@elsh, thanks for commenting. It's great that you received mentorship at your local church. Was that mentorship from your pastor while you were training to be a pastor?
Being able to study through online courses is a great opportunity, and vastly different than the way most people have been educated historically. I've got no beef with online education (or education in general). The issue is that whatever doctrines you learned from the online course could have been taught to you by the local church, by your mentor. If they taught you those doctrines, what was the point of getting the formal online education? Was it a certification course, or a degree course? Was it a requirement before you could serve in a ministry? If it was, that's the heart of the problem. Mentorship includes teaching in all matters related to the faith. If you get that from your mentor through the local church, you should be well qualified to serve as a pastor ... if that is your calling.
The advantage of training through a formal institution is specialised teaching in each area you learn about. The avg church size in Australia is under 100 so often there is limited options of being trained in anything let alone everything you want to be trained in.
A large disadvantage of being trained by the local church is the amplification of false beliefs. With no other opinions than the lead pastor - who is to verify if what they teach can be trusted. This is a fast track to cultish tendencies.
I recognise Jesus wasn’t a registered training organisation and mentored the disciples Himself- but there knowledge of Scripture going into the training probably exceeds most degree level pastors coming out of training.
False beliefs can originate anywhere, even seminary and Bible college. If you read carefully what I've written, you'll see that I'm very much against a "lead pastor". It's not scriptural. Christ set up His church as a decentralized network of believers, all of whom were to minister to each other. Knowledge comes from the Holy Spirit, most often through other believers and not necessarily the pastor. Any other source of knowledge is false.
I understand the idea of a priesthood of all believers- look forward to being a part of that hopefully before heaven.
If you are against a lead Pastor how then do you interpret Gods continual appointment of a lead person throughout Israelite history? Moses, Joshua, Nehemiah, David, Solomon……
God has called special people throughout history to fulfill a specific purpose in his kingdom plan.