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 ow to keep your seminary experience positive
Somewhere between the application process and the diploma, most seminarians at some point question why they chose the seminary path. But keeping your seminary experience fresh can be as simple as refocusing priorities and making sure you have some healthy disciplines intact. This month three MinistryMentor Advisory Board members, author Gordon MacDonald (A Resilient Life), professor Thomas Fuller (Beeson Divinity School), and professor George Hillman (Dallas Theological Seminary), offer insight on how to develop behaviors that lead to a positive seminary experience.
Q: What is the relationship between our values and behavior?
George Hillman: Our values and our theology are the bedrock of our behavior. While all of us can put on a good show, our true values eventually reveal themselves. We need to realize that there is a difference between idealized values and realized values. While in our minds we might say that we hold certain values, our realized values are the real things that drive us.
Q: Can you give an example?
GH: I can say I value prayer because that is what a “good seminary student” is supposed to say. But do I really live my life as one who is dependent on prayer? Part of the seminary journey is discovering your values and theology, and then living your life from the inside out.
Q: What values do seminarians need to make a priority?
Thomas Fuller: Those values that constitute the heart of Christian discipleship. I tell my students that their call, first and last, is to follow Christ. Christian discipleship is the essential framework on which all of Christian ministry hangs.
|  | Beyond this, I urge seminarians to be themselves. People are desperately seeking for people and things that are real in a world full of pretense and imitation. There is the temptation to develop or assume a ministry identity that mimics someone else or conforms to what one believes others want them to be. Aside from growing in the image of Jesus Christ, seminarians do well to be themselves and let God use their uniqueness as He sees fit.
Gordon MacDonald: If you’ve been a counter-cultural college student, it may be time to enter the greater adult world. Don’t expect to go into the average church and gain the respect, trust, and ear of older-generation men and women if your dress, vocabulary, and life-style are those of a teenager. Paul’s Jew-to-Jew, Gentile-to-Gentile strategy kicks in here (1 Cor 9:20). Learn to bridge the gaps between all people simultaneously—seniors, midlifers, and youth; Republicans and Democrats; poor and wealthy.
Q: What disciplines are most helpful to seminarians, and why?
TF: Stay connected to a local Christian fellowship. As a seminarian it is easy to become insulated from the lives and experiences of the people in the pews. Eugene Peterson writes about the dangers of “religious careerism.” Those who are preparing for Christian ministry must grow toward people, not away from them.
GM: Seminarians must maintain a vital family life (or friendships, if single). Lots of marriages “go south” during seminary because the spouse begins to feel as if marriage is low on the priority list—and is often justified in this perception. Learn to control time so you achieve a balance of priorities in life.
|  | Q: What other disciplines are important?
TF: Seminarians need to play. I see my students stretched to their limits because of their studies, work, family, and ministry commitments. Recreation is re-creational; it renews and refreshes.
GH: Most seminary students struggle with prayer. Some of that might be because seminaries attract the cognitive type. It is so easy to get caught in the intellectual trap of school and reduce a relationship with God to textual criticism. Yet prayer is the best discipline for maintaining a love affair with God.
GM: The discipline of study is also at the top of the list. Only a fool tries to do the minimum in seminary. There will be a lifelong regret that the great learning years were squandered.
Also, seminarians are tempted to take their church experience less seriously. They begin to think of Sunday as a study day—or an “off” day. A nice idea, but don’t expect the people you will someday pastor to be faithful to the congregational experience if the pastor wasn’t during grad-school. |
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 n interview with Dr. Gary Chapman, pastor and author of The Five Love Languages, on making your marriage thrive in seminary
Marriage is work, no matter what phase of life you find yourself in. But in seminary, your marriage vows—like being there for your spouse in good times and bad—are tested and retested. In a recent interview, Dr. Chapman talks candidly about the dangers marriages face while a spouse is in seminary and the importance of always putting your marriage first—no matter how godly your pursuit.
Q: What are the hallmarks of a healthy covenant marriage?
Gary Chapman: A covenant marriage takes biblical concepts and seeks to implement them. This means that marriage is for a lifetime. Secondly, it means that husbands and wives are committed to loving each other unconditionally. And thirdly, it means spouses are committed to confronting and forgiving each other when things are done that shouldn’t have been—which we all do.
As I see it, God did not initiate marriage to make us miserable; he initiated marriage because two are better than one. If a husband and wife do marriage God’s way, they will accomplish more in ministry than they ever would have accomplished separately. That doesn’t mean it’s God’s plan for everyone to be married. But for those who are married, God knows that when a husband and wife intentionally give their lives to each other, they can become what God intended them to be.
Q: If you’re feeling drained in seminary, and you suspect your marriage is part of the drain, what’s really going on?
GC: It means things are out of balance. The key is learning how to balance the various responsibilities of your life: attending class, studying, working, and attending to your spouse’s and children’s needs. But this is true not only in seminary. Once you get into ministry, there’s not any less to balance. You’re just balancing different things.
Q: What are some ways to make your spouse a priority?
GC: Have a regular time in which you check in with each other on how things are going. In The Five Love Languages, I encourage spouses to ask each other a couple of nights a week, “From 0-10, how full is your love tank tonight?” (Ten means your love tank is full; zero means you don’t feel any love.) If the response is anything less than ten, you say, “What could I do to help fill it?” Then the spouse gives you a suggestion, such as: “Honey, the greatest thing you could do tonight is do the laundry for me, and not go to your study group.” Then you call the study group and cancel.
It’s a simple way of checking in with each other emotionally to see if you’re secure in each other’s love. If you’re not, then you have an idea of what to do to help the situation. If you don’t check in with each other in some way, you can go for months with one person feeling totally depleted emotionally and on the brink of crisis. If you can check in with each other emotionally, you’re less likely to get to the breaking point and you will know where you need to give priority.
|  | Q: How do you keep from feeling resentful toward your spouse when s/he asks you to sacrifice your studies for your marriage?
GC: You have to recognize your priorities, and in my opinion, the first calling is to love your spouse. If you’re not loving your spouse, I don’t care if you’re making straight As; you’re not pleasing God. You’re better off staying at home loving your partner if he or she is in need of love. In doing that, you’re setting an example for other seminarians (and when you’re in ministry, you’re setting an example for your congregation). You’re also establishing a pattern for your future life in ministry. If you’re neglecting your spouse while you’re in seminary because of pressures, then you’ll probably neglect your spouse once you’re in ministry—because, believe me, the stresses aren’t any less! |
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ow one seminarian learned what Jesus was all about
by Matt Horan, Asbury Seminary
When I began seminary, I didn’t think there was much more to learn about Jesus. I figured I’d relearn everything I already knew, but this time in Greek or Hebrew. But after my first week, I was open to the possibility that there were a few things that I didn’t know about Jesus. And after my first year, I realized there were a lot of things I didn’t know about Jesus.
It was at this point that I began my mentored-ministry experience. Serving as a hospital chaplain, I discovered that I barely knew Jesus! Working in the hospital amidst those in despair, I began to understand beyond an intellectual level what ministry is all about, as described in Matthew 25:34-36 (NLT):
Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.
As a hospital chaplain, I saw sorrow and suffering manifest in many forms. I met a woman with AIDS who had contracted the disease from her husband after he had an affair. A fourteen-year-old young man needed a kidney transplant, but couldn’t get one because he didn’t have health insurance. Terminally-ill patients expressed their desire to die, or their regrets as the end approached.
|  | I visited sick children and held babies as they died. I talked with three kids, two in college and one in high school, about deciding to disconnect life support from their mother—their father had died three years before. I sat with families, tense as they awaited results. Recipients of good news sighed with relief, but for many others the news was doom. There was crying, screaming, wailing. One man who lost his son yelled at me, “Where is your God now?”
Presence—Not Performance
Yes, the days were often overwhelming and discouraging. Once, only two people came to chapel to hear my “insightful, carefully-crafted sermon.” Afterward, however, they stayed to talk about the heartache in their lives. I was reminded that, in ministry, presence is often more important than performance. Jesus—the one I had thought I’d known so intimately—would have already known that.
|  | It was my privilege to pray with people as they endured physical agony, and sometimes emotional and spiritual agony as well. It was my privilege to hear stories of suffering, loss, and brokenheartedness. It was my privilege to be invited by patients and their families to stand with them on the holy ground of their trials and tragedies. I have never felt so honored and unworthy at the same time.
When I first arrived at seminary, I felt that the most effective minister was one who provided the most—and certainly the deepest—answers to life’s tough questions. Could I avoid being stumped? Did I have the right Scripture to quote at the right time? I didn’t realize that this type of ministry was all about me. Jesus—the one I thought I knew inside-and-out—would know better. He would make ministry all about them.
A woman who has lost a baby does not need a quick explanation for her suffering. A patient with Alzheimer’s disease does not need religious clichés. They need people to be like the Jesus I now know—who gave up luxury and privilege to be present alongside the suffering. These things I never knew until I went to seminary. Once I began my mentored ministry as a hospital chaplain, I could hear God saying, “See, I told you so.”
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