Choosing a Fundy U is an incredibly important step in a preacher boy’s life because it marks the territory of his future ministry possibilities. A BJU pastoral grad isn’t likely to find much opportunity at a “Hyles church” and a missions major from PCC may be considered too liberal to be supported by those in Crown circles. Pick your college, pick your friends.

The other possibility is that the preacher boy may decide that if John the Baptist didn’t have no book learning that he don’t need none neither. Down this path he may find a menial position on ministry staff at his home church where he can sit and learn at the feet of great men like his pastor and the part-time volunteer youth director/bus mechanic/grounds keeper.

He will hone his preaching technique, copying the voice and gestures of those he idolizes as carefully as he copies their sermon outlines to use later. He will practice and revise his “true life” illustrations until he can be sure that there won’t be a dry eye in the house by the time that rebellious teenager, her parents, and her dog finally perish in that freak balloon accident. He will learn how pastors walk, how they think, how they smile so it looks almost real, and how they nod attentively while planning what they’re going to say next.

But whether in the classroom or the school of sub-minimum wage hard knocks, the most important lessons that a preacher boy learns are those about himself. For he is a Man of God. He is the Man of God. He is practically a demigod. He is a prophet, priest, and king and none can say to him “what doest thou?” He will rise up and call himself blessed.

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a newly minted preacher boy.