Seminarians and Pushing a Global Perspective

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Quatchu

Puritan Board Sophomore
I hear allot about how there are so many seminary graduates and not enough vacant pulpits. I talk to seminarians on a daily basis who are struggling to find a pulpit because they wish to stay in Southern California, or am only willing to be called to a specific part of the USA. Now if its true that there is such a influx of seminary graduates looking for pastorates that rather then close seminaries would it not be more useful to push a more global perspective for the church. If all the seminary graduates who struggled to find pulpits instead put themselves at the disposal of confessional churches in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe, can you imagine what could be done, through the world.
 
The Lord Jesus Is At Work In Asia

UPH in Jakarta is open to receive more teachers. I've preached/presented there before. A fine school.
 
Invitation to Indonesia | TGC | The Gospel Coalition

Mission-minded people in the West should consider an opportunity that sounds too good to be true: working at a Christian school or hospital, in a top-notch facility, without raising support or learning a new language—salary and benefits included.



In other words, Indonesia is calling.

Most Westerners might not guess that Indonesia holds the fourth-largest population on earth or that its more than 17,000 islands stretch wider than the United States. Perhaps more surprising, Christianity is flourishing in this country that hosts the largest Muslim population in the world.

The Republic of Indonesia grants a kind of religious freedom, even though about 85 percent of its people are Muslim. This freedom is relative depending on the area and is not as much a part of the cultural fabric of certain islands like Sumatra. In fact, while it's “legal” to be a Christian in Indonesia, it's actually difficult to switch religious affiliations. That said, this freedom as it works out in Java in particular, along with a surging middle class amid the extremes of rich and poor, allows opportunities for the gospel. And a colonial history of Dutch Calvinism makes the country more welcoming to Reformed theology.


I am passing through Jakarta in Mid-March and if anyone is serious and interested, I can help accompany them to this school and introduce them to some friends.
 
This might be less of a problem if the aim of a seminary degree were more targeted at propagating the gospel than finding secure employment...
 
A minister of the gospel is always subject to being redeployed to wherever the King calls him to serve. This is one of the freedoms of the minister's calling; that he is no longer bound to the pressure to make the right career moves and land in the right, comfortable location. He is bound, instead, to the Lord.

I realize this is true, in many ways, of every believer. My wife and I have said this to ourselves several times when contemplating life decisions. And it's not easy to actually live by such a mindset when you reside, as we do, in a resort community. But still it is (or should be) the way to think, particularly for gospel ministers.
 
It is the case that there currently appears to be a glut of seminary-trained men for the open confessional church pulpits.

Solution? Well, prayer that the Lord would open doors of service for these men here and abroad and raise up many others for the harvest.

Confessional churches here need to be seeking actively to plant churches and get some of their seasoned men into such places, together with younger men who might show special gifts and graces for such. Such churches ought also to be more active in sending men abroad and seminarians should be open to calls worldwide. Certainly what Justin suggests must be a part of this.

Much more, however, churches stateside should be spending their "capital" both in men and material to plant churches stateside and abroad, and to support men in works abroad. We have vast resources in the West, especially America and Canada. Some churches have significant if not vast reserves. This needs to be spent on sending the gospel here and abroad.

It is right, Justin, for you as a seminarian to call your fellow seminarians to be willing to serve as you indicated. But it is also necessary to call churches that have a good deal of resources (and quite a number have quite a lot) to invest those resources in church planting and foreign missions.

Peace,
Alan
 
Let's also keep in mind that not all seminary trained men are called to the pulpit.
 
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