Getting high quality preaching from trainee ministers - with Toby Neal

How can a senior minister best train junior preachers (student ministers and assistant ministers) in preaching?
There’s a tension we all feel: we want to be a training church raising up the next generation of leaders and yet we also want to make sure that the quality of what happens in our gatherings is high.
We don’t want a Sunday morning ‘plane crash in the pulpit’, where people at church that day think‘I wish I had stayed home today’ or ‘I wish I had gone to St Bloggs down the road.’
Toby Neal is at Vine Church in Surry Hills in Sydney. Toby says there’s been days when he sat at the back of the church, head in hands thinking, “Oh dear - I hope we don’t have anyone new here today!”
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[@DubboPresbyterianChurch]

A great interview - thanks Dominic and Toby.

[@wokka99]

Student ministers are near impossible to get in standard diocesan churches. It’s either size related or proximity to college related. It would be great to organise the student ministers with churches who really need the help! And we would sit with them and give them great training too. Toby’s training method is exactly what I have done for lay preachers and that would extend to students but no one will ever come!!

[@wokka99]

Student ministers should come to the church in partnership with the college. They learn theology at college and then we, the rectors of the parishes train them in the practicalities. It’s not ‘come and see’ it’s ’come and be trained’. What Toby proposes in sermon prep should be bare minimum for someone having a student minister. If that’s not happening then why do college students keep going to churches that aren’t going to invest in them? Come to the churches that not only need you but will train you!!!! They are out there, we can look after you!

[@winneryeahmate]

Sure underpreparedness is not good - but so is overpreparedness to the point that other responsibilities such as pastoral care, resolving conflict etc are overlooked This I've seen in several evangelical churches in the past (not my current one). Let's have a balance.