Ministerial formation remains one of the top priorities of theological educational institutions today (Wood 1991). This chapter explores ministerial formation of an evangelical Charismatic tradition. For the purpose of this chapter, ‘evangelical’ is defined as a person for whom the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as testified to in the Bible, is central to their doxology, orthodoxy and orthopraxy (Morris 2001). Moreover, evangelicals are marked by:

• • Biblicalism, viz God's universal truth is revealed in the Protestant Bible in a way that is accessible to all humankind.

• • Christocentricism, viz Christ, who is God becoming human in the historical man, Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesus is the fullest revelation of God to mankind.

• • Conversionism, viz the truth of the Gospel must be appropriated on a personal basis by means of repentance.

• • Crucicentrism, viz the crux of the Gospel manifested itself at the cross, where atonement was made for all sins.

• • Activism, viz the truth of the Gospel must be demonstrated by social service and evangelism. (Bebbington 1989:12–32)

A ‘Charismatic’ is defined as a person who assumes that he or she is able to function with the same power available to the early Church. As a result of being filled with the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12) are exercised as part of a person's Christian experience (Warrington 2002). Moreover, it can be argued that the concept of testimony, the telling of one's personal story pertaining to God's activity, is central to the ordinary expression of the Charismatic faith. This is due to the fact that the Charismatic tradition is rooted in oral culture rather than literary culture, and oral culture is shaped by narrative (Hollenweger 1997:18). Indeed, the kind of rationality employed is more likely to be a narrative in shape: a story about what happened and its consequences, rather than a set of abstract propositions. As Cartledge (2002: 34) argues, testimony is a means of social knowledge construction and, indeed, integrates other forms of knowledge such as perception, memory, consciousness and reason. In the Charismatic tradition testimony functions as a mechanism of reinforcement and commitment; it both legitimises and energises the world view of the community via the art of giving testimony about the grace of God as it has become concrete in the lives of believers (Pluss 1987:10).