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The downplaying of the importance of a solid Bible education, an emphasis on shouting and histrionics to the detriment of Bible content in preaching, and the emphasis on emotionalism as the evidence of spiritual reality has weakened large numbers of churches in “the South” even to this day.
As early as the turn of the 19th century, there was opposition to serious education of Baptist preachers in the South, as described by B.F. Riley, History of the Baptists in the Southern States, 1898:
“With rare exceptions the ministry of the Baptists of the South at this period was composed of illiterate, but earnest and devout men. ... These sincere, honest, though unlettered men ... insisted that if called of God to preach there would be supernatural provision for the duty as occasion might require.”
Consider the Primitive Baptists described in The Man Who Moved a Mountain, a biography of Virginia preacher Robert Childress. One preacher shouted, “Praises be to God that I am ignorant. I’d only praise him more if I were ignoranter” (p. 22). Hearing such things as a child, Childress recalled thinking to himself, “Did God hate learning?”
Carter Woodson described the same thinking among many black preachers in the South. “Preaching to his congregation, the minister would often boast of having not rubbed his head against the college walls, whereupon the congregation would respond: ‘Amen.’ Sometimes one would say: ‘I did not write out my sermon.’ With equal fervor the audience would cry out: ‘Praise ye the Lord’” (The History of the Negro Church).
Some in England had the same thinking. “In the 1600s to the 1800s Baptists were divided about the desirability of an educated ministry. Some believed that education--‘human learning’--was inhibiting to the Spirit. For example, Samuel How, a Baptist preacher in Coleman Street, London, wrote a pamphlet with the title: ‘The Sufficiency of the Spirit’s Teaching without Humane Learning’ (1639)” (Norman Moon, Education for Ministry: Bristol Baptist College, 1679-1979).
We agree that preachers don’t have to have worldly education to be effectual, but they do have to have good biblical education and they do need to be ever-educating so they can feed and protect the flocks. They need to be serious students of the Bible and of everything pertaining to the ministry of God’s Word.
“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Ti. 2:15).
“Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine” (1 Ti. 4:13).
“Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1 Ti. 4:16).
“Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (Titus 1:9).
“For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat” (Heb. 5:12).
“For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:27-28).
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