Andrew Fuller on Theological Education

Well done, I enjoyed it.
I had a professor in seminary who said something to the effect of don't get the big head due to the education you will receive here, their are many preachers out there who know more, preach better and are better shepherds than you will ever be and they don't have a formal education. I found those he was talking about.
I believe we had to read some of Justin Martyr, Arnobius and Origen work defending the the lack of polish of the Greek (Koine) the Scriptures were written in(NT). It was written by common people for common people with the leading of the Holy Spirit.
I guess it has come in my life span that there is more of a distinction of preacher who have have a seminary or Bible College education and those who don't. I been blessed by those who have and have not had a seminary education.

 

A friend of mine, a retired Presbyterian Pastor, told me once that he figured out after earning his Th.M. back in the day that he needed to unlearn much of what he had been taught in Seminary in order to minister effectively, or at least set some of it aside. He said shepherding requires that you live in the field with the people not look on from the window of a lofty study.

My old baptist friend locally from the Gideon's jests me that the worse thing I ever could have done is to earn a doctorate! He says that's how they ruin otherwise good preachers... lol

 

Funny about what your retired Presbyterian Pastor friend told you, I heard it a little different but same message from the late W. A. Criswell.

Might be more truth there than we perceive.

 

Or a different take: one can only become a useful scholar after working in various ways for God. Then maybe the preacher can handle humbly and better the pressures of academia.

I read a story from one of my sermon illustration books recently where Carl F. H. Henry did street evangelism when he was young. D. A. Carson served God as a pastor. (Read his great story of his father, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor.) Missiologist David Hesselgrave was a missionary for years in Japan, and the missiologists all were missionaries somewhere or other.