Approaches to Ministerial Training Among New South Wales Baptists: Initial Lines of Enquiry

Abstract

The author identifies a number of lines of inquiry, which when drawn
together, it is argued, define the dominant approach to ministerial
training among New South Wales Baptists by the end of 1920. These
lines of inquiry include: the level of education required of ministers; the
priority of preaching, evangelism, apologetics and Bible knowledge; the
desire of centralised authorities to oversee the training of all those
involved in preaching and teaching; the propagation of baptism by
immersion only linked to closed church membership as essential to
Baptist identity; the proclamation of Dispensational Premillennial
teaching of the Second Coming; caution about any ecumenical approach
that might compromise NSW Baptist identity; and lack of finances that
affected the approach to ministerial training.

By the end of 1920 the approach to ministerial training in NSW had
consolidated to focus on the production of preachers, trained to be
effective as evangelists and apologists with a thorough knowledge of the
Scriptures. They were not to be scholarly pastors. Five years of
ministerial training was required to produce ministers who would
propagate the NSW Baptist identity, which included baptism of believers
only by immersion linked to closed church membership and
proclamation of a Dispensational Premillennial understanding of the
Second Coming of Christ. These ministers began as Home Mission
agents and would continue after their graduation under the authority of
the Home Mission committee.