would call these people information junkies.

That's why I think a lot of us binge other people's content, right? Because we are the same. We just love to absorb and learn pieces of information. But discipleship is not merely about information. The process does not stop at mere education.

It goes way beyond that. And many churches and church leaders either do not understand this themselves or they don't communicate it very effectively. And so, what do we have? We have a lot of people in church who know a lot of things about Jesus, but don't obey him.

Pastor Rob Egality says it like this, we have educated ourselves beyond our obedience. As a matter of fact, I heard it said that the average North American church is about 3 ,000 Bible verses overweight.

Why?

Because we just sit there and we consume information and we consume information and then we do nothing about it. So, good for Bauckham. He's saying, don't think that discipleship is something that happens at seminary.

This is something that churches can be doing right now.

I started preaching when I was in college. And again, I told you I didn't grow up in church. I didn't grow up around Christians or Christianity. First time I heard the gospel was my first year at university.

Later on, some teammates of mine, they're discipling and mentoring me. They brought me a Bible, taught me how to read it and how to study it. And I had a number of ministry opportunities. And on one trip in particular, we went to a number of different schools, this ministry called Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

And we went and talked to young people. And I had an opportunity to share the gospel for an entire week. And after that, I remember being in the car with the rest of the guys headed back to campus and the Lord just dealing with me.

And one of them asked me, what are you thinking, man? What's going on with you? And I looked at him. His name was Brent Napton. And I said, Brent, I think I just found what I'm supposed to do. I think I'm supposed to be a preacher.

And he and another guy sort of looked at each other and kind of high-fived like,.

Yeah, we know that.

I'm glad you figured it out.

You know, it's funny. I had a similar story. I was relatively new in the faith, newly saved, very passionate, on fire. And I convinced the youth pastor at the church that I was attending to let me get up in front of the youth group.

And teach. And so I did that about two, maybe three times and just felt this, this bug. You know, I caught the teaching bug. Those of you that are teachers, you know what I'm talking about. And I wanted to understand what that meant for me in my life.

And so I went to about four or five people that I knew that were wiser in the faith, that I respected their advice. And I said, hey, what do you think if I became a teacher? And they were like, oh yeah, that's, duh, that's a no-brainer, you know?

It was the same reaction as Bauckham's Friends.

And so when I got back, I went and talked to my pastor, Pastor Willie Adams, who went to be with the Lord just last week at New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church,.

Houston, Texas.

Traditional, small, black missionary Baptist church. And I went to Pastor Adams and I said, Pastor Adams, I didn't have all this terminology, you know, hey, the Lord called me to preach, you know, and none of this, whatever, I'm going to surrender to the ministry.

By the way, I have a very minimal goal here, okay? And I don't know if I said it at the outset, but let me just go ahead and say it now just to set expectations. Bauckham is speaking specifically to a crowd of ministers, and he has a specific goal in mind.

My goal is to pull out principles that we can use in our circles in churches today so that we can make disciples, okay? And the question is, will those principles be there, right? So that's what I'm looking for.

I'm listening very carefully to hear if those principles exist, that we can extrapolate it into our circles. So now that you know what I'm doing, listen with me and see if we can get through those principles together.

Southern term, I still don't understand. Surrender to the ministry? What is that, right? You surrender to welding, you run to the ministry. So anyway, and I said, Pastor Adams, I think I'm supposed to be a preacher.

And Pastor Adams opened the calendar on his desk and he said, okay, third Sunday of next month, we'll all find out.

That's when your eyes grow as big as dishes, right?

And I remember when that time came and I preached on that Sunday evening, there were a number of pastors from around the community who were there. And this wasn't unusual. It was almost as though these men who had given their life to the gospel ministry were there, number one, as encouragement, but not only for me, but for themselves.

Because they were there to witness the fact that God's not done. There's another generation of preachers coming. And again, don't hear me bashing seminaries or bashing theological training. We need that.

But my worry is that we've divorced the church from this great privilege. We've divorced the church from this very natural passion that says, Lord, please raise up more in the next generation.

The church is the most natural mechanism through which leadership is cultivated. And to me, this is how I've always advised pastors at churches, the quickest, fastest, most effective way of raising up leaders in the church and placing them in positions of service.

You know what some would call like a leadership pipeline, right? Which is to take someone who is a member and make them a leader. That pathway is a clear and easily replicated discipleship model. And guess what?

All that is really required are those who are willing to take the time to do it. That's really one of the only obstacles that is keeping churches from biblical discipleship. It's really time and willingness.

And yet churches are not prioritizing disciples. They're prioritizing decisions at an altar call.

Sure.

But they're not prioritizing disciples. They're not prioritizing raising up active servants and leaders in the body of Christ. They're prioritizing attendance. So let's see how Bauckham unpacks this for us because, man, we all desperately need to understand discipleship and what it looks like today.

That's why I'm making this video.

Apostolic Teaching, Sound Doctrine, and the Pattern of Sound Words

With this commitment to apostolic teaching, it's a common Pauline theme, 2 Thessalonians 2 .15. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

Titus 1 .9. Speaking about elders, he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. It's a common New Testament theme.

You find this most famously in Acts 2 .42 and 43. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers. All came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

We commit ourselves to this. This is what we are raising up. It is not just about raising up talented individuals. It is about raising up individuals who understand their duty and responsibility and the obligation to hold on to this doctrine and to hold on to it firmly.

That's what we're a part of. The gospel ministry, it's the ministry of the gospel. It's not just talented men finding a way to make a living without having to get a job outside the church. If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch.

This is a calling to preserve something. But how do we do that? Practically speaking, how do we create an environment where we put into the minds of the next generation the importance of these doctrines, the importance of this pattern of sound words and the importance of those who will be raised up among us to hold them and to propagate them?

So again, Baucom is more narrowly focused on the act of discipleship as it applies to replicating ministers of the gospel at the pulpit. He's speaking at G3 here a few years back, okay? But there are principles here that can be extrapolated for us all.

That's my hope and that's what I'm hoping to pull out of this, right? I would remind us again, discipleship is a great commission given. Not just to pastors and preachers, but to all Christians for all time.

That's both men and women who will commit to sit with other men and women and teach them and replicate themselves for a duration of time with the understanding that afterwards, the person they just discipled will go and do likewise with others.

Okay, one of the key texts of discipleship, just in thinking along these lines is Luke 6, verse 40. A disciple is not above his teacher. This is Jesus speaking, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.

I think this immediately exposes the problem with a lot of churches today, okay? Because if we sort of figuratively speaking, pick up this verse and we use it as a lens to assess what's going on in our churches, I think we're going to notice that a lot of discipleship in today's day and age aims at information, but biblical discipleship aims at imitation.

To be like our teacher, to be like our rabbi Jesus, to be like our Lord and Savior, right? So the question that we have to be asking in our churches, in our particular vantage points is, how do I know that discipleship is taking place in my church today?

And the answer, according to scripture, is not that people know things about Jesus, but that they actually imitate Jesus. They imitate their Lord and Savior. That's how you know it's happening. Jesus said in John 15, by this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples, okay?

The fruit is in imitating Jesus. That is not only the first century expectation of ministers, it's the expectation of Jesus on all of us.

I believe there are a number of tools that God gives us. And I think it's interesting that many of these tools we've either redefined or moved away from altogether. These tools that remind us that we are a community that is defined by this pattern of sound words, things like hymnody and liturgy, hymnody and liturgy.

We've moved away from both hymnody and liturgy, but hymnody and liturgy, it's not just a question of style. And that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm not talking about a question of style. I'm talking about a question of content.

The idea that when we gather together week to week, we are not here just to entertain one another. We are not here just to get a spiritual jolt or a shot in the arm. We are here to have our minds renewed as we just heard earlier.

And we are here to be rooted and grounded in these things most surely believed among us. And what hymnody does and what liturgy does is it says to us, these are those truths that we need to hear again and again and again.

They define us.

Hymnody refers to the singing of ancient sacred songs. So a lot of us in some churches will open up what's called a hymnal and we'll sing from them during corporate worship. More contemporary churches don't do that.

But you'll find like churches who lean more old school Baptist, Presbyterian and some other denominations do this. Catholics sing ancient songs as well. Liturgy refers to the ancient practices or traditions or even like rites.

So R-I-T-E-S that churches continue to put into practice every time they come together and corporately worship. And it can be as simple as everyone reciting certain creeds together. Or everyone reading from the text of scripture and then repeating certain phrases in response to a leader speaking from the pulpit.

The point that Bauckham is making here is that traditions create proper patterns. Proper patterns preserve truth. And discipleship is a pattern that should be handed down from generation to generation, much like hymnody and liturgy.

They all exist in the same category.

And I'm afraid that so often when we gather, what we're saying is it has to be new. It has to be fresh. It has to be entertaining. It has to scratch itching ears. And I am not talking here about dead orthodoxy.

Going through the motions, amen? Far from it. This is not about style. It's about substance. And there is a reason that the great hymns of the faith are the great hymns of the faith. There is a reason that they stand the test of time.

And they root us and they ground us in something.

So he's touching on things that split into much deeper issues within the church. You know, for example, why are so many in the younger generations turning away from contemporary church, but not turning away from church altogether?

They're just seeking more traditional liturgical churches. Right? It's not because of a style preference. It's because many, this is my opinion, many contemporary churches have no substance. So, okay, this is a different video for another time, but it is possible for a church to be contemporary and spiritually rich, just as much as it's possible for a church to be rooted in ancient traditions and liturgical and be so spiritually dry that they are dead on the inside.

But when you have contemporary style churches that also have no spiritual substance to it at all, then all of a sudden you lose the proper patterns that preserve truth. And that includes biblical discipleship as well.

And that right there, I think that's what a lot of us are seeing right now. Too many churches, we're looking around and we're looking for discipleship and we can't find it.

Why?

Because too many churches have not sought to preserve those proper patterns because they decided somewhere along the way that other things less important mattered. And that's a big problem.

The liturgy, it roots us and it grounds us in something. It continues to point us in a similar direction. I've said it before, I'll say it again, confessionalism. Our confessions remind us of what it is that we believe.

And when we are raising up a generation of young ministers, one of the difficult things for them is they don't have a theology at all. So what does the ministry mean if you don't have a theology? What does the ministry mean if you don't have a confessional framework?

What are you being called to? What are you being called to do if you don't have this theological framework? If we no longer have hymnody, we no longer have liturgy, we gather together to entertain people.

We gather together in order to make sure that the crowd continues to grow and that people remain happy. Now we have the next generation growing up in the church, watching us do what we do. What is everything about?

Everything is about entertainment. Everything is about numbers. What is the ministry? Well, this is about continuing this process of entertaining and attracting more and more people.

He's spitting fire. I mean, there's so much to say here, but he's stepping on toes, okay? And he's not wrong, ladies and gentlemen. This is what pastors, senior pastors specifically, are thinking about on a weekly basis, okay?

And then you add all of these other elements in here that he's pointing to, you know? The fact that a lot of the Bible for those of us in church has become so systematized that it's become disconnected from a narrative or a framework of understanding for everybody in the church.

I mean, hopefully some of you are picking up what I'm putting down, what Voti's talking about. It's, boy, it's a real problem.

As one famous R &B hymn writer wrote, got to give the people what they want. Don't try to act like you don't know that song. But our confessions root us and ground us. Our confessions give us a framework.

Catechisms help to teach our confession. And there is not this divide, by the way, in Christianity between churches and ministries who have confessions and churches and ministries who don't. As one writer has put it, the difference is between churches and ministries who have written confessions that are available to be evaluated by all and those who have unwritten confessions that change from time to time.

But we're all confessional. We're all confessional. It's just, is the confession written? Is it there to be evaluated? Is it there for all of us to see so that there can be accountability? Or is the confession just in the mind of the minister so that if he leaves and goes somewhere or dies, now the next minister brings the confession that's in his mind and you have division in the church when he says something one day that goes against the confession of the last guy that wasn't written, by the way, so he didn't know it.

And now there's a war in the church between the unwritten confession of the last guy and the unwritten confession of the new guy and nobody knows where the starting point is.

It's getting hot in here. Stop him when he gets too close to home for you, okay? Again though, so just to let you know what I'm listening out for. Are we hearing things that we can extrapolate from this talk so that we know how to disciple folks in our churches today?

By the way, do you have an idea about what that looks like? About what discipleship practically looks like in your circles? Let me know in the comments. I mean, I'd love to get your thoughts. Like legitimately, I have an idea about what that looks like.

I recognize that it can look differently in different circles. You know, I had a friend of mine, a pastor at the old church back in Las Vegas. We ran discipleship groups. It was very low key, easily replicated and it produced measurable growth in the people that we discipled.

So let's talk about it. We're gonna circle back around and get to that at the end. Boy, thank you so much for watching this video. Did you know that the majority of people who do watch are not subscribed to the channel?

If this video is blessing you, would you do me a favor and like and subscribe to the channel? It just really helps me to get the word out about this ministry. I greatly appreciate it.

As Derek Thomas just so eloquently reminded us,.

Books, books.

Are we giving the young men in our church books to read? And just like when I talk about hymnody, those things that have stood the test of time, when I'm talking about literature and books, I'm talking about those things that have stood the test of time.

Are we doing this? Have we created a culture where we are raising up young men in our midst who have a biography of guys like Owen and Edwards and Spurgeon and Bunyan, where they know these names, where they've been reading these books, where they're rooted and grounded in theology and they're rooted and grounded in history and they're rooted and grounded in highest and best.

That's good.

I think it's sad when men grow up in churches of great renown, have a sense of call, go off to seminary and the first time that they hear of or read men like Owen and Edwards and Spurgeon and others is when a seminary professor mentions it to them.

We should be seeking out young men and pouring these things into their lives. Not every young man is going to respond. There are gonna be a lot of young men, you give them the books from these theological giants and you ask them about it a week later, well, you won't get to ask them about it because they hand them the book.

They know you're gonna ask them whether or not they read it. They might not even come back to church for a while, but there'll be some who devour it and say, I've devoured that book. Do you have another?

Yeah, I've got another and I got my eye on you.

So Howard Hendricks used to talk about the right kind of people to look for along these lines, right? I mean, if you're thinking about discipleship, you're thinking about pouring into somebody, what kind of people should be looking for, right?

Bauckham's right. Not everybody you approach and engage for the purposes of discipleship will lean in. I've seen it happen too. You approach somebody, all of a sudden they disappear, you never see them again, right?

A lot of them will make excuses and they'll back out. But the ones you should be looking for, according to Hendricks, are fat people. Fat is an acronym, by the way, so we're not being rude. Fat is faithful, available, and teachable, okay?

Are there these kinds of folks, faithful, available, and teachable people in your midst right now? Just as Jesus chose his disciples, we should be prayerfully considering certain kinds of folks to be discipled.

Faithful, available, and teachable. The ones who are not faithful, who are not teachable, don't bother. Your efforts will not produce fruit, okay? So as an element of discipleship, are we extrapolating things and pulling things out?

Take note of that. We're looking for the right kinds of people.

So there is a sense in which it's an outgrowth of our corporate ministry to all. But this corporate ministry to all gives way to some personal instruction. And here's where it gets a little messy, because number one, this is time-consuming.

This is time-consuming for pastors. To take young men under your wing and to try to encourage and mentor them with a view toward finding faithful men. And then when you find faithful men, to invest in these faithful men even further, this is time-consuming.

Yep.

This is why I said earlier, one of the obstacles to biblical discipleship is time.

Why?

Well, because the structure and the format is easily achievable and anyone can do it. But one of the biggest excuses that I received when I went around and ran discipleship groups was, Nate, I don't have the time.

That's not true, by the way.

Okay.

We always have time for what we think is important.

Amen.

And this is why everybody needs to hear this. Because the difficulty here is not necessarily that it's time-consuming. The difficulty here is that if a pastor gives himself to this, and if he has a group of faithful men into whose lives he's pouring, the likelihood is that there are going to be other people who throw a fit because the pastor is not spending as much time with them.

If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. You know the ones, right? Hey, Sister Jones, how you doing? Oh, I'm okay. Sister, well, everything all right?

You fine?

Yeah, I'm fine now.

Well, what was the matter?

Sister Jones walks off in a huff and you go, hey man, what's going on with Sister Jones? She was in the hospital last week. She's mad because you didn't check on her. Come back, Sister Jones, I'm so sorry.

You were in the hospital. You didn't even check on Sister Jones. Did you tell me? No, that's why everybody needs to hear this. Because the fact of the matter is pastors won't be able to make this kind of investment unless they're given permission by the rest of the body.

Unless the rest of the body is on board,.

Gets excited about the idea of a next generation of ministers of the gospel so that they're willing to sacrifice being able to talk to the pastor about their ingrown toenail so that he can invest some time in some potential ministers of the gospel.

So I think we have a couple minutes left here, but have you been picking up on some good principles of discipleship from this talk? I hope you have. Okay, some of the elements that I picked up on, I'm just going to say them out loud so we're on the same page.

I heard replication. Okay, I heard time investment. I think he mentioned mentoring at one particular point, right? So if you can just, in your mind, think of these elements as ingredients to make a nice discipleship meal, right?

Then I think we're pretty much there. I'm going to let him finish his thought here and then we're going to circle back around and we'll see if we can put all these pieces together. I'm going to talk about what I've done practically in my own circles in terms of discipleship.

We find individuals and we reach out. You heard from the stage during the Q &A of the incredible model that Mark Dever has been in this regard. And now you never see Dever. I don't care. You just don't see him without a couple of young men around him who are currently being mentored by him.

And many of these young men are young men who aren't even a part of his church. They come from somewhere else. He invests in them and then sends them back to be a blessing elsewhere. That's the other risk.

That's the other cost. Well, you know, one of the reasons that conferences like this are so popular is because they are mini reunions. Amen. There are people that you've been hanging out with the last couple of days that you haven't seen since G3 last year.

And in pastoral ministry, this becomes incredibly important. This idea of having these relationships and here's something that's difficult that we don't expect to be so difficult when you identify this next generation of ministers.

And you keep your eye out there and you plant the general seeds and you see them begin to take root in some lives. And then you invest a little bit further. And then you have the acknowledgement of this call in their life.

And then you invest even more. And then you give yourself and give yourself and eventually begins to bear fruit. And then all of a sudden they're raised up and you see gifts and graces in their life. And you have a partner at your right hand.

And then you plant a church and they leave.

Ooh.

Yep.

It would be awesome to keep everybody.

Yeah, that that's the formula. OK, I don't know if you caught it, but that's the formula in a nutshell. OK, again, OK, Bauckham is more narrowly focused on raising up ministers. My goal was just to extrapolate a formula that you can use principles that you can use to make disciples and fulfill the Great Commission at your church right now, whether you're a congregant, you're a deacon, or you're an elder.

Amen.

So let's chat about that for a moment. OK, there's a lot to say about this. And if you would like me to talk more about this and get more into depth, in depth on this particular subject, let me know by liking the video and just telling me in the comments.

Because I won't be able to plumb the depths of this issue. All right. I just for reference, I spent a year and a half teaching leaders at church how to lead and in the area of discipleship the way that Jesus did.

So this is not something I can, you know, unpack in a 40 minute video or whatever it is. OK, also, let me just say this very soon. I'm going to be giving some training in the area of discipleship over on my Patreon.

So stay tuned for those announcements if that interests you. OK, but there are just a couple of pieces that I think are helpful here. I just want to leave them with you for your consideration. Two things to bear in mind.

Jesus as the Model for Discipleship

OK, first, Jesus is your model for discipleship. OK, now let me start here with a question. How did Jesus model this discipleship, right? Bill Hull has written a lot of great stuff on discipleship. When I researched, again, I was teaching Jesus model of discipleship.

I relied on Hull's scholarship because I thought it was pretty thorough. OK, but Hull's more on the academic side. Robbie Gallaty is also someone who has written on the subject, but more on the layperson side of things.

So I'm just bringing them up because their books are very helpful on this. Gallaty suggests that Jesus essentially followed four phases of making disciples. OK, number one, Jesus ministered and the disciples watched him.

OK, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught God's truths while the disciples observed, they listened and they learned as part of the crowd. OK, so that's Matthew 5 -7, right? When Jesus went into the synagogue and he healed the lame and he cleansed the lepers and he gave hearing to the deaf, the disciples were there to watch him.

OK, number two, Jesus allowed the disciples to assist him in ministry. OK, pay attention to this formula. OK, when Jesus fed the multitude, he broke the bread, performed the miracle, but it was the disciples who distributed the supernatural meal to the hungry crowd and collected the surplus.