RELIGION : The Need to Learn : Many ministers of small and medium-size churches have little formal training beyond a calling to the pulpit. New initiatives are underway to help.

The first voice Pastor Reginald Lawrence of the Church of Deliverance says he heard was God’s.

“I have been blessed with an anointing in apostleship by the Lord Jesus,” he says with calm conviction. But in an instant his pronouncements are charged with energy, as if he has been struck by lightning from on high.

“A lot of miraculous things happen,” he declares, warming to the occasion. “People are healed! Demonic spirits are cast out! The gifts of the spirit do operate through my ministry.”

The second voice he remembers was his late mother’s.

“My mother used to say, ‘Son, I don’t want you to be an ignorant preacher. Whatever you do, make sure you represent God right, and speak with intelligence.’ ”

But like many Christian preachers in small and medium-size Protestant churches in the African American community, Lawrence lacked formal training.

In Los Angeles, 30% to 40% of black preachers may have no formal training, according to Eugene Williams, executive director of Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches, a group of about 40 African American churches. The figures may be similar for small, independent and rural white churches.

James Costen, former president of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, found that only about 20% of African American clergy have seminary degrees. The center is the largest consortium of African American seminaries in the world.

“The vast majority of them are trained in the ministry through the apprenticeship system--that is younger clergy apprentice with a pastor for a number of years and receive their ordination through the pastor,” said Lawrence H. Mamiya, professor of African studies and religion at Vassar College and co-author of the 1990 book “The Black Church in the African American Experience.”

“It just requires a calling and the guts and the willingness to listen and open up your doors and begin teaching,” said the Rev. Richard Byrd, president of Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches.

That is a far cry from the rigorous theological training in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches. A college degree is usually the minimum requirement to be admitted to their seminaries, where future priests and ministers undergo an additional three to four years of full-time preparation before ordination.

But as preachers from storefront churches to medium-size congregations confront the diverse needs of their members, they are discovering that the demands made on them involve more than spirit-filled preaching.

Counseling skills are needed to meet the challenges of single-parent families, children at risk and drug addiction. Administrative skills are needed to run and build a successful church.

God may hide things from the “wise and intelligent” and reveal them to “infants,” as the Gospels say, but education can’t hurt.

“The spirit can work through you better the better you have prepared the instrument for it to work through,” Byrd said.

Moreover, as the educational level of church members rises, preachers have to keep up. It is, as Williams said, a competitive world.

An Emphasis on Training

To meet the challenge, new initiatives are underway in Southern California to provide training. The West Angeles Church of God in Christ, for example, has established its own Bible college on its Crenshaw Boulevard campus. Azusa Pacific University and USC are looking for ways to help by sending professors into neighborhood churches.

The Louisville Institute, which operates a small grants program for the Lilly Endowment, is funding a program by Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches to bring pastors of small and large churches together to talk about challenges to their ministries, including the need for formal education.

One of the most innovative approaches is run by Pastor Larry J. Lloyd, a “pastor to the pastors.” Lloyd calls his program “Harvard in the ‘hood,” although it is not affiliated with Harvard University.

Lloyd, who said he holds three master’s degrees, connects untrained preachers with International Seminary, an unaccredited institution headquartered near Orlando, Fla. Lloyd is supervisor of International Seminary’s program in Los Angeles and heads Kairos Ministries, a para-church organization that helps train church leaders and offers continuing education. Lloyd also is director of the African American studies department at Azusa Pacific University.

“I have had them to weep with me, weep over the fact that they have desired to be a minister and they’re saying, ‘I didn’t know how to do it. Thank you for helping me,’ ” Lloyd said.

“There definitely is a need--and desire--for that,” said Donald Miller, a religion professor at USC. “It’s something that is regularly expressed to me by African American clergy. The target really is the small to mid-size church.”

For $1,200 a year, including the cost of books, Lloyd said, pastors can take courses in practical theology through International Seminary to equip them for their callings.

Three years are offered under his direction in Los Angeles. In the fourth and last year, students take correspondence courses directly from International Seminary and, upon successful completion, are awarded a bachelor’s degree. Since International is not an accredited seminary, its degree is not accepted everywhere. But Lloyd said that Azusa Pacific is looking for ways to accept it if students take additional courses to fill the gap.

The program has value not only to preachers from small, independent churches, but for upcoming laymen and associate pastors in big churches, Lloyd said.

“They feel in some ways that they’re locked into a system that will not allow them to actually move on,” he said.

Lawrence was one of Lloyd’s students. Now, he said, he has a much better understanding of religious belief and how to better function as a pastor.

He said that his congregation, the Church of Deliverance on South San Pedro Street, has an overflow audience at Sunday services. He sometimes has a video screen set up in a nearby room to accommodate the overflow from the main sanctuary, which seats 150 worshipers.

Such a program, Williams said, is especially valuable to preachers who already have congregations and can’t attend college or afford high tuition.

“Most folks are doing what they are called to do,” Williams said. “A pastor 40 years old with a congregation of 300 or 400 is not going to stop pastoring to go back to school. What they need is an opportunity to get the continuing education while they’re doing what they’re doing.”

Still, as long as women and men feel called to Christian ministry, their relationship with God, Lloyd and Lawrence say, must always remain paramount.

“In some denominations, there is not enough seeking of the very presence of God,” Lawrence said. “In some denominations I believe there is more a seeking of their denominational education than seeking of God. . . . The most important thing is to get full of the Holy Ghost.

“It’s very important to have education if you’re dealing with peoples’ lives--and very important before you actively involve yourself with people that you must have a divine intervention from God.”