Getting My License
On October 17, 2025 I was officially licensed to preach the gospel by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church Presbytery of Ohio. It was a long and challenging journey that culminated in receiving this license.
In North Carolina in order to get your driver's license before 18 you must take Driver's Education and hold a learner's permit for a period of time. You may take a Driver's Ed course at the age of 14 1/2 which I did, of which the final portion involved a number of hours actually behind the wheel.
Getting into the driver's seat of the car in Driver's Ed was the first time for me to do so in my life. Naturally it took some time to get used to it, but my teacher was used to students who had practiced (illegally technically) with parents or others, so he did not have much patience with my need for practice. I imagine he thought he was helping me by always pointing out the many things I was not looking at yet, but I remain unconvinced it was anything more than occasionally and marginally helpful.
I find that I learn new things best by being allowed to explore and make mistakes at my own pace. Rushing ahead or making shortcuts stunts my learning. So I think I mostly learned to drive despite my teacher's methods which probably worked well for others, but not so much for me. The last thing I did in the class was to slowly back his car into a telephone pole, taking out his taillight while trying to execute a side road turnaround. Despite his lecture that followed, he declined to require any remedial hours, and his insurance covered the damage.
I got off scot-free, although becoming infamous, because, in exchange, he received another one of his famous stories he loved to tell
that my younger siblings each heard recounted when they subsequently took the same class years later. To their great relief I became anonymous after the first couple years and was no longer identified as their brother when my story was told.
I ended up taking to driving like a duck to water and after a year driving with my permit, when I took my license test, I passed very easily. I was licensed to drive.
I still remember my first trip in the car without my parents. It was a mundane errand to the grocery story to pick up ingredients for Friday night homemade pizza (which I was usually in charge of), but the fact that I was unsupervised made it seem different. On the one hand it was just another drive, but on the other I didn't need bring a parent along with me. I had to keep reminding myself that it was perfectly legal.
Becoming licensed to preach was a much longer and more involved process. In some ways it did begin around the time I became licensed to drive, but it was another 19 years until I was licensed to preach.
While I did study the Bible and church history on my own starting in high school, and took Greek and Hebrew in college, seminary was a much more significant hurdle to overcome. After 5 years of working full-time and taking classes where and when I could, I graduated with a Masters of Divinity. I started an internship which involved "exhorting" (supervised preaching) every week thinking I would breeze through the licensure exams on the side.
However, I soon found that while I was prepared for the Bible and doctrine exams, the level of mastery required of Greek and Hebrew was higher than I anticipated, and church history was not a walk in the park either (more like a small mountain hike). But, by God's grace, many prayers and long hours of study, I was approved. The easiest aspects were the floor exam and the sermon before the presbytery and they went smoothly. (I'd learned my lesson from Driver's Ed to not let my first time in the pulpit be at presbytery. By that point I'd been preaching regularly for a year.)
So now I get to the other side of this process and I'm finally licensed to preach the gospel. In many ways nothing changed, I'm still standing in the pulpit most Sundays (usually one week off a month), but in other ways things are different. I am now approved to preach without supervision in any pulpit and thus free to seek a call somewhere. The final step of ordination remains, but by design the harder exams are in the licensure process, which are now behind me.
I was musing on the similarities between getting my license to drive and getting my license to preach. Both are serious responsibilities with lives at risk. There is a strict approval process and there are some safeguards once you're out there on your own. Policemen will write you tickets for obvious offenses, presbyteries try to hold preachers accountable in their teaching and conduct, but it's a very imperfect enforcement. These are often extreme final measures.
Self-policing, self-discipline is indispensable. Drunk driving can go for years without getting caught. False teachers can preach for years in obscurity, or immoral preachers can live in secret sin for months.
"Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers." (1 Timothy 4:16)
Worthy driver's license holders maintain a careful appraisal of their own ability to drive a vehicle safely and avoid driving impaired (from substance or lack of sleep). Lives often hang in the balance, their own and others.
Worthy preaching license holders maintain a careful appraisal of their own abilities to fulfill their ministry. It is possible to get drunk on the world, become dull to sin, and asleep to the gospel. They must be vigilant to avoid falling asleep at the pulpit and veering off into ditches or oncoming traffic.
Driving is a dangerous activity. Preaching is even more dangerous.
Cars can kill people, but sin can damn them.
Only by God's grace can I remain a faithful and alert driver, able to assess my own competency humbly. Only by God's grace can I remain a faithful and alert preacher who hates sin and loves Christ.
And by God's grace I will never outlive that preserving grace.
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