I’ve long said that, for all its blessings, one failure of your typical seminary is that most graduates make it all the way through without either knowing, or caring that the whole of the Bible says not the first word about seminaries. In fact, in the two lists the Bible gives us of the qualities of an elder, a ruler in the church, thirteen of fourteen are character qualities rather than academic. Somehow we have come to believe that what equips a man to serve the body of Christ well is a graduate degree.
The Shepherd’s College is our plan to get back to the Bible in preparing men for gospel ministry. While a seminary focuses on academics, we focus on character. While the seminary teaches in the ivory tower, we teach in the context of the local body. Seminaries have not given us godly shepherds to watch over the flock of the Great Shepherd, but academics and entrepreneurs, professionals and psychologists, technocrats and hirelings. That’s what institutions create. Living bodies give birth to living bodies.
Our Lord’s model, though it was far too organic to be rightly called “a model,” was to disciple men. Jesus taught His disciples by investing His time and energy in them, by speaking with them of the things of God while about the business of doing the work of the ministry. Jesus never gave a lecture on the nature of sign gifts. Instead He gave a lesson on the folly of Job’s friends by healing the man born blind, that they, and we might know that He is the light of the world. The disciples witnessed Jesus as He ministered in Judea. They learned from His sermons. They asked Him questions touching on the lives of those to whom they ministered. As “graduates” the disciples went out as apostles, those sent to speak with the authority of the Sender.
The Shepherd’s College, while certainly potent enough to prepare men to be “able to teach,” is rounded enough to prepare men to be better men of God. The reading list includes the wisdom of Edwards, Murray, and Calvin. But it also includes the wisdom of C. S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, as well as the insight into the gospel that flows from the pen of Sinclair Ferguson.
The list is rigorous, but it is but a part of how we will prepare men for ministry. We will meet weekly to discuss the reading, as well as to cover pastoral issues as they arise in the local church. Students will visit the sick and the imprisoned with their pastor, tussle along with the elders over tangled relational issues in the church. Students will be instructed in both hermeneutics and homiletics, but in real time as their pastors prepare and deliver their sermons. They will be shown how the Bible washes the Bride of Christ.
We begin August 30, with our opening cohort, men ready and eager to test the waters, willing to risk reforming the status quo and zealous more to become better men than to get a better job. You can read more and apply here. We have limited scholarship funds available. If you are a church looking to come alongside this bold venture, you can reach us at theshepherdscollege2021@gmail.com. Please be in prayer for us as we seek to follow the Great Shepherd of the Sheep, to serve His flock, and to prepare others to do the same.