How Did Calvin Create Pastoral Accountability | Scott Manetsch
Channel: Henry Center
Date: 06/11/2014

Lecture Title - Pastoral Collegiality & Accountability in Calvin’s Geneva

In recent years, several commentators have noted the unique challenges faced by Evangelical ministers in contemporary America as they encounter a religious culture infatuated with robust individualism, celebrity preachers, and ministry empires. Too often, these cultural forces render Christian pastors isolated and discouraged, covetous and unaccountable to others. This lecture will explore the institutions and ministry models that the reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) created in order to promote the collegiality, accountability, and spiritual vitality of the company of ministers who worked in Geneva in the sixteenth century. Though Calvin’s religious and social context was vastly different than ours, the reformer’s vision for Christian ministry provides an important corrective for many of the challenges faced by ministers today.

Scott M. Manetsch (PhD University of Arizona) is Professor of Church History at Trinity Evangelical Divinity school. During graduate school, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship and spent two years doing archival research on French Reformation history at the University of Geneva. His publications include Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France, 1572-1598 (Brill, 2000) and Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609 (Oxford University Press, 2012).

The Henry Center for Theological Understanding provides theological resources that help bridge the gap between the academy and the church. It houses a cluster of initiatives, each of which is aimed at applying practical Christian wisdom to important kingdom issues—for the good of the church, for the soul of the theological academy, for the sake of the world, and ultimately for the glory of God. The HCTU seeks to ground each of these initiatives in Scripture, and it pursues these goals collaboratively, in order to train a new generation of wise interpreters of the Word—lay persons and scholars alike—for the sake of tomorrow’s church, academy, and world.

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