AMERICA’S COLLEGES - A History of Ministry Education
Many early spiritual movements in the United States realized the need for training people who were being called into the ministry. In the early days of the United States before 1800, education was largely oriented toward training men as ministers. Harvard College was established by the colonial legislature to train ministers (1636), College of William & Mary was established by the Virginia colony to train ministers connected with the Anglican Church (1693), Yale College was established by the Puritans to train ministers (1701), Princeton University was established by the Presbyterians for ministerial training (1747), Kings College was started by the Anglicans for ministers in New York City (1746) and it become Columbia University after the American Revolution. The Dutch Reformed Church set up Queens College (1766) to train ministers and it become Rutgers University. Baptists established Rhode Island College (1764) to train ministers and in 1804 it was renamed Brown University.
America’s history is filled with schools being established, identifying leaders who felt God’s call to serve the church and providing training to them. However, the training that took place in the exponential growth of Christianity on the frontiers of America was fueled primarily by two main groups. In 1750, the Baptists in America had a total of 180 churches. By 1792, just forty years later, they had become the largest denomination in America. During this record rate of growth, they had no Home Mission Board, no National Convention and no missionary society of any kind. They had started Rhode Island College but they operated with a very different educational philosophy. With a vision to reach the greatest numbers of people possible, they created a movement of resurgence-focused churches primarily using bi-vocational lay-pastors and church planting leaders who were trained to share their faith and start churches wherever they could.
By 1820, just thirty years later, the Methodists had passed up the Baptists in number of converts and churches. Methodism came to America in the 1760's and under the leadership of Frances Asbury, because of the church planting methods they used, they soon became the largest Protestant denomination in America. The secret of their exponential growth was scores of lay-preachers and lay church planting leaders who were released by the Methodist movement to share their faith and start churches. A hundred years following the American Revolution, it was clear that the two largest religious bodies in America would be the Baptists and the Methodists. The strategy behind the growth of these two denominations in the early history of the United States was their use of laypeople in creating new healthy, multiplying churches. Take a drive through the main streets of America and you will discover that in hundreds of cities and towns, there are historic Methodist and Baptist churches. Here is the method of how each of these spiritual movements planted tens of thousands of churches.
The Methodists impacted the expanding frontier of America and planted churches by training a "circuit rider." The circuit rider was not a college-educated preacher; he was simply a lay-pastor whose spiritual leadership sprang up from within Methodist discipling groups that Wesley called societies. "With this lay-training, a burning commitment, and the call to preach, the Methodist circuit riders rapidly covered the western territories...they paid the price to carry out the Great Commission."[1] As a result, early Methodism exploded with both spiritual and numerical growth through the ministry of these lay church planting leaders.
The Baptists had a different philosophy and method of planting new churches on the frontier, but with a similar story of success. Rather than having a traveling lay-pastor like the circuit rider, most Baptist preachers simply emerged out of the context of the community being reached. They were “lay-pastor farmers” with a call to preach. They were radically committed to preaching the salvation message they found in the Bible and establishing a church in their community. Because of their zeal for Christ and their ability to fit the sub-culture they were trying to reach, their witness and their leadership in planting churches was much more effective than the witness and leadership of professionally trained Presbyterian or Episcopalian clergymen who were being trained and sent out of the eastern city schools mentioned above. American church history teaches us that the two largest denominations in the United States fueled their movement as a direct result of their evangelizing methods and their ability to produce healthy, multiplying churches and leaders by training lay people.
We believe the Church of the Nazarene in the USA/Canada Region can learn important lessons from these spiritual movements that have shaped our American religious history. We stand at a similar crossroad, making important decisions about the future of how we will fuel the Nazarene movement in the coming decades. In our generation, using a variety of methods as the Baptists and Methodists did, we believe we should imitate their strategy and use lay pastors as church planting leaders. We believe the future of our movement’s ability to impact the USA/Canada Region rests on this issue.
NAZARENE HISTORY OF USING LAY LEADERS
The Nazarene movement in the USA/Canada Region began in 1908 with 228 churches and 10,500 members. Several missionaries were already connected with the movement, which led to the early establishment of new churches in several countries, i.e. Cape Verde, Mexico, Peru, Scotland, The movement exploded with growth in the first 50 years, through the planting of hundreds of new, Nazarene churches. By 1960, the movement topped 5,000 churches. The vast majority of these churches were not started with ordained clergy…they were started with lay people whom God had called to preach. Across the world, churches emerged in clusters to form new districts; mostly led by apostolic, evangelistic leaders committed to creating movements of healthy, multiplying churches.
The perfect movement historian is the person whose writing captures both the character and the spirit of the movement. “History reveals that while later generations may improve the facilities and techniques of a spiritual movement, rarely do they improve on the spirit of the founding generation.” (Board of General Superintendents, 1962, “Called Unto Holiness,” Preface, p 5).
The spirit of the early Nazarenes created a culture of contagious churches. Everywhere they went, they started churches committed to spread the message of full salvation to the next town, the next generation and the next country until the whole world was evangelized. Thousands of workers were needed to fuel the movement and they did. Lay leaders were called to preach, trained in local churches and sent out to evangelize and help plant new churches, usually using a “tent revival” of several weeks. At the end of the revival meeting, new believers were gathered together and a new church was started. Sometimes a pastor for the new church came from outside of the town, but often the new church was pastored by a lay leader who had recently been “called to preach.” As with most movements, education and training “caught up” with the movement as its spirit fueled the movement’s spread throughout the country. Colleges and Universities were created for the express purpose of providing Christian Education for both ministers and lay leaders. Nazarene educational institutions throughout the world have been raised up to fuel the needs of the international church. The “spirit of the movement” is one of the unique features that keeps fueling the vision of global Nazarenes everywhere. “Making Christlike disciples in the nations” has been at the heart of the church since 1908 and will continue to be what fuels our hearts in the 21st century.
[1] Frank R. Tillapaugh, Unleashing the Church (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1982), p. 29.