f you’re planning on pastoral ministry, most ministers advocate finding a mentor to show you the ropes. Reverend Lee Eclov, senior pastor of Village Church of Lincolnshire in Lake Forest, Illinois, says that the skills students need for a pastoral role will be developed only by spending significant time in a church, learning the ministry inside and out. Eclov has committed his life to mentoring emerging pastors, and he has some advice for making the relationship worth everyone’s while.

1. Be teachable.
Most students, says Eclov, are not too arrogant to be teachable, but they’re too busy. "By busy, I don’t mean their schedules," Eclov says, I mean they’re busy-minded." This often prohibits students from being good listeners, an important quality in a protégé.

2. Be available.
"If you’re going to ask a pastor to mentor you," says Eclov, "that’s a big deal. He better have some sense that you will meld your schedule around his availability." Eclov says he understands that seminary students have a heavy work load, but it’s really frustrating to a pastor, who also has a hectic schedule, to tell a student when he can meet and have the student say he or she isn’t available. "I need some flexibility in these students," he says, “and that sometimes means it will put the squeeze on them, but that’s part of the deal."

3. Be a thinker.
"It’s flattering to be asked thoughtful questions," says Eclov. "And it shows you’re someone who wants to understand the soul of ministry, not just the skills." Eclov says he wants to be asked the skill questions, too, like "When do you work on your sermon?” But past that, he hopes students will ask the deeper questions. A good example: "Don’t you get tired of helping hurting people all the time?" Eclov encourages students to take time to think about these kinds of questions and to keep a list of them to ask their mentor.

Mentoring is definitely something that takes time—a precious commodity for the seminary student. But those who have made it a priority have found it well worth the investment. As Eclov says, "You never know when you’re going to strike a vein of gold in a conversation that will really help, that will cause a student to think about something they’ve never thought about before."

he seemingly endless array of worship styles and philosophies can dizzy even the most ministry-savvy seminarian. What are your philosophy and theology of worship? Even if you don’t end up as a pastor, have you thought about what constitutes God-honoring worship?

Doctor Robert Webber, author of The Young Evangelicals and many other books on the subject of worship, is leading the charge to return to the ancient understanding of worship—albeit in a fresh way.

Ministry Mentor wanted to know what constitutes authentic, historical worship, and how one goes about developing a solid foundation for leading worship.

How does one develop a practical, working theology of worship?

The most important thing is to learn exactly what the substance—the content—of worship is about. Worship is not just merely style and technique; as a matter of a fact, as people attempt to make technique worship, they will fail.

As we move into the twenty-first century, many congregations are moving beyond the technique of the last 30 years. People are looking for “authenticity.” So the first thing a seminary student needs to do is understand the meaning of worship, search for the depth of worship, and seek to be formed spiritually by the understanding of what worship is. This way, he or she doesn’t go out and try to lead worship as a show or something slick. What he or she needs to learn is how to lead people and understand worship as an expression of spirituality.

So what is “authentic worship”?

In a nutshell, authentic worship proclaims and enacts the actions of God in history to rescue creatures and creation, culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus. All this is so complex. My students after a semester of study are still trying to figure it out.

So how do we start?

Essentially, what I’m talking about is the recovery of “story.” It’s something that we’re recovering in the postmodern world. The Bible is a story from beginning to end, and God has been involved in history: the creation of Israel, the expectation of the coming of Jesus—the incarnation of God, the life and ministry of Jesus, his death, his resurrection, and the second act of creation at the beginning of the new creation. The church, then, is called to be a witness to this. Worship is intended to proclaim the Story and to enact it as we anticipate the second coming of Christ and the restoration of the entire created order. If you get those words, that summarizes it, but relatively few people seem to understand it.

I’m guessing that many people haven’t heard worship framed in this way. Is this something that’s being missed in theological education?

Yes. In modernity, we trained church leaders to be business people, marketers, advertisers, and to run programs. We need to change that and go back to the substance of the Christian faith and form Christian leaders so they embody the Christian faith. So they can lead churches into a true experience of being Christians—not just talking about it but living it and embodying the Christian faith in the context of a post-modern world.

Did you learn this early on in your education?

Not really. If I had the opportunity to redo my education, perhaps I would learn more about history and cultural trends and work to understand the rhythm and patterns of the church, music, literature, art, and theology.

On the spiritual level, I wish that I had learned much sooner in my Christian pilgrimage the essence of spirituality and Christian worship. I wish I had learned earlier that spirituality is a gift. It is not something that we attain or earn or create within ourselves. Spirituality is learning to live in the pattern of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

How does one live in that pattern?

It’s the baptism pattern. In baptism we’re baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection. That means we are to put off the old person and to put on the new person. This is the struggle of our personal spirituality: Learning to put off greed, envy and jealously, ambition, and material wealth, and to put on the fruits of the spirit.

How I found God in seminary

By Michael Mauriello, Master of Divinity Student, Trinity International University

came to Chicago for seminary straight out of a tough undergraduate major in architecture.

In that program I had struggled with a variety of fears: failure in class, not being liked, and people being angry with me. I thought I had left that buried and behind me at graduation, but when I came to seminary, these fears rushed back as I struggled to keep up in Greek and Hebrew. Every quiz I got back terrified me. Would it be the final nail in the coffin of my attempt at ministry?

By my second year, I was a mess, trying to balance my struggles in school with a new marriage. I worked at the campus bookstore, volunteered in youth ministry, and helped my landlord in exchange for rent. I was a freight train heading toward burn out.

During this period of time, God sustained me in surprising ways. My wife and several godly men spoke truth to me where I believed lies about my fears. For example, once I came home believing I would never pass Greek because I failed a quiz. My wife was there to remind me gently of my "A" exegesis paper in the same class.

I’ve also been surprised and seen God’s grace in how the pastors at our church have invested in training my wife, Londa, and me as leaders. My senior pastor, Lee Eclov, invited me to meet with the elders so they could pray for me about my fear issues. Lee continues to meet once a week with me to talk about ministry.

And God has providentially placed me with language professors who have been especially gracious with slower students. My last Hebrew professor extended several deadlines on papers with which the whole class seemed to be struggling. His class also focused more on the personal application of passages studied, rather than just focusing on issues of syntax.

About that same time, Londa and I sat down and together made some significant choices. We agreed to try to go to bed together every night before 9:30 and to ride together to and from school everyday. That gives us a lot of time together to talk and reconnect. We also decided that getting straight A’s in seminary wasn’t necessary. I still work hard, but I’m content with a B (or even a C) in some classes where there isn’t enough to time to do everything 100 percent.

As Christ said to Paul, "'My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness.' So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me" (2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT). God has taught me that his grace is sufficient. It’s not about a 4.0 grade point average. God’s primary purpose for having me in seminary is to feed me on his Word.

We still have a year of school to go, and fears can still crop up. Yet I remember God’s grace is sufficient; he will see my wife and me through to the end.