Building for the Future, One Pastor at a Time
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast - where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace Churches with our executive director. Mark, we have an esteemed guest.
Mark Prater:
We do, we do. Recently, we had the most famous man in Sovereign Grace. That was Bob Kauflin.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes!
Mark Prater:
Now we have the Dean himself, Jeff Purswell.
Benjamin Kreps:
For the few who don't know Jeff, Jeff is a pastor at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville. He serves on our leadership team as the director of theology. And for the purposes of this episode, Jeff serves as the dean of our pastor's college in Sovereign Grace, and he's been serving there, for going on the end of three decades. I believe before the podcast you were saying the 25th class is preparing to graduate any day now. That's incredible! You have seen many things over the course of three decades at the Pastor's College. You have seen it turn from something that was much more, or let's just say less organized, less thorough going as a school and really it's evolved into something much more substantial. Something I got to experience 13 years ago and that year was a precious year for Kate and I. So here we are 13 years later and what a joy it is to be able to talk to you today and to hear your thoughts about the Pastor's College. So let's get into it. Jeff.
Jeff Purswell:
Thank you guys for the invite. Always a joy. Really grateful for what you do week after week on this.
Benjamin Kreps:
We love having you. So you have been leading the Pastor's college for 28 years, 27 years, something like that.
Jeff Purswell:
Twenty-seven.
Benjamin Kreps:
27 years. So over that period of time, what have you learned in your role as the dean of the Pastor's College and why do you remain convinced, and we're assuming you do, that the Pastor's College is vital to our overall mission of advancing the gospel by planting and strengthening churches.
Jeff Purswell:
Yeah, what have I learned? That's one of those questions. It's like you're asking an old man, what did you learn about life?
Benjamin Kreps:
It's going to be a very long podcast.
Jeff Purswell:
A few things. We don't have time to cover all those, but it's a good question in terms of the Pastor's College itself and especially connecting it to why I remain convinced and I do, I think more than ever, this is not an obligatory answer, it's just the case.
First thing I would say is the faithfulness of God, and we all know this as pastors, but when you serve over a number of years, you become very acquainted with weakness and with limitation. And that's true chiefly personally, but also the standpoint of the pastor's college, just resource and staff. I mean we are small. Our family of churches is small, but to see what the Lord brings about in the lives of students and their wives and families year after year, I mean we don't presume upon that. We seek to labor to maximize the experience.
But I mean, a former student is actually in the pastor's college this week. He's visiting this week with his pastoral team, and when I was introducing the speaker, I was introducing the class to these visiting pastors and one of those guys who had just graduated was sharing about his own year and he said, just we as a family, we've said this many times, but we were saying it again the other day, best year of our lives. And you hear that and it is humbling. You plan for that, you pray for that, but you can't manufacture that. So nothing builds my faith more for the pastor's college than that, the faithfulness of God.
So I've got to say that first. Another thing I've learned that's related to the first, and that is the power of the context. A big part of what the Lord uses each year obviously is the context, the bringing together of men and their wives and their families to experience the entirety of the pastors college year together. I mean, and you guys know this, they're not just taking a similar curriculum. They're not gaining the same formation, that they're not passing each other in the halls, the text of scripture, that they are immersed in the body of doctrine, that they are exploring the ministry skills. They are strengthening and acquiring the ministry experience that they're gleaning from the multiple instructors they are experiencing and processing and being stretched and challenged by and being shaped by all of this together and the cumulative effect of all of that, all experience together, it's just potent. And when you look at the trend in pastoral training and theological education, I mean everything is moving. It's not just moving, it has largely moved to online training.
And you can deliver a lot of information online, but I've never been more convinced you cannot shape a pastor online. You cannot impart life online. You cannot reproduce the corporate shaping and the mutual learning and all of the sharpening that comes from a shared experience and mutual encouragement and friendship. And so obviously not everyone can come to a context like the Pastor's College, but if you can, you just can't approximate, I don't think the undistracted focus and the intensity and the reinforcement and the cumulative discipleship that comes with a context like this. So those are two things. One other thing I think particularly since we've been in Louisville, particularly in the wake of our polity, a third one that is definitely something I'm more convinced about than ever, I'll just call it partnership assimilation.
Because of who we are as a family of churches, I mean the Pastor's College is not some standalone educational institution we are connected to. We emerge out of, we are supported by, we serve our family of churches and because of who we are as a family of churches and pastors listening to this, this, but we are a confessional family of churches built upon the same doctrinal bedrock. All of what we do is informed by that. So we're confessional and we're also a connectional family of churches. We are building together. We are strengthened by each other. We are pooling our resources and our experience and our history and our values. So given these characteristics of who we are, there's nothing like a shared training and developmental context like the Pastor's College to inform our shared doctrine and values to inculcate that shared doctrine and values too, and to galvanize our future leaders in that shared doctrine in those shared values in the pastor's college, our students are, they're obviously immersed in this doctrine and in these values and in the ministry training, but they're also connected to pastors and leaders throughout Sovereign Grace.
They're connected to men throughout Sovereign Grace, they're connected to churches throughout Sovereign Grace. They're connected and have a front row seat to so many shared mechanisms we have in Sovereign Grace. Aspects of our ecclesiology, our church planting, our national church planting group, our missional philosophy and practice, they get to know members of the leadership team. They get to know some of the members of the executive committee. They're getting to know pastors from different regions throughout sovereign graces. They get to know Sovereign Grace staff, they get to know Sovereign Grace Music. They get to know all that's happening here. And again, it's not, I could go on and on with this one, but it's not that great training can't happen with a guy's local team, by his pastors of course. But given our partnership that Confessionalism and Connectionalism, our ecclesiology, our shared mission, I just know of no better way to instill that into a man and thus build him into our family of churches linking him with other guys that he's going to be lifelong friends with. And he's had this shared experience with, and thus, I mean year after year, what's happening is we are helping to secure our future health and our unity in Sovereign Grace. I just don't know of a better way to do that than the pastor's college. And I would say that if I was not involved in the pastor's college, I've said before, I've sort of become, I get mocked a lot of times that I'm not great at promoting the pastor's college and I own that and I'm kind of proud of that. I think if I was great at promoting, it might be something wrong with that. But I have become a bit radicalized in recent years, especially as I see the trends of seminaries. I mean my own alma mater has just, they are shutting down other seminaries. I could tell you they're on fumes, other seminaries that their curriculum is changing and so much more is going online. I've never been more convinced of a setting like this where pastors are being shaped and families are being shaped and doctrine and values are being instilled and then men are then left or they leave and they're sown into our family of churches. I really do think it's vital for our future. So those are some of the things I've learned.
Mark Prater:
I'm sure you've got a lot more lessons that you can share and we would benefit from, but those are excellent, Jeff, thank you. Thank you for sharing those and for leading the pastor's college for 27 years about to graduate your 25th class. That is the fruit of your labors. If I've got my numbers right, you and your PC staff have equipped, I think over 300 men now for pastoral ministry. So I wanted just to ask you, based on your experience, describe the profile of a PC student who maximizes his year at the PC and by doing so maximizes the benefits from his years at the year at the pc.
Jeff Purswell:
Yeah. Well that's a great question. That's actually a difficult question to answer because I mean, one thing I've certainly seen over 25 classes is how the Lord uses the pastor's college in various ways for all sorts of students, men in different seasons of life with different backgrounds. I mean younger men with little theological training, younger men with a lot of theological training, older men with a lot of experience, but not a lot of formal training. Older men with PhDs. I think we've had two PhDs, we've had a few Ds, many MDs, so men with a variety of training, men who've been in Sovereign Grace for years and then men for whom the pastor's college is a sort of means of entry into Sovereign Grace.
One level, I wouldn't want to answer that question in a way to sort of disqualify or discourage anyone from considering the pastor's college because it is amazing how the Lord, we have a program, we have a set curriculum, we do things a certain way, but the Lord is so able to sort of angle those things and hit guys where they're at with different life experiences, et cetera. So that's the first thing I'd want to say, but it's a good question, Mark and I do think there are things we can identify, I think some important things that can help. I think you used the term maximize that can help maximize the experience. I think the first thing there, and this is going to be pretty obvious, you'll guess this one, and that is a provenness in character. I mean it's obviously a qualification for the pastor's college. The character qualifications of the PC are basically the same as those of an elder. But the reason that's important is that just positions a man to receive everything that the pastor's college offers.
And without going through all of those things, but the top of the list, a heart for Christ at the heart of everything that we do, all of our focus, all of our motivations, I mean we want pastors, I mean it should be the definition of a pastor, but we want pastors who are enamored of Christ and so we want our students, so a godly guy who loves Christ, he loves his wife, he's seeking to serve his family, and he comes in knowing, wanting to learn and grow and be challenged. I mean, he's just going to thrive in the pastor's college. I have said so many times over so many years to churches, to my own church here, the host Church of the Pastor's College, I've said it to people outside, we really do have, if you wanted to say, alright, what's the secret weapon of the pastor's college?
Whatever it is we do, is there a secret sauce to that? And I always answer the same way. It's the men that gets sent to us. You get great men, you get godly men and the Lord works. So that's just critical, and I think every pastor in Sovereign Grace when they're thinking about a guy's sending him, they're going to have this in view, but I think it's good to say because it can work against a misconception of the pastor's college that we're simply a doctrine delivery system. It's much more than that character. Now if you think of 1 Timothy 4:16, it's sort of a guiding verse for us. I would add to that, something else that you might be obvious, but a doctrinal base is very helpful. Now, I'm not saying that the pastor's college is a finishing school that comes after all of his theological training. As I said a second ago, we've got guys at different parts of the development, but it is the case that the curriculum comes at you fast. You're processing a lot, you are doing so quickly, and so it can make it much more efficient when a man has some foundations or some foundation of biblical theological training, a deep relationship with his Bible, a familiarity with the fields of doctrine. And along with that, the vocabulary of theological study. Whenever you study any field of study, so much of learning is just getting the vocabulary down.
If you're studying accounting, if you're studying chemistry, there's a basic vocabulary that just enables you to interact with the ideas. So having that in place is helpful. The pastor's college is not a good place for a man to hammer out basic convictions.
Am I reformed or not? Do I believe in believers baptism or not? I had love to spend tons of time on such things. We don't have time to hash out fundamental doctrines that we can confess together, but having a foundation is really helpful to position a man. Then when he comes to go deeper in his understanding because he is going to reflect deeply on those basic convictions and hopefully go deeper in his understanding and sharpen his convictions and strengthen them and further inform them as well. But a guy who's been studying is obviously going to be in a place where he can I think steward what's coming at, and so I think that can be very helpful. All right, so that's what I say, character and a doctrinal base. A few other characteristics though that I would definitely say or go into a profile of a guy who can maximize the opportunity, and that would be one, just a guy who has a hunger for this experience, a guy who realizes his need for this experience, a guy who appreciates the unique opportunity.
I'm thinking of one guy in particular who's in the class this year. I mean, he's been wanting to come to the pastor's college for well over a decade. I think he's been to four pastor's college info meetings over the years. I could have turned it over to him and let him share about the pastor's college before he even came. But he finally came, it finally came together and he just said, I've heard him say a couple of times I need this year, my church needs me to steward this year. And when guys come in that way, it's just a delight and they absorb it and they really benefit in a maximal way. Another way to put that maybe is combined with that is a sense of stewardship. A guy who comes and says, I'm not just here for me. I am doing this for my church.
I am doing this for Sovereign Grace, I'm doing this for the body of Christ. So it's not just about, well, what am I going to do? What am I called to do? I mean, obviously we wrestle with those things. We want to pray about those things. We want to gain clarity from the Lord on such things, but having a sense of stewardship that I'm here for more. What happens here has the potential to affect generations, the people that I'm going to come home and serve and preach to. I think about that phrase and 1 Timothy 4:16, I mentioned a moment ago, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. In so doing, you will save both yourself and your hearers. And so the sense of coming to God, my sermons are going to be shaped by what I learned here, and those sermons are going to shape lives, and those sermons are going to shape families, and those sermons are going to shape future adults. Those sermons are going to shape people who aren't even saved yet. I mean the ripple effects of what can happen, I think when a guy comes with that sense of a judiciousness about what can happen here and thus have a hunger and a sense of need for it, man, I think that really positions a guy to maximize the opportunity. So character, doctrinal, base hunger. Another, this is going to be obvious too, but just coming in ready to be diligent.
Diligence is there aren't just character requirements for pastors. There's work ethic requirements for pastors that are in the scriptures. Do your best to present yourself a worker. Sorry, pastoral ministry is not for lazy people. You might be godly in many other ways. You might get more rewards than a pastor in heaven, but it's not for you if you're not a worker. But recognizing the PC is going to be a lot, but it is doable. The PC guy said that the other day, Brian was telling me this, Brian overheard him saying to one of the students, the PC is a lot. This guy's had a number of challenges this year, physical, et cetera. He said, but it's doable. And that was a wonderful thing to hear. It's going to require a stewardship expressed in diligence because there are going to be weeks when you have a lot coming at you from a number of different directions, heavy weeks where you might have added to that a family crisis or an outside commitment or an extra assignment, a paper that's on top of the normal weekly rhythm or maybe preaching in a church. It requires diligence to make the most of a year that's already very full, but it's going to help a guy. It's going to help him maximize it. Another thing I definitely want to add, and that is a guy whose heart is to maximize his wife's experience.
I've sort of become radicalized on this as well. The wives sacrifice so much to come to the pastor's college. They sacrifice massive amounts during the pastor's college, but they also receive a lot. And so when a man is, I think of an application of Philippians 2:3-4, considering his wife's pastor's college experience more important than his own pastor's college experience, looking out for his wife's pastor's college interests and not just the interest of himself that can really benefit his wife, that can position her to really experience all the avenues of grace that come her way during the year, it'll benefit his marriage. So I want every guy coming in going, this is not just about me. This is about my wife, this is about my family. And having faith for that and wanting to position his wife for that. One other thing I'd want to mention, and this is something that I think experience has shown us, and that is a student who's got a strong relationship with his pastor or his pastoral team and his home church and wants to maintain that relationship with his pastor, his home church. So a good relationship and a sense of trust with his sending pastor. It makes a big difference in the year. It's really impressive when I see a student who comes and he loves his church, he loves his sending pastor and he trusts his sending pastor and he's in touch with him. He's looking to him for direction, the other side of the pastor's college. I mean, that strengthens his partnership that serves the man's heart. It serves the pastor and the church who sent them. It cultivates gratefulness for that church. And it really feeds into what I was saying earlier about stewarding the pastor's college beyond just his own personal needs. It positions the man to steward that experience for the benefit of his church as well. This is really, I mentioned this because it's really alive to me right now.
We are in May, we have two weeks left, and guys are, and they have been for a few weeks. They're thinking very much about what's next. They're thinking very much about what the next season holds for them. They're in touch with their pastors. They're looking to the future, and that process is so much more healthy and it's so much stronger when that relationship with his pastor and his home church is strong. And it is only right because the man wouldn't be in the pastor's college without the pastors who have invested in him. He wouldn't be in the pastor's college without that home church that has helped shape him, and that has sacrificed for him, and that's home praying for him. So I love when I see that, and it really does go into making a guy's year at the pastor's college even more fruitful. I think that's good. So those are some thoughts.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, certainly from everything that you described, anybody who's interested in attending the pastor's college or sending a guy to the pastor's college, we need to understand there's not a one size fits all approach to this. It can look like a lot of different things. I remember in my pastor's college class, we had a guy finishing his PhD and a DMin and several MDs, and then they had me with nothing beside my name. Well, I did get a GED at the time, so I have letters beside my name and I amen everything you saying.
Jeff Purswell:
A great piece of year, Ben!
Benjamin Kreps:
A great PC year.
Jeff Purswell:
You were a great contributor to that class as well.
Benjamin Kreps:
Well, thanks. And now currently finishing a seminary degree, which you said earlier about the difference in the online experience compared to the in-person experience at pastor's college. That is a gap that is much larger than maybe even some people think. I mean, I'm really in this online experience. It really is just information testing, regurgitating, unlike Pastor's college, which was this rich environment of relationship and worship and connection even as we learned together. And so for anyone who is interested in coming or sending a guy to pastor's college, maybe they're seeing some challenges here financially with making that happen. Well, a few years ago, you started a pastor's college development fund. Tell us why you started that fund, how the money gets used and how someone can get to that money to help a guy get to pastor's college.
Jeff Purswell:
Yes! The main reason we started that fund is pastoral training is not cost efficient. That's the simplest answer to that. I mean, like higher education in general, tuition does not cover the cost involved for no educational institution does it do that? Now, we are obviously graciously supported by our churches, and I couldn't be more grateful for that support and for what's behind that support, which is the conviction that the pastor's college really is a vital part of our future. And again, I've never been more convinced of that. But I do think, and I have thought that it's wise to build a financial base, a foundation that can help support our efforts. We'll never have a 50 billion endowment like Harvard, but I do think it's wise for us to work toward a funding base that provides some flexibility to what we're doing in the pastor's college.
Then the money's used in a variety of ways. I mean, one is an important one, and that's infrastructure. I mean, each year we obviously have operating costs, not to do a deep dive in financial accounting for educational institutions, but we have operating costs. But having adequate infrastructure and delivery systems for our operations is critical, and those costs are typically above well, your normal operating costs, your educational costs. And so for instance, in our new facility here, we recently upgraded our sound system, our video capabilities that can help leverage our instruction both for our students and for external uses for our churches. So that was a vital need and something I very much had in mind, especially I don't have to talk about technological advances, but technology really does enable you to extend your reach and to improve the educational experience for people. So that'd be one a second important use of those funds, which we haven't used a lot of yet, but is in resource development.
And this is tied to the first one, but because of who we are in the pc, what our churches have purposed to create in the pastor's college, we have resources. That's the difference in the pastor's college and a individual local church. It's not that the pastor's college is, obviously the pastor's college is not a local church. It's not that we're superior to a local church, but our churches have decided to pool training educational, theological, biblical resources for the benefit of all of us. And so we have, therefore, because of our church's conviction, we have instructional resources, we have materials, we have a well of theological biblical knowledge that can benefit not just our full-time students, but also our pastors and our churches as well. And so a fund like this can give us more flexibility there. Be these specialized courses for our pastors, particular instructional contexts, which we are looking more and more to do in recent years, well past years I should say.
We used to do, I used to do many sort of mini conferences. I would turn a PC course into kind of a mini conference. And so we had our church admin and finance course, which our students take. We turned that into sort of a mini conference for administrators. We did the same thing for evangelism. We did the same thing for preaching. So we've done preaching cohorts, or not cohorts, but preaching labs basically for our pastors to come in and do those. We did those in years when our resources were more abundant than they have been in the past few years, but we are excited about starting those up. I'll give a little, I was hoping to announce this, but I hope should I save this announcement? I'll just say it for the benefit of the listeners off the Mark Prater podcast.
Benjamin Kreps:
On the Mark Prater podcast.
Jeff Purswell:
I'm hoping beginning in the fall to offer online for our pastors, Hebrew. I’ve wanted to do this since day one of the pastors college.
Benjamin Kreps:
Let's go!
Jeff Purswell:
There are online resources for that, but to do that online via a cohort where guys are able to do it together. So they have the structure, they have the accountability, but they're also doing it together, and they're also doing it through the lens of pastoral ministry, which we would do it just like we do all of our courses. I hope to start that up two semesters this coming year for our guys who want to pick up Hebrew who haven't had the opportunity to do that. Our fund gives us the ability to do those kinds of things to serve our churches beyond the confines of the classroom. A third use it's related to this, is that of strengthening our staff resources. I mean pastoral training. And when I say that, I don't just mean online theological data dumps and there's nothing I'm grateful for online data dumps.
I mean, online training is good to get information, and there's a lot of information that's real important for us. Pastoral ministry is theological at its core, but holistic pastoral training, which involves more than just information. It's labor intensive, and unlike say, music and it doesn't generate income, the horizon of the fruitfulness, I'll put it this way, the horizon of the fruitfulness of pastoral training is long-term. It has a long tail to it. You don't see it for a long time. And so we're constantly looking for ways we can utilize other people in serving our churches, providing instruction, developing resources, and so therefore, or thereby making visible what's happening in the pastor's college so that it can serve others. Ben, you mentioned for us of your question there, how can people get their hands on the money? That's an interesting way to put it. I don't have a particular way for people to get their hands on the money. Hopefully they will benefit from the use of the money.
But having said that though, it is my hope that as the fund grows, it can also be utilized for underwriting the cost of PC education, so scholarships and et cetera. And so that's definitely something that we do have in view. It's something we want to be careful about, obviously, because you could easily drain your fund and lose the leveraging of that fund in an ongoing way. But that is something that we'd definitely love to see in the future.
Benjamin Kreps:
Thank you for clarifying that. So a better question would be as well, how can someone give to the fund?
Jeff Purswell:
That's a great question. Yeah. Actually, the Pastor's College, in keeping with our history and Sovereign Grace, we make it hard to do good things. Typically its hard to give to the Pastor College website or the Pastor College Development Fund on the website. But if you go to the website and there's a tab at the top of the page, give now on that page. So if you go to the give page, there's a dropdown box near the bottom of that page for choosing your designation. And if you do that dropdown box, you'll find there the PC development fund. So that's the way to do it. Now, however, and I just learned, and this did not prompt for our listeners, this did not prompt Ben's question, but I just learned in recent days that on our give tab, you have general giving and then you have development funds. Well, the Pastor's College Development fund is not on that fund. And so I raised that issue with our website powers that be, and I was assured that very soon it's going to be listed with the other development funds that are easier to find on the website.
But if you go to give and you find where you can choose your designation, hopefully soon it's going to be listed with the other development funds that we have. That's how someone can get funds to the pastoral for the PC Development fund and our pastoral training efforts.
Mark Prater:
Thanks for explaining that, Jeff. And I just want to add my voice to anyone listening to this podcast that would even have interest in giving to the Pastor's College. This development fund is a place where you can designate your funds. And so please prayerfully consider that it will be put to good use, as Jeff said, that bears fruit long into the future has that long tail, as he said so well. Jeff, thanks for taking the time to be with us today. On behalf of all of the pastors and churches in Sovereign Grace, we thank God for you. Yes, we do. You are a wonderful and unique gift to our family of churches for a number of reasons. But you have, through your investment into men have strengthened and I think even transformed the preaching of God's word each and every Sunday. And as a result, there are churches throughout the world where people are hearing that good preaching and their lives are being transformed by the word as the Spirit works. And that is, that's an investment that's very hard to measure, but has lasting impact. So thank you for all your labors. Thank you for leading the Pastors college for 27 years. We, as a family of churches, we thank God for you.
Jeff Purswell:
Very kind. Thank you, buddy. Quite the honor.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yeah. And personally, thank you, Jeff. I couldn't imagine being in the role that I'm in now without all that I gained from that wonderful year at Pastor's College 12 years ago, 13 years ago when I graduated. So personally, I thank you and I thank you for being on the podcast as well. So thanks for joining us, and thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next time. Lord willing. Bye for now.