There are more people training for ministry in the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) than at any time in the last 30 years. Surprised? So were we, when we did the maths.
And the numbers we crunched need a few caveats: We don’t have absolutely concrete data going back 30 years, so we had to do some asking around. And because we’re independent churches we don’t keep tabs on everyone training for Christian work, so we had to do a little estimation.
But in broad terms, it’s about right. Yes, in the FIEC, there are more people training for ministry today than for a long, long time (something approaching 200 people, probably). It seems counter-intuitive: as other en contributors have pointed out, there seems to be an almost catastrophic decline in those following classic training routes (typically full-time residential training).
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David McNeil’s obituary made me cry. I am not ashamed to admit it. Some of my friends perhaps think I …