Paul’s exhor­ta­tion is to the pas­tors of these churches in Eph­esus, and his con­cern was that they spir­i­tu­ally feed the flock of God. This speaks of spir­i­tual edi­fi­ca­tion, or in other words, spir­i­tual edu­ca­tion. Paul’s obser­va­tion is that the wolves will enter in and “not spare the flock”. They will fleece the flock for every­thing that they can take from them, because the mark of a griev­ous wolf is that they cvet another man’s sil­ver, gold, and apparel. In other words, the mark of a false prophet is their per­sonal finan­cial enrich­ment at the expense of the brethren. Is it just me, or do other peo­ple think it unjust, out­ra­geous, and exces­sively (wolfly) to hand over half the price of a house to have some­body edu­cate your chil­dren? A cou­ple with both work­ing can barely pay for a house for them­selves in 30 years of pay­ments, and if they send two kids to a typ­i­cal Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity, they will prob­a­bly hand over close to that much between tuition, room and board, and all the extras that these wolves such out of you. What hap­pened to Christ’s prin­ci­ple, “freely you have received, freely give” Mat 10:8? As a pas­tor of a local church, I observe what I under­stand God’s rule to be. I give freely to my church peo­ple, and as they have funds and God puts the desire in their hearts, they give. I don’t con­di­tion my min­istry to them on their finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to me. As a man of God, I have to learn to be con­tent with what God gives me, and not try to force the sheep to give me even so far as their own life blood.

Ezek 34:2 Son of man, proph­esy against the shep­herds of Israel, proph­esy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord unto the shep­herds; Woe[be] to the shep­herds of Israel that do feed them­selves! should not the shep­herds feed the flocks?

Ezek 34:8 [As] I live, saith the Lord, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because [there was] no shep­herd, nei­ther did my shep­herds search  for my flock, but the shep­herds fed them­selves, and fed not my flock;

God con­demns those spir­i­tual lead­ers that put them­selves into a posi­tion of rule over God’s peo­ple for the end of per­sonal finan­cial enrich­ment. Sim­ply put, this dis­qual­i­fies them from min­istry. While most local churches have a mod­est build­ing and facil­i­ties, Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ties have mil­lions of dol­lars of invest­ment in prop­er­ties and build­ings. The peo­ple who work there in gen­eral make good money, at least those at the top. The Bible repeat­edly put the exam­ple of renounc­ing riches as the goal of a man of God. These peo­ple try to jus­tify the just the oppo­site. They rea­son that they “have to charge for their ser­vices” because it is a uni­ver­sity and there is sim­ply no other way of doing things except that they charge the students.

They pro­mote them­selves say­ing that they are a “Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity”, and although you won’t get many to go on record pub­licly say­ing this, their atti­tude is very clearly, a grad­u­ate from their “min­istry” is a thou­sand times more pre­pared and bet­ter Chris­t­ian and min­is­ter than some­body who is a prod­uct of a local church. Per­haps this is true, because many pas­tors of local churches have put their min­istries on “coast­ing” (doing the absolute min­i­mum and min­i­mum qual­ity) because their think­ing is that all the real Bible teach­ing will come when their young peo­ple go off to Chris­t­ian col­lege. First of all, this is sim­ply a sur­ren­der of their mis­sion as if they could not do it, yet they won’t get out of the way either, they stay in con­trol of the local church, just barely main­tain­ing it, and the local church’s mis­sion (in their eyes) has changed from evan­ge­liza­tion and equip­ping the saints to do the work of the min­istry to be a feeder church for some Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity. All the activ­i­ties and focus of their church become prepa­ra­tion and con­vinc­ing their mem­bers to send peo­ple to the Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity that they some­how “are part of.” Sec­ondly, this atti­tude basicly leaves all the adults help­less and floun­der­ing, because they work and pay the bills and can­not drop every­thing and go off to col­lege. A NT bib­li­cal church is one that takes its evan­ge­lism and equipping/discipleship oblig­a­tions before the Lord seriously.

At the same time they are telling us that it is absolutely nec­es­sary to make the Chris­t­ian TEACHING INSTITUTION “ordained of God” a “for-profit” insti­tu­tion, they them­selves are tak­ing a large salary. Their rea­son­ing is that any pres­i­dent of a sec­u­lar busi­ness that takes is $100 mil­lion a year ($20,000 tuition each x 5000 stu­dents) has the pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent with salaries of 2–5 mil­lion each. While pub­li­cally they do not men­tion these num­bers, they exhort the stu­dents to be thank­ful because mom is wash­ing floors some­where back home, and dad also is doing some humil­i­at­ing and demean­ing min­i­mum wage job in order to make extra to pay the school bills (which allows the top lead­ers of the Uni­ver­sity pyra­mid to have their own per­sonal jets). Remem­ber that these peo­ple insist that “this is the only way.”

When you study the pages of Scrip­ture you find no hint of a struc­ture or thing sim­i­lar to a Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity. What you find very clearly in the New Tes­ta­ment is the foun­da­tion of the church, and this is the instru­ment and method of God to do the work of God. There were no Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ties nor schools of any kind in the New Tes­ta­ment. The scrip­tural teach­ing insti­tu­tion in the New Tes­ta­ment is the local church, that specif­i­cally has these dis­tinc­tive factors:

Why is slow bet­ter than the fast track? Because noth­ing per­ma­nent can be done quickly. Instead of spir­i­tu­ally chang­ing peo­ple, fast, com­pressed, intense Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tion becomes a “facts fill­ing heads” type of thing. Knowl­edge makes peo­ple haughty and arro­gant, and it doesn’t make them spir­i­tual. Moral change is what we really want, and this change makes one like Christ, and takes one close to Christ. The fast track is like a young fel­low going up to some girl he hardly knows and says, “I don’t really know you, but I want to marry you, so what can I do in 1 week to get us to that point?” Girl’s response: “Get away from me, because build­ing a rela­tion­ship is not a list of things you have to do.” This is the same with God. You must walk with Him over a goodly period of time, learn­ing, respond­ing, and chang­ing in order to be close to God. Spir­i­tu­al­ity comes from know­ing God, not know­ing facts. This knowl­edge of God does has a lot of spir­i­tual prin­ci­ple involved with it, but under­stand­ing is what is nec­es­sary, not rote knowl­edge. Chang­ing to reflect what you under­stand is also nec­es­sary. This lit­er­ally takes years, and a life time. Nowhere in the Bible is any saint of God “on a fast track” with God. Moses took 40 years in Egypt, and 40 years in the desert before he even really started with God. Paul, went off into the desert to study and learn God’s word with just his holy Scrip­tures and God to teach him (no human teach­ers) and this took a few years, but Paul was a false prophet with the San­hedrin before that, and had devoted his life to know­ing the Scrip­tures from child­hood prob­a­bly. This wasn’t a fast track either. After a life­time of study, it took him 3 years in the desert to under­stand that Jesus is the Mes­siah? That sal­va­tion is by grace and not works? The apos­tles did have a short time with the Lord Jesus Christ, and I would rec­om­mend that if any­body has the oppor­tu­nity to per­son­ally sit under such a great teacher who is actu­ally God incar­nate to do it, BUT since the only teacher like that is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ has left and won’t come back until the rev­e­la­tion events, the rap­ture, I don’t think that is an option for any­body these days either.

You can never get around the require­ment of per­sonal exam­ple as absolutely nec­es­sary for teach­ing spir­i­tual truth. Moral­ity is catch, not taught. You have to per­son­ally know the teacher, and see the teacher’s work­ing out of the spir­i­tual truths that he is teach­ing. Moral­ity is not trans­fered from one per­son to another through book-learning, it is trans­fered by lis­ten­ing to why peo­ple live the way they do, and watch­ing and eval­u­at­ing their life and see­ing that it works, and that it is rea­soned bib­li­cal approach that has the author­ity of God ON HIS LIFE STYLE. Because of this I could never attend a church pas­tored by a homo­sex­ual, a child molestor, nor a divorced pas­tor. His lifestyle is unac­cept­able for me. But what about a Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity? In any uni­ver­sity set­ting, the whole point is to bunch up a lot of stu­dents in a class­room, and keep stu­dent away from pro­fes­sor except in the money mak­ing endeavor of teach­ing. ALL TEACHING in a Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity is pure fact and head-learning, because you have absolutely no idea what kind of per­son is teach­ing you. Any­body can be a hyp­ocrite, and play the part of a “spir­i­tual per­son” for 50 min­utes in class. But to go to the house reg­u­larly, weekly, and go out wit­ness­ing beside them, and see how they inter­act with their spouse and chil­dren, and get to know their fam­ily per­son­ally, this tells you what kind of man of God that teacher is. All of this is either absolutely pro­hib­ited, or it is very staged (i.e. stu­dents will get to know a sin­gle pro­fes­sor at a staged event where things can be con­troled and cov­ered up as to the true spir­i­tual nature of the teacher and his fam­ily). It is highly dis­turb­ing to see how Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity staff seem extremely fond and very com­pe­tent at act­ing. Many Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ties will have a tremen­dous drama and act­ing divi­sion on cam­pus, and they will put on “the­atri­cal works” show­ing off the great act­ing tal­ents of these teach­ers in being excel­lent hyp­ocrites, excuse me, actors. An actor is noth­ing more than a hyp­ocrite, to be some­thing you are not, and con­vince oth­ers by your sin­cer­ity and tal­ent at deceiv­ing oth­ers. In this, the Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor excells. Does any­body out there think at all? This is a bad sign, not any­thing to be lauded.

READ TRACT: The Exam­ple of the Man of God

Moral char­ac­ter is trans­fered from one per­son to another when the recepi­ent (stu­dent) knows the moral char­ac­ter in the giver (teacher), and the teacher explains the bib­li­cal  rea­sons and basis for his lifestyle.

When Christ sent out the apos­tles on their mis­sion trip, he imposed on them some spir­i­tual prin­ci­ples of “how to do the min­istry”. One of these is that what we deal with has to be free. At the same time, the min­is­ter as a worker is wor­thy of his salary (James 5:4). Paul dis­cusses his right to finan­cial sup­port (fore­bear work­ing in a sec­u­lar job in order to ded­i­cate him­self to the min­istry) in 1Cor 9:1–14. He resumes and con­cludes with verse 14.

1Co 9:14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.

Mat 10:10 “for the work­man is wor­thy of his meat”

Gal 6:6 Let him that is taught in the word com­mu­ni­cate unto him that tea­cheth in all good things.

1Tim 5:17 Let the elders that rule well be counted wor­thy of dou­ble hon­our, espe­cially they who labour in the word and doctrine.

Luke 10:5 And into what­so­ever house ye enter, first say, Peace [be] to this house. 6 And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again. 7 And in the same house remain, eat­ing and drink­ing such things as they give: for the labourer is wor­thy of his hire. Go not from house to house.

What we observe here is impor­tant to insist upon in Chris­t­ian min­istry. First of all, every­thing is free. As we have not had to pay to receive the Gospel or our spir­i­tual dis­ci­ple­ship or our spir­i­tual food, nei­ther should you charge oth­ers. Next we see that it is a spir­i­tual respon­si­bil­ity for all Chris­tians to sup­port those min­is­ters that are work­ing locally in their local church to spir­i­tu­ally feed them. Those that work in doc­trine and expo­si­tion of the Word of God are due dou­ble salary if they labor well. But ALL WORKMEN are due their salary. There­fore our con­clu­sion is that the peo­ple should pay their min­is­ter that gives them spir­i­tual food on a weekly basis, but what they receive should not be charged for, but freely given. Why? How does this work? Accord­ing to the Uni­ver­sity peo­ple, it can­not work on a free will basis. So let’s look at what they say and how it relates to what God says.

First of all, a Chris­t­ian mak­ing a mea­ger income, will not go to the bank and bor­row money equiv­a­lent to about the price of a house in order to spir­i­tu­ally edu­cate two of his kids. This is true. But why do Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ties charge so much? Why do they put their tuitions equal with state and sec­u­lar (pagan) uni­ver­si­ties? Because that is what they are con­sid­er­ing them­selves to be, just a sec­u­lar uni­ver­sity. They have the same desire for income that a sec­u­lar uni­ver­sity has. They are no min­istry except for PR pur­poses (Pub­lic Rela­tions). Oth­er­wise they would have pity on the poor, and give the poor free tuition. It is amaz­ing to see sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ties giv­ing away tuitions to the poor and the Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ties extend­ing credit for 30 years to their poor brethren. This is not char­ity! It is big busi­ness. If I pur­chase a prod­uct and it does not work, am I not within my rights to ask for a full refund? So why do Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ties grad­u­ate so many stu­dents that never actu­ally get jobs in their career field? Many as high as 60% or 70% will have to go back to some local junior col­lege and get a real edu­ca­tion in what is avail­able and what they can do. The job of the Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity is to pre­pare the stu­dent for life, but they fail morally to com­mu­ni­cate moral stan­dards, and they fail on a nor­mal tech­ni­cal level. Their grad­u­ates on the whole don’t enter their fields of study. This is because it is a busi­ness, and they will always take a student’s money, let him study for some­thing that know­ing peo­ple in that field would tell him that he has scarce chances of get­ting into (because the stu­dent is not smart enough, it is over sat­u­rated as is, or sim­ply the truth, peo­ple in that field rarely will take grad­u­ates from a Chris­t­ian col­lege). Even the same Uni­ver­si­ties parade their few suc­cess sto­ries of a few stu­dents that are accepted into med­ical school or law school, but if you ask what per­cent­age of their prelaw or pre­med­i­cine stu­dents actu­ally are prac­tic­ing lawyers and doc­tors, they become strangely silent.

Micah 3:11 The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, [Is] not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.

What we see in the Scrip­ture is that moral edu­ca­tion should be free, and as a moral prin­ci­ple. Either moral­ity works or it does, and if moral­ity does work, force the finan­cial sur­vival of the teach­ers of moral­ity on their suc­cess at teach­ing. Don’t THEY AS SPIRITUAL GIANTS HAVE THE FAITH TO LIVE BY FAITH? Short answer, yes they are spir­i­tual giants (accord­ing to them), but no, they will not risk their finan­cial well­be­ing to “their faith”. This is always the prob­lem with a false prophet. He will never be sat­is­fied with what God gives, but gets a cov­etous soul to him­self, and must enter upon “fleec­ing the sheep” some­how. Some money mak­ing scheme. I would insert here that so many churches today have a store where they sell reli­gious trin­kets and books and things under the same lack of faith.

So God works this way. Teach every­body with­out charg­ing any­body. We deny reli­gious ser­vice to nobody, but con­cen­trate on all those who attend and par­tic­i­pate at our church. But we teach the spir­i­tual prin­ci­ple of God’s peo­ple hav­ing an oblig­a­tion to sup­port their local min­is­ters, and if the church as a whole suc­cess­fully com­mu­ni­cate this moral mes­sage (which they should be experts at argu­ing the truth of Scrip­ture) then they will sup­port them­selves. The sys­tem is designed by God in such a way, as to always work with true min­is­ters of God, imme­di­ately indi­cate a false pro­het because they can­not work the sys­tem. A false prophet does have the per­sonal rep­u­ta­tion and trust that a true man of God  has, and so he has to resort to brow beat­ing his peo­ple, sell­ing junk, or embar­rass­ing the peo­ple into giv­ing. Morally argu­ing the oblig­a­tions of Scrip­ture are met with resis­tance by the con­gre­ga­tion because he lives in a high life style that they don’t have, and so they won’t give. The most com­mon way around this bar­rier is to hide his lifestyle from those who pay and then “poor mouth” (talk of all your “valid” min­istry expenses, and how poor and needy you are, and how even a sin­gle dol­lar would help out, etc). Some churches do this, but every Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity has a sys­tem which in the sys­tem of a Uni­ver­sity, the income and profit is hid­den, the fees are charged and non-negociable by those who pay the tuition, and it has all the mark­ing of a false prophet.

Luke 12:15 And he said unto them,Take heed,and beware of cov­etous­ness: for a  man’s life con­sis­teth not in the abun­dance of the things which he possesseth.

We as Chris­tians must renounce riches as the goal of our life. It is placed on the shoul­ders of true Chris­t­ian min­is­ters to bear this stan­dard. God repeat­edly place the require­ment of aban­don­ing finan­cial gain as the goal or high­est pri­or­ity of our Chris­t­ian life. This is mock­ery to have 6 digit incomes and pre­tend that you com­ply with this require­ment of God as an entry level spir­i­tual require­ment before spir­i­tual min­istry is allowed.

I would add that the Bible places an excep­tion here in that of mis­sion­ar­ies. No they are under same require­ment of reject­ing and denounc­ing riches as their goal or pri­or­ity. But a bib­li­cal mis­sion­ary is the ONLY excep­tion of a local church send­ing money to some­body that is not locally min­is­ter­ing in that par­tic­u­lar church. All other min­istries are under a phys­i­cal local church which mon­i­tors the eco­nomic lifestyle of those min­is­ters. Most Chris­t­ian min­istries today are specif­i­cally set up to hide their eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion as well as their true doc­trines and prac­tices from “their donors.”

I would also briefly state that the only thing that is a bib­li­cal NT mis­sion­ary is a man or cou­ple who goes to another coun­try to evan­ge­lize and start local churches. Out­side of that pat­tern, the person/ministry breaks with the NT pat­tern, and he is no longer biblical.

Par­ent Page:

• What’s Wrong with the con­cept of a Chris­t­ian University?

Pages in this series:

• Only a liv­ing exam­ple can teach morality
• The Church: the Genius of God
• Invest­ment of tithes in “God’s work”
• Excel­lence is not greater than faithfulness.
• The sin of “min­istry for hire”