From Pastoral Apprentice to Pastor

This Sunday, we ordain and install the first graduate of our pastoral apprenticeship program as an assistant pastor at East River Church.

He came with some ministry experience and theological education, but needed a real opportunity to finish his training. That's what we gave him.

When we started the program, I had bigger, more formal aspirations than what we pulled off. We lacked structure. We didn't lack substance.

He had the opportunity to experience some of the rarer or more unique ministry situations...

He saw what it looks like to enter a denomination, realize within a year that you had to leave, and then walk through that process without blowing everything up. He watched how you deal with an officer who began moving toward planting his own church without elder approval, and even against it. He was there when we wrestled through finding a building for 400+ people with a limited financial track record and putting together a "building campaign" that made sense for us. He sat in on the decisions behind running, or not running, large-scale conferences. And much, much more.

And then the fundamentals. How do you run an elders meeting? How do you conduct membership interviews? Lead a congregational meeting? What actually happens in a hospital visit? How do you handle premarital counseling? How do you correct the proud, encourage the weak, and help marriages hold together? Etc etc.

You can read about these things. But you can only truly learn by going through them together. The more of that a man has before the responsibility ultimately rests on him as one of the elders, the better off he and his future church will be.

Anyhow, I'm proud of Jason Svintsitsky and grateful to have him as a peer on our elder board. We will also be looking for another apprentice this year. It's a two-year unpaid program, but we will pay for your education, ideally through Grimké Seminary or Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And make sure you get experience both in the fundamentals and, probably, some more unique stuff. More on that soon.