Like I touched on earlier, that goes against my personal experience. I've seen a fairly large number of preachers who had seminary educations, and most of them were pretty bad to watch. They were probably doctrinally sound, but completely unengaging.I'd pit a preacher with an accredited seminary education against a non-seminary educated preacher any day of the week and twice on Thursday. Homiletics is an art. sure, there are some untrained people who are naturally good, and there are some trained people who can't preach their way out of paper bag. But, by and large, the odds are HUGELY in favor of the professional.
BTW - "unpaid" necessarily means "uneducated"? I'm not sure how the Baha'i do things, but AFAIK, Mormons in preaching and leadership positions do get training.
Meaning what, exactly? What's an example of "spiritual harm"?Harming people in a spiritual way.