Brothers,

I'm doing some research on the subject of pastors who did not receive traditional training, yet were used powerfully in the pastorate. I have thus far:
Lloyd-Jones, Spurgeon, and William Jay. Are there others that you know about in your reading that were not trained by a seminary?

Thanks!

__________________
Pastor Jerrold H. Lewis. (Dipl. IT; Assc. A; B.Th; M.Th Candidate, PRTS)
Lacombe Free Reformed Church
"A hot iron, though blunt, will pierce sooner than a cold one, though sharper."

JOHN FLAVEL

My Blog - Click HERE
Our Church site - Click HERE

John Brown of Haddington, John Bunyan, Augustine

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Gil Garcia
Rehoboth Reformed Church (RCUS)
La Habra, CA


"Indeed, one might say that as far as the doctrine of justification
is concerned, if you are not on the road to Wittenberg or Geneva, then the old proverb is indeed true: all roads lead to Rome." Carl Trueman

I always fashioned myself in the line of Howell Harris but he was never a pastor. He was a traveling preacher in the Welsh revival.

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Bob Vigneault (Bawb Vēēn-yo)
I just know there's got to be a pony in here somewhere!

The Heartbeat of Heaven (blog) MySpace (Music), MySpace (Personal)
Member of Christ Presbyterian Church, Janesville, WI OPC www.christ-opc.org

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yes, but a good example of usefulness all the same. Thanks.

And one of my great heroes. Do you know the Lloyd-Jones paper "Howell Harris and Revival" in The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors?

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In Christ's love and service

Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC

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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon

You can start with the Apostles. "unlearned and ignorant men."
(Acts 4:13).

Was D.L. Moody formally trained? We would disagree with him of course in much of his theology, but there is no denying he was very much used by God in his time.

__________________
Sterling Harmon
Coventry, CT
PCA
Deacon
________________

"Whatever is laudable in our works proceeds from the grace of God."
-- John Calvin, Institutes III:xv.3.

"Our Lord God must be a good man, to be fond of worthless fellows. I cannot like them, and yet I, myself, am one."
-- Martin Luther, Table Talk

Zwingli had a Masters of Arts. Does that count as formal ministerial training?

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I don't think Moody was formally trained and he wasn't formally ordained. Others prominent in history who I understand weren't formally trained include Finney, Scofield, Chafer, Ironside, etc. but I don't know if that's exactly what Jerrold had in mind!

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Chris Poe--Attending Grace Community Baptist Church, Mandeville, LA

"There never was a man in the world without a creed. What is a creed? A creed is what you believe. What is a confession? It is a declaration of what you believe. That declaration may be oral or it may be committed to writing, but the creed is there either expressed or implied."—B.H. Carroll

Moody was not formally trained.

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Ivan Schoen, Pastor
Maranatha Baptist Church
Poplar Grove, Illinois USA
http://maranatha-sbc.org/
"When a denomination begins to consider doctrine divisive, theology troublesome, and convictions inconvenient, consider that denomination on its way to a well-deserved death." Dr. Albert Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Why should a man be allowed to teach others if he is not first willing to learn himself?

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Do you mean no academic training or just seminary? Samuel Miller studied under his father for the pastorate and Charles Nisbet at Dickinson College.

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Chris Coldwell
Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
• Naphtali Press: Presbyterian & Reformed Books
• The Confessional Presbyterian, A Journal for Discussion of Presbyterian Doctrine & Practice
• The Blue Banner Archive

When heresy rises in an evangelical body, it is never frank and open. It always begins by skulking, and assuming a disguise. Its advocates, when together, boast of great improvements, and congratulate one another on having gone greatly beyond the ‘old dead orthodoxy,’ and on having left behind many of its antiquated errors: but when taxed with deviations from the received faith, they complain of the unreasonableness of their accusers, as they ‘differ from it only in words.’ This has been the standing course of errorists ever since the apostolic age. Samuel Miller, Introductory essay, The Articles of the Synod of Dort (1841).

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I don't think a willingness to learn is the issue here. The issue is the question, "Learn from where?"

Non-traditionally trained still means trained.



The Third World has many, many examples of locals being raised up by God to take the Gospel to their neighbors and planting churches within their own homes.

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

How are they trained if they are not trained by other ministers of the word?

Actually, what's really surprising is that Calvin never formally studied theology!

We must remember in this discussion that people like Lloyd-Jones, Spurgeon, and Calvin were freakishly intelligent. It's difficult to emulate such giants.

Blessings.

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Marty

From Creation to New Creation via Redemption

And didn't they all have a part in setting up colleges for ministers? Clearly their experience was not normative.

My first Pastor Joe Gwynn whom I consider to be a true Modern day Puritan Pastor.

I would like to ask you if the Spurgeon college grads would be considered as not having been formally trained. Al Martin at Trinity doesn't hand out the sheep skins either.

BTW, I am not fully condoning the practice but do recognize that some men are called to Pastor that have not been formally trained.

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R. Martin Snyder (Moderator)

1689er
Harmony Baptist Church (Member)
PuritanCovenanter MSN Blog
PuritanCovenanter's MySpace Page

"Our object should not be to have scripture on our side but to be on the side of scripture; and however dear any sentiment may have become by being long entertained, so soon as it is seen to be contrary to the Bible, we must be prepared to abandon it without hesitation."
William Symington

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Spurgeon and Al Martin's men have been trained by ministers of the word - I would not argue that you need a Seminary degree. However, men in the pastorate who have not been trained should certainly need to be the exception rather than the rule. IMO a man would have to have some confidence in his own ability to think he could step into the pastorate without a period of intense formal training.

I can help you get your Bible degree in SEVEN DAYS!

Brain surgeon might take a month but hey, it's still faster.

Most were trained by missionaries or by the preachers that were trained by missionaries.

So they were trained then?

The lack of training for a minister is the exception and not the rule. There is no reason a minister should not be trained. I had been a minister for six years in an Arminian group, before I came into the Reformed faith. I had an undergraduate degree in the New Testament, but no seminary training. I went back to school and got my MDiv at Knox Seminary. I am glad I did. Presbyteries are starting to water down the standards and this is a shame. Any man, if he has a calling, can certainly go back and get some training. The average age of seminarians today is 35. I knew men at Knox who were in pastorates and worked hard to achieve an MDiv and they were not young men.

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Stephen Welch
PCA Teaching Elder
Nova Scotia