The earliest record of ministerial training in the Baptist Union of South Africa (the 1915 ‘Plan for ministerial training’) listed elements which included that the ‘candidate must furnish evidence that he has been used of God's Spirit to lead souls to Christ, or has been of help to them in spiritual things … the certification during the course of studies of … his natural and spiritual endowments, his educational and preaching abilities’ (Hudson-Reed 1977:100–101). The underlying assumption, within Baptist theological education has thus always been the spiritual, moral and theological qualification of its ministers within what may be best described as a conservative evangelical theological tradition. While the 1915 ‘Plan for ministerial training’, at face value, reflects a basic commitment to and synonymity with spiritual formation, its effectiveness has never really been assessed via a formal study. It has been assumed that a theological education focussed on teaching the traditional theological disciplines at a denominationally controlled institution would automatically produce such suitably qualified ministers. It is essentially through feedback requested from time to time from Cape Town Baptist Seminary graduates that this author could report to a 2006 Theological Education Forum of the Baptist Union of South Africa that Baptist ministers as a result are ‘good [at] theory but not necessarily good practioners’ (Rinquest 2006:2) of the various requirements of ministry. This semi-formal report was further tested through engagement with a number of people who dropped out of formal ministry not just due to moral failure but equally due to theological and practical inadequacies exposed during the course of ministry.

There is unfortunately at this time a lack of empirical evidence and subsequent critical evaluation round the issue of ministerial formation in the history of South African Baptist theological education. Various factors have contributed to the current nature, expression and goals of ministry training within the Baptist tradition. This may be best understood in terms of the history of the Baptist movement (internationally and locally), its theological distinctives that were birthed out of its 400-year history, its history within South Africa that has been influenced by the political developments in the country, and the various Baptist institutions that currently exist and how they seek to meet the current challenge of ministerial formation.