The purpose of this chapter is to give a broad survey of ministerial formation in the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) since its establishment in 1994, to highlight some of the problems that it faces in the light of its past history, and to suggest a way forward that could address some of those problems.

The Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa came into being on 14 April 1994, through the unification of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) and the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA). The DRMC was established by the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) as a separate church for ‘indigenous’ Christians in 1881 in terms of DRC mission policy. As the DRC mission policy and practice unfolded, the indigenous ‘Bantu’ congregations were later separated from the ‘coloured’ congregations to form the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Bantoekerk in 1951 (Crafford 1982:118f). Its name was changed to the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa in 1963, when a General Synod was established to unite the four regionally constituted synods (Crafford 1982:563). In this paper I do not survey the history of ministerial formation (or theological education) in the DRC family as a whole. I concentrate on the formal decisions of the URCSA since its inception in 1994 and then make a constructive proposal for the way forward.

I approach this topic as someone fully involved in the ministerial formation programme of the URCSA, particularly the Northern Curatorium and the Northern Theological Seminary (NTS) in Pretoria. In addition to the NTS, the URCSA has three other formation centres where ministers are trained, namely in the Western Cape (in collaboration with Stellenbosch University (SU)), in Namibia (with the Namibia Evangelical Theological Seminary) and in Bloemfontein (with the University of the Free State).

As a URCSA minister, the Belhar Confession – and the way in which it articulates the biblical message of hope, unity, reconciliation, justice and obedience for the Southern African context – informs and guides my deliberations in this paper. I use the term ‘ministerial formation’, by which I mean the holistic formation of church members for ministry that includes the three dimensions of intellectual (theological) insight, practical (ministerial skills) and personal, spiritual growth. The 2005 URCSA General Synod adopted this as its preferred term (URCSA 2005:293). I focus on only three dimensions of ministerial formation, namely responsibility, curriculum and spirituality.