Introduction: Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Welcome to Exploring Missions, connecting mission needs with those equipped by God to meet those needs across the world or across town. And now, the host of Exploring Missions, Bert Harper.

Bert Harper: You know, when you think of missions, most of the time you think of someone being sent out from a church to a group of people that need to know the Lord. That is so true, but we're seeing people come to us many times as well. People coming in saying, "What must I do to be saved?" You remember the Philippian jailer? So, we're asking God to let Exploring Missions be a part of what God is doing in our world today. And one of those things is training. Now, what the Apostle Paul would do, he would gather around those men that would travel with him, and he would let them do part of the work. He would give them part of the work, leave them to do the work, send them before him to do the work. I wonder where he got that idea? Let me see. Nathan Harper, do you think it was Jesus gathering around twelve men and Him training them for three years? Do you think there's a connection there?

Nathan Harper: I believe there might be. You know, and it's great to credit Paul with a lot of things, but Paul did not come up with this plan. He did receive it from the Lord, like all the apostles did. So, Jesus, who is creation, created by Him and for Him, He was there at the beginning in creation. And He was working, He was the Word at work in creation. So, you think the Creator of the universe could come up with a plan and a mode of operation for how to disciple the world, and make disciples, and see the nations come to know the glory of the Lord? Yeah, Jesus is the originator of that.

Bert Harper: The vital part of this is training others, and that's what we're talking about today. Matter of fact, our guest is Jay Parks. Jay, thank you for joining us here on Exploring Missions.

Jay Parks: I'm so excited to be here and share about what God's doing in my life and through the ministry that we're working with.

Bert Harper: Well, the ministry is called Pastor Training School, and as you and I were talking, we remember when it was—would you call it in its infancy?

Jay Parks: For sure, it's only been three years ago once it started. Yes, sir.

Bert Harper: Was it three years ago? And Nathan Harper, we were there, and I heard what they were doing, and I was excited. And I've meant to get ahold of Jay before now, but I trust God's timing. He does it well. So, we want to talk to Jay today about Pastor Training School. Nathan Harper, you know what training is. Over there in Clarkston, Georgia, when you were there for five years ministering and serving with Global Frontier Missions, you did a lot of training for those missionaries that were going to go on the fields in foreign places, did you not?

Nathan Harper: Yeah, that's right. And sometimes people might have a question, "What's the difference in teaching and training?" To do training, you have to do some teaching. Teaching is more kind of a focus on the content and "here's what it meant and here's what it means." And then training takes that a step further, and "so what do we do about that? How do we implement that in a practical sense? How do we live that out?" And then there's another part of training that is then training others, right? So, it's multiplying that training in other people's lives. And so, it's exciting to be a part of that when you see the truth of God's Word come alive in somebody's life, and then lived out, fleshed out in their lives, and then it gets passed on to others. That's an incredible thing to be a part of.

Bert Harper: Well, Nathan Harper, I was asking Jay right before we started. I said, "Do you have a Bible verse?" And surprisingly—[laughter]—he said 2 Timothy 2:2! And this is Paul teaching Timothy to teach faithful men to teach others also. So, we've worn that verse out here on Exploring Missions. We talk about it a lot. But Jay, tell us a little bit about Pastor Training School. Just share with you where you would start, and then we'll pick up from there.

Jay Parks: All right, man. Thank you so much. Pastor Training School is kind of an overflow of a ministry that I got involved with with Church Missions Network. And I think Eric Perkins has done something with you before on missions, and I work with Eric with Church Missions Network in Eastern Africa. And we primarily use a method of training pastors to plant churches, and so we start cohorts or we call them schools there, and we'll go to a rural area and set up a school, and they'll bring guys in, and we'll bring in biologically trained guys that will teach those guys. And those guys have to sign a covenant with us at the end of 24 months that they're going to plant a church. And so, that's been the mode, and I've been working with them now for a little over five years.

And one day I had a friend of mine, Mclean Chimwaza—he's from Eastern Africa—he was here with me, and we were riding up Highway 55 north of Jackson coming back toward my place. We'd been out talking to partner churches, and we were just kind of dreaming a little bit. He says, "Man, what do you hope to accomplish, you know, in life?" I said, "Man, if I could lead 10 guys into ministry, that would be amazing. I mean, that would be a huge feat."

And he just looked at me with so much honesty. He was like, "Why is your number so low? That is terrible!" [Laughter] I remember thinking, "What? You're crazy!" He said, "Jay, if you would just do what we're doing in Eastern Africa here, you could raise up thousands of men."

I just kind of shrugged that all off, but you guys all know what happened after that. The Holy Spirit wouldn't leave me alone. Went home, would wake up at night thinking about it: "How could we do this? Does anybody care about certificates?" That was our mode of training there with certificates through conventions. We were looking at all these options. I said, "Man, but the difference in here and there is people have access to theological training here, and they don't so much there." But it just wouldn't leave me alone.

I went and sat with Dr. Ronald Meeks, my mentor, and sat with Doc and just told him about this. He said, "Jay, there's a huge need for bivocational pastors here. I mean, a huge need. I mean, there's churches everywhere without a pastor." At the time we were talking three years ago, the number was hovering close to 500 just in the state of Mississippi for Baptist churches alone. Over 70% of those were less than 100 people, so those are bivocational areas for the most part. And he said, "Jay, there's just no pastors coming." There used to be a long line, but there's just not coming anymore. At Blue Mountain Christian University, there used to be a line of students coming to be trained, but they're just not there anymore. It's just dwindling. "What are we going to do?"

So, we put together courses. At the time, it was 10 courses; we've developed that into 12. Basic tools that guys would need to walk into a small, little rural area church that they could train and be trained to be equipped to be able to go in and teach biblical messages there and lead in church revitalization.

So, I think to answer the question, how all this got started, it really got started out of an overflow of ministry with Church Missions Network. But it also really got started in my childhood, being raised up in a rural church. Man, I was raised up in a small, small country church. We were a church of less than 100, and I remember over the years of having the issue of pastors would come in, and then they would leave. And then we would start another year or two-year cycle trying to find the next pastor. And we luckily, I mean, God really blessed us, and we found Brother Everett Childers, and he came in and did an amazing work there, and God moved in powerful ways.

But my heart really is for these rural churches all around where we live right now. I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them without pastors, especially in the Delta. The Delta's a huge area.

Bert Harper: Delta in Mississippi.

Jay Parks: So, how can we raise up guys, and how can we train those guys? And I believe a little bit of it's our fault, Bert. I think part of it's our fault as pastors. We haven't been calling out the called, man. That's something that's kind of drifted. I remember as a kid hearing that preached, like "calling out the called." Have I done it that much? Not really. That's just not something that we do that much anymore, and now we wonder where all these guys are, but we haven't been calling them out.

And so, that's really where all of this came from. The "why" of what we're doing is really because of the rural church. How can we help the rural church to raise up a guy who was born in that community, most likely will die in that community? Who else would be a great servant for the local church than that guy? Man, he can love them, lead them into revitalizing that church. It would be amazing. And so, that's really our "why" of what we do. I'd be happy to share more of a method of how we do that, but that's your first question of why are we doing this.

Nathan Harper: Yeah, Jay, this is awesome, and we definitely want to hear more about how this plays out. But for any of us that have paid attention—and I wouldn't consider myself like paying close attention, but it's noticeable, the lack of next-generation leadership stepping in to pastor churches and lead small, rural or country churches, community churches.

But let me ask this, we're on Exploring Missions, we're talking with Jay Parks with Pastor Training Schools. But Jay, let me just ask this kind of question. I know the originating of Pastor Training Schools kind of came about through some influence with an East African brother. I think you said, was he from East Africa?

Jay Parks: From Malawi, East Africa.

Nathan Harper: Okay, so there's a little bit of some roots there on the mission field, if you will.

Jay Parks: Yes, sir.

Nathan Harper: But your focus on a rural church in the South, here in the United States, can a church like that have a global focus? Can they have a missional impact just, you know, since we're talking about exploring missions, we're talking about pastor training, but can that pastor gain a vision of impacting the world from their small country church?

Jay Parks: If he reads the Bible, I think he can. [Laughter] You know, like Acts 1:8 calls us in all four areas, you know, but the last one is the ends of the earth. And man, we're planting that seed in these guys that we're training. Look, man, you're not just responsible for your Jerusalem where you're sitting. You're responsible for all four areas: Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. If you get in and you teach the Word expositorily, you're going to come across these missional things, and they can't be ignored. So, absolutely, the small rural church can make a huge impact.

My small church at Old Union Baptist Church, they hadn't been on a mission trip in over a decade. And man, I just cast this vision for going to Africa, and within three months, we had 10 people signed up to take to Africa. It was amazing. And so, we're seeing a splash. And you know the ripple effect of what that's done inside the health of our church? It's been incredible. I mean, it's hard to even imagine not having a missional focus for the small church.

Bert Harper: You know, when you do a ministry, like when you started Pastor Training School, you have a target group. You catch what I'm saying? On missions, Paul started out with a target group, and as he went out on the mission field, it expanded. He became more of an apostle to the Gentiles. And so, as you've started this Pastor Training School, and you've experienced growth in this, and you've seen God do these great, great things with purpose and with all the vocational training they've done, tell us the expansion. Three years ago, where you were and where you are today to your program, started with 10 basic subjects, but it's expanded to 12. Tell us a little bit about that growth and how it happened.

Jay Parks: So, basically, we started with six guys that they just wanted to grow. They didn't even say that they were called to ministry. [Laughter] We just started with those six guys at Abbeville, Mississippi, right outside of Oxford, at First Baptist Abbeville. And I started training in spiritual formation. And those guys, man, they were eating it up. They started telling guys about it; others started reaching out. I took a few selfies with those guys and posted them on my Facebook and had people from Tupelo reaching out asking about it.

And I called my friend Matt Powell at First Baptist, and just said, "Hey Matt, would you..."

Bert Harper: First Baptist Church, Tupelo.

Jay Parks: Yeah. "Would you be willing to teach Old Testament?" He said, "Are you kidding? I eat and breathe Old Testament. I love it!" So, he started a class, and we launched, I think, eight guys in the Tupelo cohort. We launched one down toward Sturgis and Mathiston. And by the end of our first year, we had four cohorts with 38 men in training. We graduated our first guys last December. They got a certificate of Christian Ministry, and we graduated 14 of those.

It was amazing, the experience of that, but we have seen an explosion now because we have tapped into something that there was such a need for. We went from those four cohorts to January the 15th to nine cohorts across the state. Then we went to 13. As I'm sitting today, we're on our second week of courses that started in August. On our second week, we have 29 cohorts, 290 men across four states right now.

Bert Harper: Okay, started with six.

Jay Parks: Started with six.

Bert Harper: And now, what was that number?

Jay Parks: 290 men in training. We got a total of 29 cohorts. And so, basically, what we do is we'll find a guy like you, Bert, that is serving faithfully in an area, you got a heart for the rural church. You reach out to us, maybe you're an association guy, maybe you're friends with an association guy, maybe your group reaches out, however that works. And what we do is we come in and we allow you guys to use our curriculum. We have a total of 12 courses now: Spiritual Formation, Hermeneutics (how to study the Bible), Homiletics (the art of preaching), we do Old Testament 1 and 2, New Testament 1 and 2, Pastoral Ministry, we do Evangelism (Amen! We need to be teaching evangelism), we do Church Revitalization, Intro to Theology, and we also do Discipleship Multiplication. Those are our 12 courses.

And so, those guys will gather at your church on a Monday night from 6:00 to 8:30, and you'll come in, you'll train those guys in spiritual formation, if that's the course. You'll do two and a half hours of training. That sounds like a lot; time flies by. We'll provide you the curriculum, and you'll go through, and we ask you, man, we've done a lot of the legwork, we're trying to take a lot of the stress off of you. Then what you do is you simply just come in, and you bring your personality, and you bring your experience, and you bring your heart as a pastor. That's the most important part. These guys will gather, and you'll sow into them for the next six weeks. This is really just subject-based discipleship. That's what this is.

But it's focused on raising up guys that intentionally be able to go and preach the Gospel in pulpits just all over the place. Right now, we have a list of 70 men that are doing preaching supply across the state of Mississippi that have completed our Hermeneutics and Homiletics, and our teachers have signed off on them. There's not a single week that we don't have 12, 24, 36—you name it—guys in pulpits all over our state that are preaching. This is just the beginning. It's amazing what God is doing through this ministry. And our heart really is to invest in faithful men—2 Timothy 2:2—that will then go invest in others. And that's exactly what we're doing as Pastor Training School. So, that's our heartbeat.

Nathan Harper: That's awesome, Jay. It's just incredible to see how God is at work, multiplying that impact. Even though there's a lot of movement happening, it does feel like it's on the front end of something bigger and greater. I think your friend from Africa was—ten was a small number!

Jay Parks: That's right. He was a prophet.

Nathan Harper: I would love to come back to that here in a few moments and tell you how I see this thing coming full circle. It's amazing.

Bert Harper: Well, go ahead, share with us. How about that?

Jay Parks: Yeah, so right now, I said we've got 29 cohorts currently. I'm in conversations—we've got a few that have started in Arkansas. We launched there about six weeks ago. Our first class launched two weeks ago. We made a deal with those guys six weeks ago, and then two weeks ago, we launched a class. We've got 34 guys in training there in two locations in one county.

I've begun conversations right now with guys that are connected with the Arkansas Baptist Convention. I've got meetings set up. They're talking about, if this thing continues to go as it is, they said, "Man, we could dream about having 20 of these cohorts across the state in the next year."

And we're in the same conversations in Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, of launching these cohorts. I started doing the math the other day. If we launch 20 in Arkansas, we launch 20 in Alabama, we launch 20 in Tennessee, and our number continues to edge up in Mississippi, that's 100 cohorts. Our average of cohorts is 10 guys in a cohort. I broke in tears when I did the math the other day and thought, "A thousand men."

Bert Harper: Yeah, your 10 was multiplied by...

Jay Parks: A thousand men, yeah. It's incredible to think about the power, one, of multiplication. We all know that, man. You've got to multiply; you don't add to your church. Man, you develop those guys so they can multiply.

And we're seeing that. We can see the fruition of what Mclean planted in me three years ago, of what God could do in a powerful way if we're just faithful to follow.

Bert Harper: When you're talking about this, most of this has been work in Baptist. Do you have churches, other denominations, that have come to you and asking you for this? Are you willing to say, "Hey, we'll take all comers if you really love the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God, and you want to learn it, come ahead"?

Jay Parks: So, what we're doing is we, with our partnership with Blue Mountain Christian University, every person that graduates can get a certificate from Blue Mountain. They're even offering some upgrades. It's pretty amazing, our partnership with them.

Because of that, we lean toward Baptist teachers, like all of our teachers have a master's degree. They need to have a master's degree from a seminary—it doesn't have to be one of the Big Six, but it has to be in like-faith. So, these guys will teach, but as far as students, man, we say, "You love Jesus, we love Jesus, come, let's learn about Him."

And so, we have some Apostolic guys, we've got Pentecostal. There's kind of a pretty wide spread. We're just happy to have them, and man, we're teaching them straight out of the Word of God, and we're teaching them these theological principles that we really believe are Bible-centric. So, if you love Jesus, come talk to us about it.

Bert Harper: That website is pastortrainingschools.org?

Jay Parks: .org.

Bert Harper: .org, and you can find out about those 12 subject areas, you can look at the individuals, you've got pictures of those at different locations all over. It's a great website to learn about it.

Jay Parks: You can apply there if you're interested.

Bert Harper: Oh, okay.

Nathan Harper: So, Jay, as we're talking, I'm thinking of just kind of—well, I'm thinking about on the mission field how disciples are made and multiplied, and then how leaders are developed, churches are planted. And it's really the very similar or almost the same process as far as educating leaders, going a little bit deeper beyond just the milk of the Word, but into the meat of the Word. And as you guys are studying the whole counsel of the Word of God from cover to cover and building a strong biblical foundation for these pastors to not just get started, but to be healthy and thrive and to multiply their ministries.

So, a key concept is that education, theological education for, let's say, new leaders is very important. Yes, you have seminary, okay? And so seminary does provide a pathway and it fits a need for certain people. But on the—if you're thinking on the mission field, like Africa, Malawi, or even right in the heart of the Bible Belt in Mississippi. What can happen sometimes is you send certain people off to seminary, and there are some hurdles there. There could be costs that are restrictive, there could be previous education limits that someone might not be able to qualify to go to seminary if they don't have a college degree yet.

And so the whole idea of sending somebody off to a, maybe let's say, a big city or a centralized location, and sometimes those guys don't ever come back.

Jay Parks: They don't come back, that's right.

Nathan Harper: And so you've kind of extracted that leader from the community where they need to serve. But what you guys are doing is basically theological education by extension, and you have these cohorts in small communities scattered around all over the place, easily accessible to these men who can come in once a week, get the training, and then stay in the communities where they need to serve. Can you speak to that a little bit of how you're seeing that play out and why that's important?

Jay Parks: It sounds like you've experienced this on the mission field because in Africa, if you bring a guy to a city, to a seminary—IMB had a seminary in Malawi; they've since pulled back on some of that, and that seminary's not operating now—but guys like Mclean who would come into the seminary, they would have running water, food, beds, all these things. They were blessings. Almost all of them would never go back to the rural area. They just never would.

So, what we're doing is we're taking that same strategy where we take the education to them. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to take all those barriers out. Because realistically, I was a guy that was 28 years old when I felt called to ministry. I had a successful business, I was married, I had a kid on the way. I was scared to death to go to school. I was so afraid.

But I'm thankful that I had a pastor that pushed me, and he said, "Stop being a sissy and get up and go." And I'm thankful that he did that. I was able. Not everybody's able. So, that's really who we're targeting: man, that guy that's got that feeling in his gut like, "What am I going to do?" Just that feeling enough is enough to keep a guy from pursuing a calling that God's placed on his life.

But we're trying to take all those barriers out. We're just saying, "Man, come let us show you, you can do this. God can use even you. God can use even you."

Bert Harper: When I know—I grew up in a small church, village church, rural, rural area, pastored there in those churches. And the need is great. And as you have said, Dr. Meeks from Blue Mountain Christian University said, "There's not that many coming anymore."

I served on a board that would give scholarship money to students going to school, and I served there when I first started, from when I started, six years later, you had a hundred less of these students that were going to school to prepare for ministry. And so, there was a gap there, and this gap is real.

Notice what Paul did, and I want you to speak to it: Paul would come, and he would ordain elders in each place, so he could leave them there. Now, sometimes he left Timothy there for a while, or, you know, and he'd go on and then he'd come back and check on them. The important part of serving where you are and where God has planted you is vital. And that's what I see the school doing. Is that the heart?

Jay Parks: That's the heart. That's the heartbeat of it, and I really wish the Lord wouldn't have put that one thing in Scripture where He says that a prophet is not welcome in his own town, because people keep bringing that up over and over. And to that, I say, "You're not Jesus, okay? That's one thing."

But certainly, there is a need for a guy to just step up where God has strategically placed him. Just step up. Just step up and say yes. Put your yes on the table, be willing to put yourself out there, and God can use that availability.

Bert Harper: Well, let's do this as we're getting close to the end. Give the website, Jay, and tell that individual person, man, that's listening why he should do that. Do it in—you got a minute about it. Go ahead, but do that. That guy may be listening; he may be a Sunday school teacher, but, hey, he can be a part of this.

Jay Parks: Yeah, our website is pastortrainingschools.org. If you're listening to this right now and you know that God's called you to step up and to do more, I just want to say you can do it. You can do it. There are guys all around that want to walk with you; just step up. Maybe your pastor says, "Man, I really want to invest in men like this," reach out to us. We want to walk with you to invest in men. God has called us to faithfully step in and to continue to invest in men who will invest in others. That's what He's called us to do, so, hey man, come on. Man, we would love to lock arms and walk with you.

Bert Harper: Nathan Harper, this is exciting, and it is missional because they get the heart of Acts 1:8, they start preaching through the Scriptures, missions is going to be a part of the training, isn't it?

Nathan Harper: Yeah, and, you know, just like Paul at the school of Tyrannus in Ephesus, it talks about basically the same kind of thing Jay's talking about, how Paul would train many men to send them out. And it says that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. That's our desire, that people all over, whatever region that you're a part of, would hear the word of the Lord.

Bert Harper: Thank you for listening to Exploring Missions, and those of you that feel the call, get in contact with Jay. And I want to tell you, God can do great things from 10 to a thousand! Yes, it's possible, and you can be a part of it. Thank you for listening to Exploring Missions here on AFR.

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