Greetings, Praise be to God that after several years of building relationships it looks likely (or at least more than plausible) that in about a year's time God will bring to pass a program of training in the bible and theology for many hundreds of local pastors. 99% of these pastors have no previous theological or pastoral training, most of them probably didn't finish highschool, a few of them can't read. But they have all found themselves in positions of leadership in their church because there is no-one better available to lead.

The first stage of planning this is to better determine their training needs. I'm at the stage now where I can effectively (and without offense) go to a hundred pastors and they will happily do a questionnaire to establish their base-line knowledge of the bible and theological understanding. I'm thinking about an effective range of questions to put to them which will establish their levels and I'd be grateful for your ideas - what questions would you ask? On each datum of understanding there should be maybe 3 or 4 questions from easy to difficult.

__________________
Paul
No denomination, affiliated with FIEC
"Deliver me from worldly dispositions, for I am born from above and destined for glory" - Valley of Vision
"They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation" - Peter

Paul,

This list might be more comprehensive than you asked for but, about a year and a half ago, I had the board help me develop a list of questions for my Church to ask of applicants to a Pastoral position. I've removed some of the questions that were more specific to an application but these questions, I believe, diagnose both basic Biblical/Theological knowledge as well as some Practical theological implications of how a person views discipleship in Christ:

1. What are the Scriptures?
2. What is the message of the Bible?
3. What was man created for?
4. How does the Bible relate to preaching and its message?
5. What is sin? On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is the remaining corruption that still abides in you?
6. What is the Gospel? Is the Gospel primarily for unbelievers?
7. Why does the Lord love someone like you?
8. What is the atonement?
9. If a Roman Catholic asked you to defend the sufficiency of faith to save from sins how would you answer him?
10. What does it mean to preach Christ and Him crucified?
11. What is the Trinity?
12. What is the Great Commission? How is it carried out?

__________________
Rich
PCA, Northern VA
Student, New Geneva Theological Seminary

WebsiteMaven - Web Hosting Reviews, Guides, and Advice to build and promote your web site.
SoliDeoGloria.com - A Community for Reformed Thought and Discussion

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Rich,
I would change #9 from faith to grace.

__________________
Alan
Seminarian, RTS Jackson, MS
OPC

It's a little bit OBE at this point Alan because the question was already used. Also, Roman Catholics don't deny the sufficiency of grace to save from sins. What they deny is the instrumentality of faith alone. As a diagnostic question, by the way, a less than fully developed term is good for the person to, perhaps, improve upon the idea when they answer the question.