A Biblical Education

I posted recently on being mentored and thought I might elaborate.

Since becoming a Christian I have questioned the requirement that a person must go to seminary or a Bible College in order to teach and preach about God’s Word. I had never seen a Biblical model that required a formal education to learn God’s Word. The closest thing I could think of was the older Levite priests training the younger priests but is not the same thing. I understand that the original intent of seminary was to be able to concentrate education in one place and have more than one student trained at a time, thus maximizing the teachers effectivness. There is nothing wrong with this, even Jesus taught eleven of the apostles not including Judas who killed himself. Paul did take some time to educate himself after his conversion, but it was not a formal education like he received as a pharisee. The most effective model I have seen is the one of the mentor and student. The model I think of most is Paul and Timothy.

So I am talking to G_d and asking him what I am to do now that I have surrendered to this calling, and I am told that He will send me a teacher. Shortly after that Birdie sends me an e-mail from one of he e-mail loops. The content of that e-mail was on part of a book that the author of the e-mail was writing on having Biblical world view. I get a small voice telling me to contact him. I wrote a long e-mail to him telling him my story, fully thinking that this guy is going to think I am a nut. He writes me back that night to tell me that he would be happy to mentor me, that he thinks the last place a person looking to preach the Word is in seminary,and that although being called to pastor a church by G_d and ordained by the Southern Baptist Church he is not currently pastoring a church and has been put in the unique position to be able to help me.

I shared this before, but I liked what he said about himself so I will share it with you again.
“I am reformed in my theology and extremely conservative theologically. I am irreverent, sarcastic and critical of almost all institutionalized Christianity. If it is not Biblical, I want nothing to do with it.”

His name is Jimmie Kersh. I have also found out that he has a blog as well. It is the first one on my blogroll.