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 t's okay not to be a senior pastor.
by George Hillman
The seminary population can be divided into three segments:
One segment has a clear understanding about why they are here. They know they’re going to be a pastor, a missionary, or a teacher. They come to seminary for the tools and confirmation of their calling.
Then there is a small portion of seminarians who come to seminary and think of it as a time of penitence. This group comes to seminary for the wrong reasons.
Another segment uses seminary as a discovery process. I fell into this category. I showed up at seminary and I really didn’t know why I was there, I just knew that I would figure it out along the way. Students know they need to be at seminary, but they’re trying to discover what their call will look like.
|  | Because seminaries demand students declare a ministry track, students often become frustrated. They may not know immediately if they want to be a professor at a seminary, a pastor, or a missionary. Some students also have to deal with new possibilities. If I come to seminary and my only model of ministry is the County Seat Church where there was one senior pastor and 200 people, I come to seminary and find out, Wow! There are people who do all kinds of ministries, and it’s not just a senior pastor role.
Community Confirmation
I firmly believe that life change takes place in the context of community. While individualism is widely embraced in Western Christianity, Scripture teaches us to live life in community. You may want to be the next Chuck Swindoll, but the people closest to you can look objectively at your gifts, talents, temperament, and life situations and give you an honest opinion of whether you’re equipped to head down that road.
At our seminary, we require all students who are on a track for professional ministry to be in a spiritual formation group for two years. Their last project within this group is to present a ministry vision statement of what they think God is doing in their life.
Within this group, you are able to say, “I want to be a children’s pastor.” The folks in the group, who have known you for two years, can freely say, “Wait a second. You’ve never even talked about children’s ministry. Where is this coming from?” Though it may be difficult, through community you are given the opportunity to ask the hard questions: Where do you see me? Where do you see God at work in my life? What do you think I’m best equipped to do?
That is how confirmation works, and that is why it is so important for students to be engaged in their local church. You might think you’re a great teacher, but are you teaching at your church? If you are teaching, what feedback are you receiving?
Not about the Glory
While human nature is to aim for the glory position—to be a missionary that blazes a trail or the evangelist that reaches millions—seminarians need to know that it is okay to be an associate pastor, a Web developer for a mission agency, or even a administrator for a local Christian radio station. These positions are no less honorable. Like Martin Luther says, the milkmaid is just as much an instrument of God as the priest. Everybody plays his or her part.
|  | More and more students are saying, “I don’t have to be the senior pastor.” Definitions of ministry are broadening from the idea that ministry takes place within the four walls of a church to the concept that ministry takes place in the context of where I live.
In fact, many seminary students receive their degree and decide to go back out into the business world. I applaud that! You don’t have to come to seminary and become a pastor. You can do ministry and be a businessman, a fireman, or even a lawyer. At the end of the day, God is much more concerned about my life of holiness and relationship with other people than what I’m doing in ministry.
George Hillman is an assistant Professor in Spiritual Formation and Leadership and the Director of the Center for Biblical Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. |
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|  |  uthor Scot McKnight on why we don’t need to know it all.
We often like to say, “God’s in control,” but we are usually very quick to ask the question “why?” whenever something happens that we don’t immediately understand. We try to figure out God’s call for our life on our own. But maybe mystery is good.
In a recent interview with Ministry Mentor, Scot McKnight, North Park University professor and author of The Jesus Creed, shares what we need to understand about God and our call when we face life challenges.
How do you understand vocation?
There are two senses of vocation for Christians. There is the general vocation, which I believe is the Jesus Creed: to love God and others. This is the vocation of all Christians. Regardless of whatever else they do, they are to love God and love others. Specifically, vocation is the special assignment only you can do—that which God made you to be.
Even if you think you have a specific sense of vocation, it doesn’t mean you are doing what’s right if you’re not loving God and loving others.
Do you think God reveals specific vocations?
I don’t think the discovery of a specific vocation, or God’s will, should be a fundamental pursuit in life. I think most people do not have a sense of a specific vocation. Some people do, and some people don’t. Whether you do or don’t doesn’t matter; it matters whether you love God and love others.
Does God reveal specific vocations? Sometimes, to some people, I’m certain of that. But the quest to discover a specific vocation for oneself, I think, often gets misguided.
How so?
Because we want to control it when it is out of our control. Some people have an experience where they just know that they’re called to a specific thing. And some people drift into what they’re called to do, and are just as effective as the person who has a specific calling.
You argue that every vocation is tested by God. How should we deal with testing?
In my judgment, many people are far too self-conscious about everything God is doing in our lives and insist they know why things are happening. Others are not aware, but they realize after time that they were tested. I think we should be more humble about what is happening in our lives. We should concentrate on what we’ve learned from our experiences, and allow them to deepen us.
How does that really deepen us?
I get frustrated with people—students or thirty-somethings—who when they have a flat tire say, “God gave me this flat tire because . . .” In sociology this is called “attribution theory.” Some people have an incurable need to declare why something has happened in their lives, because once they can declare why, they’ve got it under control.
I don’t believe that we know why these things happen. It’s more important for us to learn from them so we can relate to others and help them.
So you don’t need to be the leader in discovering why God is testing you?
Right. In a sense, accept what happened. Now, we’re talking here about bad events. I’m not talking about things that we can control.
For instance, if something happens like my house burns down, I’m not going to ask, “Why did God do this to me?” Rather, I’m going to go forward, learn from it, and grow from it. Then I can look back later and say, “That’s what God taught me.”
When we are distracted by worry and the desire to fix things, we can’t focus on life’s central issue: “Love God with your whole being.” And when we act as if we know what God is doing with everything, we’re not letting life be a mystery and learning from it.
|  | What’s the upside of more mystery in life?
We are finite beings, and there are a lot of things we don’t understand. We don’t know the mind of God on everything. And so we should enjoy that mystery—just recognize our finitude, our limitations. There should be joy in knowing that we don’t have to know. |
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 hat I learned when things fell apart.
John Nelson, student at Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota
I entered seminary confident and expectant. I experienced God’s leading through prayer and the encouragement of others, was equipped with an undergraduate Bible and Theology degree, had been involved in various forms of ministry, and was soon to be married to a wonderful woman who shared my heart for the Lord.
Certainly, I was prepared for the journey ahead! Or so I thought. By the end of year one, life had begun to unravel.
Unexpectedly, God led me away from my church of four years to do my internship with another congregation. While the opportunity was exciting, it contained uncertainties, requiring me to leave my church family. I found myself in a prolonged period of waiting, unsure of my decision and without a church home.
Compounding my angst was a struggling new marriage. The demands of life had taken a greater toll than I anticipated. Our busyness, stress, and lack of church community, together with some underlying issues, threatened our marriage.
I suddenly found myself experiencing confusion, fear, and uncertainty. I questioned my calling—and at times even my faith. God seemed distant.
I immersed myself in my books—theology, philosophy, great spiritual writers—both in search of an answer and to mask my own sense of disconnection and isolation. This only heightened my anxiety; theory failed to match my experience or translate into practice. The questions grew and the answers became few and far between.
I was not able to discern at the time that God was guiding and transforming me.
|  | Steps to renewal
I was driven to a posture of dependency and reached out for help from a few friends, a couple of seminary professors, and a counselor. This was difficult; my natural inclination is to put up the front of having everything under control. Their presence, counsel, and affirming faces served as sources of encouragement and strength that mediated God’s presence to me.
Next, I was pulled outside of my own self-preoccupation as I began spending weekly afternoons in a nearby park preserve. I have always loved the outdoors—backpacking the Continental Divide while I lived in the Rift Valley, Kenya—but the busyness of seminary life and city noise had slowly drawn me away.
This renewed time spent in nature made prayer come to life as the inherent beauty of creation led me beyond itself and pointed to the One who continually speaks it into existence. Instead of dislocation, I experienced a sense of connectedness and wholeness that began to transform my day-to-day life.
|  | Finally, I began experiencing life as grace through a two-day personal spiritual retreat. I had considered taking such a retreat for years, always making excuses to avoid it: I’m too busy. Or, It’s a selfish endeavor. In reality, fear kept me away; it was much easier to read about the experiences of others than it was to risk encountering God for myself. What would I discover about myself as I faced God nakedly in silence and solitude? The fear was unwarranted. The silence was refreshing, enabling me to receive an outpouring of God’s gracious gift of life with renewed strength to bring this gift to others.
Learning that my future is a gift
In the midst of God’s seeming absence, he had paradoxically drawn me nearer to himself. My grip on life and penchant for control was slowly released as I was drawn outside myself toward attentiveness to God, others, and creation.
As a result, my marriage is taking on new life, ministry and schoolwork have new meaning, and my sense of vocation gained greater clarity. Instead of attempting to create my own future, I am learning to receive it as a gift; one that is calling me towards the integration of spirituality and theology, with ministry and the academy coming together.
After a year of waiting, wandering, and growth, I just began my internship, ideally suited to guide me in the formational stage of this process that I would not have been ready for a year ago. I am learning that true preparation for ministry begins with the ability to hold the future loosely, remaining open to God’s transforming and unpredictable journey. This allows me to receive the gift of my calling and enables me to be a gift for others. In other words, I am learning to lose my life in order to find true life for the sake of embodying the liberating Good News (Mark 8:35). |
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