What I wish I’d learned in seminary
It’s been a while since we’ve solicited your help in a discussion topic. Let’s have another try.
What are the top 3 things you wish you would have learned in seminary?
Other ways to get at the same question: What did you learn/experience in your first few years of ministry that you were under-prepared for? If seminaries were able to address certain areas of life and ministry more fully, what would you suggest? If you had a parishioner heading off to seminary, what would you want to tell them to supplement their education with on their own? Etc.
Help us out with what you’ve learned…
Posted: March 16th, 2009 under Denominational, General, Practical Theology.
Comments
Comment from Wes Vander Lugt
Time March 16, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I’ll give a shot at this great question, which I think helps bring into focus the areas in which we still need to learn and grow. Even though there is much more I wished I learned in Seminary, there is a sense in which we are not meant to learn everything in Seminary classrooms, since the best learning is reflection on action. I also am extremely grateful for the education I received at Covenant Seminary, which leads students through a beautiful blend of theory and practice. But without further ado, here are three things I wish had been emphasized more.
1) How to engage in team ministry. Ministry is never solitary, and effective ministry has to constantly reflect and practice how to proclaim and demonstrate the gospel in word and deed together with others.
2) The important of holistic or integral mission, or taking the whole gospel to the whole person. I think if church leaders really grasped this concept, our ministries would look very different, but it needs to start with solid, biblical reflection. Along with this, there needs to be more exposure to the incredible work and partnership of the Lausanne Movement at the Seminary level.
3) Matters of culture and contextualization. These questions should not be relegated to one class on mission, but integrated throughout the entire Seminary curriculum, since we never minister in a culture-less or context-less situation. We learn how to exegete Scripture, but do we really learn how to exegete our neighborhood, cities, cultures, and countries so that we can proclaim and demonstrate the gospel in those places? Along with this, I wish that more global and indigenous theologies showed up in our reading lists in all the disciplines.
I look forward to hearing from others and how you are being formed by continual reflection on action.
Comment from Shawn Doud
Time March 16, 2009 at 7:53 pm
I wish I had been taught:
Christo-centric Biblical Theology
Liturgics
Peacemaking
Comment from Ken Pierce
Time March 17, 2009 at 8:59 am
1.) More counseling. So much of ministry is counseling, and one hodgepodge class doesn’t help. When people’s lives, marriages, and souls are on the line, more would be helpful.
2.) Peacemaking, etc.
3.) Some instruction on how to teach as well as how to preach.
The previous comments are right on. So much cannot be learned in the classroom. How much better would it be if the seminaries really excelled in teaching Bible, theology, and history, and dealt with so many other things (evangelism, missions, worship) as a mentored practicum (ie actually do witnessing, go on missions, and do daily ministry).?
Comment from Mark Robinson
Time March 17, 2009 at 7:09 pm
1) sacramental praxis - as a single guy, i didn’t even know how to hold an infant, let alone baptize one! a PT course in which we practice breaking bread and sprinkling babies would have been very helpful and anxiety relieving.
2) developing a pastoral network of ministerial support - maybe this kind of thing just happens organically and cant be taught but I felt very much on my own trying to find my way as a new pastor out of seminary.
3) the art of spritual direction - so much time is spent face to face and one on one with people helping them figure out what God is doing in their life and how the resurrection has real cash value/power for their messy life. more formal, focused teaching on this ancient practice (thank you Eugene Peterson) would have proved incalculable for me in my direct shepherding of the flock over which I was made an overseer.
Comment from Geoff Henderson
Time March 18, 2009 at 9:30 am
1.) Peacemaking skills. So much division happens because people don’t follow Jesus in this. Going through Ken Sande’s book would have been very helpful.
2.) I’m not financially literate when it comes to budgets. I probably should have done a better job seeking this myself, but some general explanation of terms would have definitely helped.
3.) Spiritual formation. A one hour class when dealing with the question of evil really and another on sanctification were not enough. Perhaps one class per year on this would have paid great dividends.
Comment from Jedidiah Slaboda
Time March 18, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I could have benefited from learning the following:
1. How to read music
2. How to speak Spanish
3. The words of Institution, and several regular service prayers.
Comment from Scott Wells
Time March 18, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Agree with the remark that many of these gaps are things that are learned in the local church. But such learning faces the challenge of who has time & budget for interns? How can we improve?
1. How to do church discipline (with thoughts on how to pursue people who run, how/if to inform a congregation, how to restore people). Case studies on adultery, rebellious teens, and deadbeat (but still in the home) fathers would have been particularly helpful.
2. “Medical terms for pastors” & “How to really love people through a medical crisis” (long or short term). I left seminary without ever personally facing cancer, a heart attack, or any other serious medical condition and therefore had little experience from which to either empathize with people or help them with practical needs.
3. +1 on needing more counseling training (CCEF’s new distance education has been very helpful, personally, in building this post-seminary).
Comment from Sam
Time March 18, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Wow, there’s so much I can put here. I think it should be important that all seminary students on the pastoral track (as opposed to professor track) should be given at least 1 year of practical ministry where they’re trained by a pastor in a ministry setting for 52 weeks before being given a degree. Now with that being said, here are 3 things I wish they’ll teach…
1. Bible Study VS preaching - the fine art of teaching and preaching, with an understanding that like bike riding one will get better with experience (Lord willing)
2. Worship Ministry - understand that whether it be preaching, Bible Study, praise - it’s ALL worship. And it helps to learn a musical instrument or 2 or 3…
3. Women’s Ministry - how to minister to women as a dude (single or married) in a way that safeguards the congregant and you the pastor from any “sketchy” stuff from happening or any rumor(s) from rampaging.
Comment from Scott Kerens
Time March 19, 2009 at 7:49 am
As with the above caveats, I agree that much of the best learning will happen after school in real-life situations. I like what Sam has to say about the internship. We should have good practical experience as part of the degree, but I suppose that’s what the field ed. was for. My present weaknesses reveal that I could have used:
1. Strategies for teaching and learning to teach better.
2. How-tos for Discipleship/Spritual Formation.
3. Ministry leadership for niche ministries (college/young adult/families)
Comment from Wes Vander Lugt
Time March 19, 2009 at 1:48 pm
A lot of you have mentioned wanting to learn how to teach better, in addition to just preaching. Have you found resources that have been particularly helpful for you as wrestle with this aspect of ministry? What would you tell those in Seminary or preparing for ministry in terms of how to learn how to teach?
Comment from Craig Higgins
Time March 20, 2009 at 11:55 am
(1) How to listen to the whole church and not presume that we have all the answers (which goes hand-in-hand with how to share what we believe in a way that honors our brothers and sisters)
(2) How to pray–the most vital work of the pastor–beyond merely the “discipline” of the “quiet time”
(3) How my own “personality” (sins, quirks, past, traumas, scars, etc.) has shaped and is shaping me, my family, my ministry, etc.
Comment from Nathaniel Ruland
Time March 20, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I’m in seminary right now. From what I can see a common theme of lament is lack of peacemaking instruction. I’ll remember that…..so far, my practical theology classes tend to depend more on the instructor than the curriculum……at least experimentally. I really want the wisdom of a pastor, not the methodology of a professor in a practical theology course.
Comment from Sam DeSocio
Time March 30, 2009 at 8:59 am
1) - How to teach and lead groups. I had several preaching classes, but there is a major different between a sermon and a class or a bible study.
2) - A Biblical Perspective on Spiritual Warfare. We still have that don’t we?
3) A holistic view of kingdom expansion
3) -
Comment from Gabe Sylvia
Time April 14, 2009 at 2:30 pm
It is a great question…
1) As one brother said in this list, that seminary is a starting point and not the reference point
2) how people change and how to counsel them biblically
3) how to develop leaders
4) how to leverage the historic faith into penetrating our culture - how to take the old into new
Comment from David A Booth
Time April 22, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I’m intrigued that the majority of the above responses all fall into the category of: “Things I could have learned in church before I went to seminary.”
Shouldn’t seminary be a place that focuses on those areas that one cannot easily learn in the local church (like Greek and Hebrew exegesis)?
Comment from Bob Smallman
Time March 16, 2009 at 9:05 am
Experience sometimes is the only teacher for most of the things I didn’t get in seminary. A friend of mine who is a veterinarian and I were having a conversation years ago about the nature of our professional education. He observed that most vets get into a practice right after veterinarian school and make all kinds of mistakes — and then move far away and establish their “real” practice. I said that pastors work pretty much the same way!