I’m currently on holiday in London, and one of the great things about holidays is that it gives you an opportunity to worship with Christians that ordinarily you wouldn’t meet. On this holiday, we worshipped at All Souls Langham Place, and Grace Church, Hackney (a plant from St Helen’s, Bishopsgate).
It was particularly good to be able to worship with evangelical anglicans. Both of the churches we visited are firmly at the centre of true evangelicalism, and are fully committed to the authority of Scripture, and a biblical understanding of justification by faith alone. In both, the sermons were helpful, and (as you’d expect) expounded the Scriptures clearly. Rico Tice’s powerful preaching on the plagues in Egypt was a particular highlight – I could happily have listened for several minutes longer.
Unfortunately, however, the most significant impression left on me from the two services was the contradictions that seem inevitable within evangelical anglicanism. Welsh evangelicalism and evangelical anglicanism have not exactly seen eye to eye, particular since John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones very publically disagreed on how evangelicals should respond to the liberal denominations they find themselves in (oversimplifying, Lloyd-Jones said they should get out, Stott said they should stay in). It is only recently that those barriers are beginning to come down, so I welcomed the opportunity to express that unity, albeit in a very small way.
In this final post looking at funding theological education, it’s time to (finally!) come to some answers. Most men starting in the pastoral ministry are in their thirties, with a little life experience and some theological training behind them. I don’t know the exact figure, but thirty to thirty-five would seem a reasonable estimate of the age of most first-time ministers. If so, by God’s grace, that man should have thirty to thirty five years in the ministry before retirement.
Many churches will support the men and women that they send to college. But few churches are able to find anywhere near £40-£75,000. It is hard to get accurate figures on the amount of support the average student gets from his sending church, but it is often just a few thousand pounds – sometimes less. For many churches even a few thousand pounds is still a considerable sacrifice – but it leaves the student with a lot of money to find.
