THE
FLIP SIDE of SEMINARY
You
Shouldn’t Go to Seminary You Should Go to Seminary
By
David Drury
I've been thinking about the so-called
“pros and cons” of getting a theological education. What’s the big deal about reading Augustine
or parsing Greek verbs? What is good
about setting aside several more years for theological training at seminary or
graduate school? What’s bad about
it? As I move this year toward finishing
my seminary education here in
Ten reasons NOT to go to seminary or grad school:
1) It can make you depend on your own intelligence. This is basically
because of the environment of academia, not necessarily just theological
institutions. It is a spill over from
the Modern Age that crowned Reason as its king.
This self-centered-side inherent in education causes even students of
Theology to flip the Wesleyan Quadrilateral upside down. When you spend your
days thinking about thinking itself, you can easily give too
much credit to your own brain.
2) It may cause you to develop false values. It is easy to
value grades, impressions, skill, and vocabulary more than the weightier matters
at seminary. It is possible to put more
emphasis on the comments of the professor and the letter marked in red than the
discovery of a new truth and the impact it has on your life and call.
3) It causes stress. A degree can be lot of work, and if it isn't
then it should be. Yet, sometimes you
find yourself spending four hours a day in class, two hours a day researching
Greek, three hours a day reading old books, and one hour a day talking to your
wife, if you're lucky (or one hour a day playing video games, for you singles
out there.) Soon you arrive at a
breaking point. This can be a hindrance
not only to your studies but also your psychological health.
4) It will likely challenge your beliefs. Your beliefs can
be challenged by a convincing person long before you are far enough along in
wisdom and understanding to defend your own beliefs and answer tough
questions. You may interact with many
professors with "far out" ideas and doctrine that convince many young
students in their belief before they even finish their first year of school.
5) It can cause you to think of your religion as a class. In seminary, it is
easy to see your religion in terms of class work, papers, and tests. But the Bible is not "collateral
reading." It becomes easier to
treat your studies as the beginning and end of your religion because they take
up so much of the day. And you can start
to see Church and devotions and worship as drudgeries that take your “studies”
into the double-digit hours for the day.
6) It can make you lose touch with real world. While cloistered
away at seminary you might sink into the Atlantis
Syndrome. You are at a school which
has its own little world and illusionary existence that never rises to the
surface of actual reality. It is easy
during a theological education to remove oneself from the world like a monk
translating scripture in a monastery with no discussion concerning what exists
outside the walls or how you should engage that world.
7) It costs lots of money. This truth
increases for those that have prior education debt. After tens of thousands of dollars getting
loans for an undergrad degree should you then add on more expense, and likely
more debt? You will sometimes wonder how
you could have used this twelve grand or so if you were starting a new church,
or pastor of a quaint church in the country, or working on staff
somewhere. You think about how this
year’s tuition money could have been an entire down payment on a house, would
buy a new car, or would easily help you start a family. Seminary costs (more) money. And many of us have spouses or even kids to
care for this go-around.
8) You can lose sight of ministry. It seems ironic
that the very institutions that train one to do ministry sometimes neglect the
very core of the calling. It can be much
like going to a truck driving school and learning all the details about
trucks—how their engines work, what tire pressure to set them at, how early to
signal for a turn, how many feet you need to clear another car during a
turn—yet you never actually get into a truck and drive it. You just learn all about it in books and on
the screens. You can lose a grasp of
your calling and your ministry while nose deep in books at seminary. Particularly since ministry is all about
people.
9) It can cause you to see the Bible as a textbook. This can happen at
the undergraduate level, but happens all the more at the graduate level. The Word of the Lord often loses its potency
when seen only under the microscope.
Sometimes we treat the Bible as though we were performing an autopsy
on a living human being. Of course one
doesn’t do an autopsy on a breathing person!
You do surgery on a living person, then you stitch them back up, and
the person walks away. All too often
the Bible spends all of its time on the operating table and never back home in
the dorm or apartment or house you live in during seminary.
10) It can make you lose your focus. Primarily, you can
lose your focus on Christ and His work in your life. It is easy to spend all your time thinking of
theology in the abstract, and never apply it to your own life. And often, you can lose sight of the things
that matter, namely, your salvation, your holiness, your call, your family and
your ministry.
Ten reasons TO GO to seminary or grad school:
1) It makes you think. Perhaps you’d say we all "think"
regardless of whether we contemplate the interrelation behind Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism on a daily
basis. This is true, we do all
"think", but the question is the degree to which thinking is taking
place. If you are to adequately
appreciate and propagate the Gospel for the rest of your natural life you must
in some way have a grasp upon its deep
meaning. You might not sense it
now—but 10 years from now you may realize you need some deeper training. You’ve got to dive deep seeking oysters if
you ever want to make a pearl necklace.
2) It makes you read. You have to read a lot during seminary. You read Church History, classic Theologians,
contemporary apologists, Biblical commentaries, etc. These all give you a grand breadth of
tradition behind your beliefs and ministry practice. No other subject than Religion has had so
much written and so much preached throughout the history of the world, and it
seems like you are forced to about 51% of it.
This gives you a love for reading that you will never lose, and often
time your undergraduate education does not provide or require this at all.
3) It makes you write. The papers and essays and projects never seem
to end during seminary or Grad school.
But it teaches you how to write.
You learn how to articulate your thoughts instead of just idly thinking
them or speaking them imprecisely.
Seminary teaches you to express yourself in written words—particularly since
your entire grade is usually based on one or two papers per class, and almost
never on a test or quiz.
4) It answers a lot of the tough questions. Everyone who ever
took a shower has questions about Theology.
And a lot of those questions are genuinely tough ones. It is hard to get those questions adequately
answered anywhere but at a theological institution. At nearly any seminary the professors have
spent decades researching and writing at the highest scholarly levels on the
very subjects they teach and they are indispensable sounding boards to help you
better answer the tough questions you have.
You leave your Theological education a bit more confident and diverse in
experience about these areas of common question.
5) It helps you understand and appreciate diversity. While studying
Theology, you have to take a look at numerous views on one subject—often times
interacting with someone from a completely different Christian (or not so Christian) tradition. This forces you to gain a deeper understanding
of the diversity within the Christian community on issues. It also causes you to appreciate the good
parts of different perspectives, for many that you don't share still add to the
collage that is the total picture of Christian belief. It is sometimes wearisome to debate over
these points of discrepancy, but in time a seminary education simply makes you
love all of God's people more regardless of the less essential points of
debate.
6) It forces you to form foundations. A seminary education
constantly tests the foundations behind your beliefs and doctrine. You come to a point when you realize that
where one settles on his/her foundations is of primary concern for life and
ministry. This not only helps you
understand your fellow students, professors and people in the world, but it
helps you understand yourself.
7) It helps your own spirituality. This is true if, and only if, you meld seminary education with your own spiritual
life. You cannot divide the two, for
they may both disintegrate. You need to
see all studies (and all work for that matter) as an outgrowth of
your relationship to God. If this is the
case, then you cannot leave seminary without growing much closer to Him.
8) It forces you to know the Bible. At a good seminary you can’t walk into a
class and give your opinions without some scriptural basis for them. You must ground them in scripture or at least
refer to the Bible in all your assertions.
This forces you to know the Bible, read it, and hopefully even apply it.
9) It makes you more knowledgeable. It doesn’t come
automatically, but comes from years of study.
You can't fake being knowledgeable very long, and people can see through
it immediately if you do. But seminary
will help you know more than ever.
10) It probably pleases God. (II Corinthians
5:9) "So we make it our goal to please him..." What could be more pleasing to God then
spending a few years studying about Him and getting to know His Words. And seminary years help grow the
David E. Drury wrote this article in 1997 while studying
for a M.A. Theology in Boston and now lives in Spring Lake,
©2004 David Drury
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