“…put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished upon the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained.” (I Timothy 4:6).
There is growing evidence that points to a serious crisis in the way that Christian leaders are looking at the traditional methodologies supposedly training our people for the work of ministry. Statistics are now showing that formal theological training has a negative correlation to both church growth and the overall quality of churches. Of the highest quality and fastest growing churches, most of the pastors are not seminary graduates. On the other hand, of the lowest quality and declining churches, the number of pastors that have graduated from seminaries is greater. This is not to in any way devalue seminary education. It does however speak to a changing paradigm from how the church world has looked at theological education to how it now sees its role to equip ministers.
Ephesians 4, where Paul describes how Jesus, at His ascension, provided the Church that He had left behind with apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, has become a fundamental biblical text for leaders of this Apostolic and Prophetic Age. In this text, these ministry gifts are given one responsibility:”the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12).
Equipping the saints for the work of the ministry has several important implications if we take it at face value. One of them is that the people who need to be equipped are “the saints”, or all the people of God. Another is that each individual saint has been assigned a ministry that requires a particular kind of resourcing. A third is that “equipping” means to provide whatever resources might be necessary to enable persons to do what is required of them.
Equipping the saints, therefore, will certainly include schooling, but it includes much more. It encompasses a much broader scope than most traditional seminaries and Bible schools have been able to provide. It certainly needs to go beyond the standard curriculum of theological education. It wasn’t too long ago, for example, that throughout the seminaries where many of us were studying, an energetic debate was being carried on as to whether a seminary was or was not responsible for the spiritual life and character of its students. Many concluded that focusing on the students’ heads, to the exclusion of their hearts, was sufficient.
This is where DOMINON LEADERSHIP UNIVERSITY makes a difference using a 21st century – Kingdom approach. As an Apostolic-Prophetic institution, we are no longer satisfied with a monastic model designed to educate a few clergy on a higher academic level than most laity. Our desire is a broad, open, fluid system that will equip the saints for the work of the ministry. In short, we choose to be evaluated on our ability to perfect the saints, for their work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.
The focus of traditional theological education is on the quality of the academic institution. The focus at DLU, as an institution that focuses on equipping ministers is on the quality of the student, or the saint. The old wineskin presumed that if we have the right curriculum, the right faculty and the right scholarly environment, we will succeed in educating the highest-quality clergy. On the other hand, DLU is as a new wineskin recognizes the fact that we have so many different saints and so many different ministries that no one institution or no one educational style could possibly suffice. Subsequently, we provide creative training programs and academic curricula tailor-made to fit diverse ministry challenges and callings.
Whether the saints are called to the nuclear church, where we gather on Sundays and for mid-week services, or to the extended church, where we scatter during the week into the marketplace, DLU is structured to help prepare them for the work of ministry. Some will become fivefold ministers and will be ordained as elders in the church. Others will serve the church as deacons and lay ministers. Yet, even more will serve the Kingdom of God as servants in the marketplace in education, business, politics, manufacturing, and etc. Wherever the destiny, we are committed to getting you there.
COME! JOIN US at DOMINION LEADERSHIP UNIVERSITY!! We’ve made it affordable to do so!
Sincerely,
+Ralph L. Dennis
Bishop Ralph L. Dennis, Ph.D., D.D.