hat you can do today to prevent ministry burnout tomorrow.

By Dr. Craig Blomberg

It's no easy task for a seminary to strike a balance between the theoretical and the practical. Theological education needs both.

Coursework can take you only so far. The next step is mentoring.

I've participated in my seminary's program to mentor students, and I think there are several principles that students can apply to their experience. One worthy goal of mentoring, I think, is to help turn the tide on the appallingly high statistic of ministry burnout and the short number of years that people stay in ministry. I wish all seminaries kept—and published—the statistics for how many of their grads who intended a life of professional ministry have left it because of burnout or moral failure. Perhaps the statistics are better buried.

1. Find a community.
Over the past decade, we’ve developed a program where each student must be part of a mentoring team. Every faculty member has a group of no more than ten students with whom he or she meets weekly during the semester. That faculty member is technically a mentor, but students must also identify two other people, one a ministry professional and one a lay minister, who can mentor them as well—from different perspectives. They also meet weekly—preferably all together—to pray together, check on any theological questions or problems the student might be having, and measure what the student is doing against his or her “mentoring contract.”

2. Write it down.
In our program, each student is required to write a contract for him- or herself that focuses on two aspects of ministry: skills and spiritual formation. Within these aspects, students further detail their needs, including such things as a self-assessment of what they’ve done, what they feel they need to work on, what they’re good at, etc. The actual contract develops out of this. The goal is to come up with objectives and theological justifications for the student’s field experience. On the spiritual formation side of things, the goals can range across all the different spiritual disciplines. For example, students often focus on prayer because they see it as a weak area. Others explore fasting, solitude, or family building. This area is broad enough that one student was able to acknowledge an addiction that he was then able to work through in his mentoring relationship.

Goal setting is nothing new, but if you're in a mentoring relationship, it's important to clarify exactly what you want out of the process. Too often mentoring can be fuzzy.

3. Broaden your experience.
Another important piece of our program is the number of full- and part-time faculty members who oversee various training and mentoring centers in the community. This provides students with about eight different arenas in which they can do their practical mentoring: the suburban church, the urban church, a parachurch ministry, missions, counseling, a rural parish setting, chaplaincy, and campus ministry.

Even if your school doesn’t have a set mentoring program, this doesn’t mean you can’t pursue these kinds of relationships on your own. Even if no one is giving you credit for it, it’s so important to be intentional about the areas in which you know you need experience. I strongly encourage you to write out objectives that can be accomplished within a reasonable time frame. Then search hard for a ministry setting in which someone would be interested in meeting weekly—or at least as often as they can. Also, seek out a layperson to balance out the professional’s perspective. This kind of input will be crucial to your education and ultimately your preparation for ministry.

he path to discovering your place is through community.

Who hasn't awakened in the middle of the night wondering if seminary was the right decision? And when you sign the student loan papers, the anxiety can be even more intense.

Ben Patterson knows the agony of wrestling with God's call on his life. And as Campus Pastor of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, he's listened to many students as they recount their journeys to identifying and pursuing God's will. Author of Waiting: Finding Hope When God Seems Silent (InterVarsity Press) and Deepening Your Conversation with God (Bethany), Ben speaks frankly but compassionately about how seminary students can bring clarity to their calling.

Ministry Mentor: Many students question their call to ministry during seminary. How do you coach them through that process?

Ben Patterson: I say, “You are probably not going to figure it out in seminary. You need to get involved in hands-on ministry and get feedback and evaluation from the people you are ministering to.”

I don’t see that you can figure out whether you are called in seminary. You can acquire the tools for ministry, but you cannot acquire experience. There are internships, but you discover your call within a Christian community—a church or a parachurch organization.

When I was in college, I went to my college pastor and told him I felt called to ministry. He said, "Good, get involved here."

I hadn’t thought about getting involved in the college group. I was going to it, but I had these great visions of what God was going to do with me. But his telling me to get involved was the best thing that happened to me. I got hands-on experience, and I felt that I was called to preach. He had me preach a few times and do some teaching.

MM: Is that the key—to get a job and then figure it out?

BP: My son, Joel, is working with our church now and feeling called to the ministry. I do believe he is being called, but I hope the elders of our church sit down and talk with him about it and give him feedback.

MM: So what if you’re in seminary but you haven’t been sent—you feel called but haven’t been affirmed externally?

BP: You should find somebody who will let you work in his or her church or in his or her ministry—maybe even volunteer your time to just follow that person around or get your foot in the door. There may be professors in seminary that can affirm teaching or preaching or counseling skills and calling. But I do think churches have to be involved in seminary.

If you’re in the middle of seminary and haven’t already done so, you need to find someone who will let you begin to serve so you can get feedback, criticism, affirmation, etc.

MM: What’s a realistic expectation of certainty or confidence that a seminary student should have as he or she nears graduation?

BP: The one certainty that you must have is that it matters more to God than to you that you find where you’re supposed to be. It’s true for any calling—a.k.a., what is God’s will for your life?

To know with certainty whether you should be in full-time ministry is really desirable. However, more important is the confidence that this really matters to God and that it will ultimately work for your salvation. Even if you just blew $35,000, it is not wasted. Whatever we’ve done, even if it’s not quite right, is not wasted if we fall into God’s arms.

Chicago news-radio reporter and theological student on the craziness of working and studying

By Cisco Cotto

The ear-piercing sound of my alarm vibrates throughout my room. I shoot out of bed to hit Snooze, hoping I don’t wake my roommate. It seems like forever before the sound is gone, but when it is, I sit on the edge of my bed staring at the red digital numbers glowing in the dark. It’s 3:45 a.m., and it’s starting all over again.

I work full time as a radio reporter, and I have to be at work by 4:30 each morning. People tune in to our radio show to find out what happened while they were sleeping, and we have a lot of fun talking about all sorts of things, from politics to dating etiquette. When the show is over everyone else heads home for a nap, but not me because I’m also a Moody Bible Institute graduate student.

That means I leave my full-time job and ride the train to campus to begin an afternoon and evening full of lectures about systematic theology and Hebrew exegesis. When class is done at 9:00 at night, I head home, calling my fiancée on the way so we can talk about the day before I get home and crash. So by 10 or 10:30, I’m crawling into bed to grab a few hours of sleep before doing it all over again the next day. That is, unless homework keeps me up past midnight.

While many of my fellow students can relate to my crazy schedule, I get a lot people asking me how I stay sane. “How do you get by on so little sleep?” they ask. Or, “How do you sustain a relationship with so many things going on?” And, “How do you learn anything when you’re struggling to stay awake in class?”

These people rarely believe me that it has become surprisingly easy. It’s not that exhaustion and frustration don’t kick in; it’s just that when they do, I’ve found relief. I meditate on a line from my favorite verse: “The LORD GOD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation ” (Is 12:2 NLT).

These words keep me focused on all the ways God sustains me instead of all the reasons why I should be falling apart. I’m reminded that he’s provided me with a job where I can work mornings so I have the opportunity to take afternoon and evening classes. There’s no way I could do it if I worked nine to five. My fiancée also goes to Moody, which makes it easier to carve out some time to see each other during the week. And God provided an apartment that I share with another Moody grad student. It’s small and in bad shape, but the cheap rent allows me to live close to work and school.

In Luke, Christ talks about how carefully God crafts lilies and says, “ If God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you?” (Luke 12:27-28 NLT). Amen!

This is not to say that I don’t sometimes feel like sitting and sulking when life gets tough. It’s hard not seeing my family or hanging out with my friends much during the fall and spring. I long for eight hours of sleep (I mean in a row, not my weekly total). And it would be great to see my fiancée outside of class or our Saturday “dates” in the Moody library.

But I know that this is what God wants me to be doing, and I have found something wonderful in the craziness: knowing I am toiling for God’s will. As I look back on the last year of seminary life, I can see God’s hand providing for me all the way. He truly sustains me and has eased a seemingly impossible schedule.