Pastors’ attitudes towards Biblical exhortations in church based ministry

Pastor1 Summary

Purpose: To survey pastors graduating Bible adherent seminaries to assess if they currently maintain Biblical exhortations or support extra Biblical attitudes in their church.  Methods: We surveyed graduates of three seminaries (Master’s, Denver and Westminster) currently pastoring a church.  Questions were based on exhortations derived from Scripture or frequently accepted attitudes within the church but not directly found in the Bible.  Results: This survey was sent to 1085 pastors of whom 200 responded (18%).  There was a statistical difference between the responses for each of the four questions directed towards the church member’s attitudes towards: one another, the church body and leaders, their speech and the outside community (P<0.0001).  For each of the four questions the mean scores for Biblical exhortations were higher than extra Biblical attitudes (P<0.0001).  Conclusions: This study showed that individuals trained in seminaries teaching Biblical principles continue to hold to those principles once they become pastors.