http://www.wtsbooks.com/prayer-hallesby-9780806627007

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CjcfEQ77fA

“absolutely appealing to a multistory experience and appealing to an over mystical view and a different understanding of faith–it’s almost like some worship is ‘we walk by sight not by faith’ when a word centered ministry, like what we have in the OPC and the PCA and other reformed churches, is word centered. Therefore it’s more plain…or more simple…it’s a very different thing.”

This is totally accurate from my experience in a variety of broad evangelical contexts over 15 years. In broad evangelicalism there are three means of grace though that term is not used: the dramatic conversion experience, the personal quiet time, and the small group bible study. These are primary with public worship and the real sacraments being not rejected but assumed and therefore subsumed as secondary.

The challenge is that when you try to even explain this nuance of focus to our evangelical siblings they don’t understand what you are talking about. They would likely grow offended that one would not consider their ministry word centered when they do quote from or study from the Bible on a very regular basis. They would then move to express concern about the lack of contextualization in reformed ministries resulting in a supposed lack of cultural relevance from their perspective. I would also add that the evangelical graduate schools now put a big emphasis on what they call ‘spiritual formation’.

At GCTS-Charlotte, where I matriculated, the closest one got to pastoral theology were two required classes call ‘Foundations for Ministry’ and another class called ‘Dynamics of Spiritual Life’. Focus was on practicing personal spiritual disciplines. Lovelace, Foster, Nowen, etc. and a Methodist minister named Robert Mulholland Jr., out of Asbury Seminary, were the primary readings. The loci of Pastoral or Practical Theology are not mentioned in the curriculum and the concept of means of grace are not mentioned or even known among the majority of students. What one absorbs is the idea that personal spiritual disciplines are the center of the Christian life.