Neal Jackson Resigns from Pensacola's Campus Church after 2 1/2 Years

I am not attacking the school. I just feel bad for the people in the church. It’s tough to have a Pastor resign. It’s tough when the resignation announcement leaves more questions than answers. The situation is worthy of discussion. How should a minister handle the flock of God when he believes the Lord has led him to step down? We can sharpen iron by discussing that issue.

Two years ago I went on a pastor’s trip to PCC; the school flew in about 30 pastors who had never been on campus. At the end their was a luncheon at which the pastor’s were told they could ask anything they wanted about the school. Most pastor’s quizzed Dr. Horton on whether the campus church truly was a local church. Thinking back, I think most of them wanted to know if the congregation really had a say in church matters or whether the school and ultimately he ran the church. Dr. Horton admitted that the church, even though it has deacons, had no pulpit committee and that Dr. Jackson came to pastor the campus church at his own invitation.

I have no idea at what has transpired since, but even refusing a goodbye fellowship it seems as if the departure is acrimonious. I can hardly think that under the conditions under which he (Dr. Jackson) came that you could ever be your own man in a ministry organized like PCC/the campus church is.

[Aaron Blumer] BJU’s solution is less than ideal… don’t call it “church” but sort of do a Sunday morning church service anyway and require everyone to attend. PCC’s solution… “Campus Church” that is not organized the way a church normally should be.
I’m not crazy about either approach, but I don’t have a better idea, so PCC & BJU—I dip a cookie to you both. Blessings to you as you try to walk that and all the other fine lines you are expected to walk.

The solution is rather simple. These institutions should discontinue their Sunday morning service and let all students and employees attend local churches in the area. Like the New Testament suggests.

Eric

[Jim Peet] **** Forum Director Comment ******

4 posts were deleted but they all pertained to the opening link that was not working at the get go.

I corrected the link and deleted the 4 posts. 1 post said the link wasn’t working, … 2 provided the correct link … and the 4th was mine saying I corrected the link

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Thanks for the clarification. Although now this thread makes even less sense to me.

Mike D

[Eric Lovik]
The solution is rather simple. These institutions should discontinue their Sunday morning service and let all students and employees attend local churches in the area. Like the New Testament suggests.

Eric

Of course, the issue is that Dr. Horton / PCC cannot control what is preached / taught in local churches; therefore, he / PCC keeps the students within his purview. The school didn’t want to get into the business of deciding which churches the students were allowed to attend. Also, the concern was that 5,000 students going to the churches in the community would disrupt the local congregations, etc…

At the end of the day, it is about controlling the message.

[Eric Lovik]

[Aaron Blumer] BJU’s solution is less than ideal… don’t call it “church” but sort of do a Sunday morning church service anyway and require everyone to attend. PCC’s solution… “Campus Church” that is not organized the way a church normally should be.
I’m not crazy about either approach, but I don’t have a better idea, so PCC & BJU—I dip a cookie to you both. Blessings to you as you try to walk that and all the other fine lines you are expected to walk.

The solution is rather simple. These institutions should discontinue their Sunday morning service and let all students and employees attend local churches in the area. Like the New Testament suggests.

Eric

Well, this is one of those situations where I’m feeling sympathetic toward something based on a memory I can no longer remember.. :) Not an ideal platform. What I mean is that once upon a time, I remember hearing someone—probably at BJU—weigh the pros and cons of having a campus non-church or a campus quasi-church and their defense of one or the other of these options seemed plausible at the time (though I was not personally won over). Unfortunately, I can’t remember a word of the substance.
At the moment I can’t think of a single reason to have a campus church that couldn’t be even better satisfied by some kind of cooperating relationship with one or more independent churches nearby.

That said, it seems to me that the NT leaves some room as to how the nitty gritty of decisions are made. It’s clear that there should be an elder or elders and also diakonoi of some kind. But there is much more detail on what kind of men these ought to be than on exactly how decisions are made.
But I don’t want to sound like a fan of the campus church idea. It doesn’t give me anything like warm fuzzies at all.

I sympathize with you Aaron. I was a faculty/staff kid at BJU and attended the campus morning service most of my life. I didn’t mind at the time, but since then I’ve come to believe that BJ’s quasi-campus church is a hindrance rather than a help. Over the past two decades, though, BJ has loosened its requirements for morning attendance. The overwhelming majority of the faculty, staff, and upperclassmen no longer attend the morning service. Here’s some blog posts I did on the topic of a visit to PCC (#1) and the idea of a campus church (#2):

http://paulmatzko.edublogs.org/2008/08/12/what-bob-jones-university-cou…
http://paulmatzko.edublogs.org/2008/08/14/what-bob-jones-university-cou…

It’s easy enough to argue about suitability of campus churches on theoretical grounds. But there are also practical matters that need consideration. With several thousand residence hall students at BJU, how would they all get to the roughly 35 fundamental churches in the area? And when they got there, where would they sit? Some Greenville churches actually have a higher attendance in the evening than in the morning. The more popular fundamentalist churches in Greenville would be inundated on Sunday mornings—if students were able to get there. (For anyone who’s interested, Paul’s my nephew.)

I like to think of the BJ-friendly churches in Greenville as a vibrant little market (I’m pulling a little bit from Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” Book Five for this). As such, supply and demand function quite efficiently. While some churches may not desire student attendance (perhaps because students tithe relatively little, are less permanent members, or are often immature believers), many churches currently seek student involvement (perhaps because students do large amounts of extension work through local churches).

Churches that desire more student attendance already send out buses to BJU to pick them up and drop them off for evening services. Churches that don’t desire increased student attendance already signal their lack of supply by not offering transportation to students and by limiting their membership/involvement opportunities (ie limiting them to “associate” membership). In a free market (unconstrained by university intervention) existing institutions will either expand supply to accomodate the demand or new institutions will arise to fill the increase. The church market in Greenville will adjust accordingly.

Anywho, I’m not opposed to the idea of having a “safety net” morning service for students who are unwilling/unable to attend the local church of their choice.

I previously Pastored in Northeast Wisconsin and our church was part of the Northland Baptist Bible College extension ministry. We were 1 1/2 hours from the campus and for ten years
we were there we had students that came down on Wednesday Evenings and Sundays (BTW the church was involved in the extension before we came and still is as far as I know).
It was a great blessing to our church and to the student. As a Pastor it gave me an extra opportunity to minister to the college students. The ladies in our church had it organized as far as
families having students for Sunday lunch, people making a sack lunch for the ride back to campus and Sat. Evening housing every other week when we had youth activities.

(I realize this thread is not about how NBBC does their ministry with students but I thought I would share a word of testimony about it worked up there since I had personal experience
with the program and to shed some light how it could work in other places)

[JohnMatzko] With several thousand residence hall students at BJU, how would they all get to the roughly 35 fundamental churches in the area?

Only 35? There have to be many more than 35 “approved” churches. I understand what you’re saying, but with so many churches to choose from, plus the students who go on extensions, it might not be as impractical as some people think.

Eric

If a University or Bible College is too large that local churches cannot possibly handle the number of students that would come their way, is that institution too large? As a college young person, I became involved in an extension ministry 45 minutes away from campus. That ministry became as important in my education as my actual classroom learning did. My classes became relevant immediately because I was ministering, teaching, answering the questions of young people, etc. As class chaplain, I took the year to preach about ministry - how college young people should be using the gifts and talents God gave them right at that point in their lives. I reminded them of the importance of having mature believers who were already ministering in the local churches to mentor them. I encouraged my classmates to be involved in a local church - not just attend one of the “in town” churches, but to be actively involved in a ministry of a local church. It is odd to me that as fundamentalists we accept the argument that it just wont work to do something the Biblical way (local church attendance for our college young people), so we just have to settle for something other than God’s plan. What is that teaching the young people? Is what they are learning in the classroom lining up with what they are being told to do?

E-mail to Alumni:

August 26, 2009

Dear PCC Alumni,

It’s easy to focus on man rather than God, but PCC remains God’s work. His blessing and guidance has caused many hands to be involved in its building and continuing process. As you know, Campus Church pastors have usually been our main public voice. They provide spiritual influence for students and church folk, but their going does not change the direction or purpose of this ministry. In today’s standard, to have 3 pastors in 35 years speaks well for the Campus Church. It’s said that today the average pastor remains 2½ years at a church.

Arlin Horton
Founder/President

[Eric Lovik] There have to be many more than 35 “approved” churches. I understand what you’re saying, but with so many churches to choose from, plus the students who go on extensions, it might not be as impractical as some people think.

[Paul Matzko] I’m not opposed to the idea of having a “safety net” morning service for students who are unwilling/unable to attend the local church of their choice.

Obviously many BJU students do have Sunday morning ministries (some at considerable distance), and many students also find transportation to local evening services. But unless you have a “safety net” service as Paul suggests, requiring all students to attend morning church off campus would be a logistical and transportation nightmare. Besides what’s more biblical about attending a Sunday morning service than a Sunday evening service? Bob Jones, Sr.’s childhood church on the Wiregrass frontier usually met once a month, on a Saturday evening and the following Sunday morning.

[Bob Nutzhorn] If a University or Bible College is too large that local churches cannot possibly handle the number of students that would come their way, is that institution too large? As a college young person, I became involved in an extension ministry 45 minutes away from campus. That ministry became as important in my education as my actual classroom learning did. My classes became relevant immediately because I was ministering, teaching, answering the questions of young people, etc. As class chaplain, I took the year to preach about ministry - how college young people should be using the gifts and talents God gave them right at that point in their lives. I reminded them of the importance of having mature believers who were already ministering in the local churches to mentor them. I encouraged my classmates to be involved in a local church - not just attend one of the “in town” churches, but to be actively involved in a ministry of a local church. It is odd to me that as fundamentalists we accept the argument that it just wont work to do something the Biblical way (local church attendance for our college young people), so we just have to settle for something other than God’s plan. What is that teaching the young people? Is what they are learning in the classroom lining up with what they are being told to do?

A church should operate like a church, not a pitstop or a rung on the Christian career ladder, which is what IMO many positions such as this seem to amount to. The same happens with youth ministries- they are viewed as a stepping stone, a way to gain experience. And for clarification, there is a difference between the pastor delegating teaching and administrative duties, and what often ends up being a church inside of a church with novices using young people as guinea pigs. Who was it that recently posted an article about the Warm Body Method of filling positions in churches…? I can’t recall at the moment, but it was a reminder of how far we have strayed from what I believe is the Scriptural method of ministerial training (apprenticeship) and the requirements for someone who holds a position of authority and influence in the church. We have indeed become too pragmatic.

But the current way of doing things seems to be generally accepted as normal, so I suppose PCC will just go forward with business as usual. I wish the Jacksons well, and hope they are indeed led to the ministry God has for them.