Regional Seminary Helps Pastors Stay with Their Church

No, Peaceful Valley Church isn’t in Peaceful Valley.

Co-pastors Josh Greenslade and Mark Ziehnert aren’t sure where their church’s name came from. The building is on a hill in Elk, not in the riverside neighborhood in west Spokane.

Josh and Mark have been attending Peaceful Valley Church since they were kids, and its wellbeing is dear to them. That’s why they sought leadership and pastoring roles there as young men.

Several years ago, God led each of them to wrestle with the weight of who He is and of preaching His Word, which informs all aspects of personal and church life. They felt their need for further training as Bible expositors in order to serve their church well. “We really wanted to continue in the ministry of the church where we were already serving,” Josh says.

But they were already full-time pastors. They had wives and children. Moving to attend a seminary wasn’t a viable option, but they still wanted in-person training with experienced pastors. “I needed to see faces, ask questions and engage,” Mark says. When the distance location of The Master’s Seminary opened at Faith Bible Church in 2017, “This filled exactly what I needed at exactly the right time.”

They’ve been enrolled ever since, taking classes one or two at a time as they continue full-time ministry. They say it’s changed them and Peaceful Valley Church.

“One man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17b)

Connecting with other pastors has been key for Josh and Mark’s journey to deepen their understanding and skill to handle God’s Word. Attending the Shepherds Conference in Southern California first opened Josh’s eyes to his need for further training. When he saw the abilities of some mature expositors of the Bible, “I felt this need to have better equipping for the pastoral ministry I was already doing.”

Fast forward to today, several years into his time at TMS Spokane, and he can see how his seminary studies have just scratched the surface: “You don’t know what you don’t know. With the breadth of learning comes the natural exposure of a person’s lack of breadth.”

Having accountability and direction from his classes, and being required to be rigorous, is valuable to Josh. He says, “As a parent, there are things that you want to teach your kids that they don’t want to learn, or they wouldn’t naturally learn on their own. In some ways, seminary has kind of been like that.”

“Seminary has taught me how much weight I can put on the text.” Mark Ziehnert

Even though he likes to read and self-educate, Josh says the assignments required by seminary classes are helpfully pushing him beyond where he would have pushed himself. For example, one assigned book about the history of Roman Catholicism was weightier than the books he would normally read – the ones he would finish, anyway. But he saw immediate fruit from that reading when he sat next to a Catholic man on a plane flight and found that he was well prepared to discuss the differences between his neighbor’s doctrine and what the Bible says.

Mark and Josh say they wouldn’t be growing as they are if it weren’t for in-person engagement with their teachers. While there is good seminary content available online, Mark says interacting with instructors John Smith (a pastor formerly at Faith, now at Christ our Hope Bible Church), Dan Jarms, and Brian Sayers has been extremely helpful. Their examples show him how academic growth and spiritual growth work together.

“The professors showed me a picture of somebody who’s trained and still personable,” Mark says. The students aren’t studying to become “MacArthurites” or “Jarmsites,” carbon copies of their favorite pastors. Each one is becoming uniquely equipped to bring God’s Word to bear on their role. “It’s been so helpful to just see real men talk about real ministry in real churches, and to know I can actually do that also.”

Mark and Josh are also working on promoting a training culture in their typically independent-minded congregation. Previously, Mark says, “We never spent time training up the upcoming generations to fill roles in the body of Christ. … It reminds me of a general coming in and organizing the troops. The troops are excellent troops, but they need training to work together to accomplish things that actually benefit the group.”

Equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:17)

Because of the demands of full-time ministry, both Josh and Mark are approaching seminary slowly, usually one class at a time. They commute to their classes together for the 40-minute-each-way trip, a time that also allows them to talk through class material or things related to their ministry at the church. The part-time approach has been helpful for avoiding overzealousness or burnout.

Mark says, “Spiritual change is slow. I’ve seen that in my ministry also: If I see rapid change and growth in somebody’s life, it’s usually not permanent.”

But as he has been taught to dig deeper and lean on Scripture for growth and answers, Mark says it continues to show its sufficiency. Rather than just pursuing cold academic knowledge of a book, he has seen the deeply compassionate and practical purpose for which God gave His Word: “for the care of His church.”

“Being able to leverage what the Scripture actually means, just on its own, has answered marriage issues and personal issues and church issues and counseling issues: All of the issues actually are answered by the text. Seminary has taught me how much weight I can put on the text. It will answer all those questions.”

Josh says leaning into the weight of Scripture has started to change their whole church. After going through The Trellis and the Vine, they’ve grown to see their pastoral roles as to “enthuse and excite people about the magnitude of what we’re doing (as a church), namely, making disciples of Christ.” Their conversations are now being shaped by what the Bible says about elders, shepherding, and how the church is supposed to work.

“Being in seminary has increased my view of the glory of God’s Word and the weightiness of handling it, and then all the things that would come down from that, in order: eldership, and then membership and the structure of the church, or how all those fit together.”

Knowing what he knows now, Mark says he never should have been made an elder as an unprepared young man, but he wants to change that for Peaceful Valley Church’s future. He now wants to invest in zealous younger men and prepare older men to disciple them for future leadership. That’s why their church has started a similar ministry to Faith’s Aspiring Men.

And while Mark doesn’t know whether he’ll actually finish a degree at TMS Spokane, that’s not his goal. He wants his training to pave the way for future leaders. “I would love to see the upcoming generations finish their degree. I would love to see them engage in seminary earlier on in life, before they take on official ministry tasks.”

Josh plans to finish his degree eventually, but not for the sake of a title or a diploma on the wall. “My focus is to grow for the sake of our church family,” he says.

The seminary is an exciting way for Faith Bible Church to love and strengthen other churches, such as Peaceful Valley, and our brothers and sisters in those churches. By sharing what God has given us to build up their leaders, we all participate in building up His body and making disciples of our Lord Jesus.

“Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16).

Lynn Yount

Lynn and her husband, Doug, lead a Growth Group. Lynn serves as a writer and editor for Living Faith magazine and other church communications.

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