‘Why we need to train, retrain pastors’

Church growth expert, Dr Francis Bola Akin-John, who is also an author and public speaker, shares his thoughts on why pastors need training and retraining to build healthy churches. Excerpts:

How did you conceive the idea of WATPRICO?

I was in a conference in Thailand for pastoral trainers, when the idea came that we need to do West Africa Pastoral Trainers Congress (WAPTRICO), where we can bring people, training pastors or have the vision of training pastors. I discovered, with due respect to our Bible Colleges, seminaries, and schools of ministries, that we are not producing healthy pastors.

How?

The Bible colleges and seminaries seem to give them too many theological issues that they may not be able to fully understand by the time they graduate and come to pastoral ministries. On their part, the informal sector has too many shallow, imbalanced and ephemeral teachings with nothing to do with preparing somebody to pastor a healthy church by the time they graduate. Leading the church becomes a big problem. So, the idea came that we should bring people from formal and informal setups for standard procedures and arrive at some resources and materials that will equip anybody God calls to pastoral ministry. When he/she passes through those trainings, at least we can say that we have given them the basics and get them ready for lifelong effective ministry.

What kind of training should ‘healthy’ pastors undergo?

‘Healthy’ pastors should be trained on biblical interpretations, pulpit mannerism and pulpit delivery and communication. They should go through training on social media and internet. They should go through training on church planting, leadership, relationship, dispute resolution, crises management and the likes. Those are things that we have discovered if you want to make pastoral training relevant, they must undergo. Pastors planning to be healthy should go through training that will develop character, knowledge, personality, communication, relationship and congregation.

The health of the pastor is the health of the church and the health of the church is the health of the society. If the pastor is not healthy, the church will never be healthy. And if the church is not healthy, the society will never be healthy. Those are issues we want to deal with at WAPTRICO.

Can we have perfect pastors?

No, but we can have growing pastors. There are no perfect pastors because all of us are in the making but you can be properly trained, equipped, grounded, molded in a way that you can help others without losing your life. Pastors are dealing with souls and destinies. They have many pressures and challenges. Being perfect is not possible but we can have holy, effective pastors. You can be a model and good example to others. You can make mistakes sometimes because you are human, but you must be growing in character, measure and capacity. You can minister in such a way you get people ready for heaven.

Are healthy pastors made or born?

They are made. Even if they were born, they must still go through training because pastoral work is a continuous learning process. You go for training for updating to interpret the scriptures; do the right things, handle issues, crises and souls. Jesus says I will make you fishers of men. He makes them by training them for three and half years.

But there are some ‘big’ pastors who didn’t go through pastoral training. What is your take on this?

That is why we have lots of issues in our churches. That is why we have lot of issues with biblical misinterpretations and misapplication. If we don’t want these things to continue, we need to be properly trained on how the church should be run. We need to go through training. We need to check our training, and go for retraining in scriptures, in handling churches, in administering churches, in leading churches and sundry issues. We need retraining on how to avoid issues, scandals, rumours and certain unpalatable issues in the ministry. So, for me, the key is we need to go back to basic fundamental training. For too long a time, the church in Nigeria has taken training for granted. You can’t be functional in the military if you don’t go for training and each promotion comes because you pass through a course. Pastors are also into spiritual military work. If you are not trained for it, you will become a casualty. It is a spiritual battle.

Does personal development make up for training?

Of course, personal development is good but it is not the final. Whoever wants to do this work must go for training. Pastoral and ministerial works require lot of training because we have issues with people and money. Most members you are handling are hurtful and injured. They have lost hope in life and it requires proper training for you to know how to handle them.

What would be your advice to trained pastors who appear not to be doing so well compared to their untrained counterparts?

Those ones should update their training. You might be properly trained, doing a good job but lack strategies to win your society. You may be concentrating inside your church to win the community. There are things you should do you are not doing. Those who seem to be doing well with crowd and money, they too should update their training because having crowd does not say you are pleasing God. Crowd is not church. You can draw crowd and yet, not draw people for heaven. You can have people that are in church yet they are not in Christ.

You are targeting one million healthy local churches in ten years. Is that realisable?

It is realisable if you have 500 pastoral trainers and each trains at least four, it is achievable. I am not saying I am going to do this alone. That is why we are calling this. We want to partner with formal and informal trainers to draw up standard training for pastors and each should run with the vision. If I can have 500 pastoral trainers who can take the resources and run with it, it is achievable.