Doing what you trained for

Going to a fundamentalist Christian school (from 4th to 12th grades in my case) that had a closely-affiliated seminary, those of us who rode on the school’s schoolbuses had a rather unique opportunity to assess those future pastors-to-be. Many of the schoolbus drivers were seminary students, earning some $$ around their own class schedules.

It may sound presumptuous to say, but we schoolbus riders often knew which of those students “had it” and which “did not.” I know that some of them today are pastoring chuches, and one went on to become the president of a Bible college. Some others, well………..

1. One seminarian became interested in a 17-year old senior girl who rode the bus. I don’t believe he ever pastored anywhere……..

2. One guy side-swiped a parked car, and then continued driving. He denied that it happened, but yet there were obvious, telltale scratches on the side of the bus.

3. Another had an obvious anger-management problem. He would often fly off the handle at other drivers, and occasionally at us riders (without just cause).

(I should add that these three instances were all on the route on which I rode.)

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ADDED: My point is that just because someone has trained to do something doesn’t necessarily mean that they are suited to do it, or should be doing it. (Some seminarians included…)

It strikes me that I’ve got multiple friends who have graduated from seminary but not gone on to pastor, and one in particular had a great attitude about it—that it was not a loss, because he wasn’t about his (pretty successful) career to begin with, and he’d learned to love Christ more. For that matter, I’m personally here in part to learn from y’all. Way back when I was a baby in Christ (I am of course a toddler in Him now,on a good day at least), I had the vision of getting a pastor’s knowledge without going to seminary and have been pursuing it slowly ever since.

Not everyone I know who has an M.Div (or in some cases a seminary M.A.) actually intended to become a pastor. Two particularly interesting cases are currently career military officers. One, a U.S. Army Colonel, earned a seminary M.A. (mostly online) in his spare time (when he has spare time, I don’t know……), just because he wanted to increase his knowledge of the Bible. The second, a U.S. Navy Rear Admiral, earned a M.Div before joining the service. To my knowledge, it was never his intention to pastor.

Actually, Larry, the guy I’m thinking of most did want to become a pastor—but his churches didn’t affirm the calling. It took him a while to recover from that—from the church telling the person what you might have told him on the school bus, really—but that’s where he got.

BTW, he wasn’t getting interested in a 17 year old or anything like that—it was simply that his church didn’t go forward with hiring him when he was done with seminary. Sorry to be unclear on that!

Once again I beat my drum for bi-vocational ministry… Get a marketable degree then go to seminary. Being bi-vocational allows you to use your seminary degree in a variety of local church / short-term foreign missions contexts. After I graduate (Lord willing) next spring, I don’t know what God has in store for me from a pastoral ministry perspective. But, where ever I am, I plan on using the gifting, skills, and theological education I received in seminary to make more and better disciples in my local church context. I don’t need to be a fulltime pastor or be in fulltime ministry… and, I can continue to provide for my family of six.

BTW, the understanding of “being called into ministry” also needs to be reexamined. Too many guys go off to Bible school / seminary because they believe they have been called into ministry without the affirmation and confirmation of the local church. Sometimes pastors are so excited that someone from their church wants to go into pastoral ministry that they don’t do the proper due diligence with these guys. They don’t mentor them, they don’t train them, and they don’t examine them. They just ship them off to Bible school or seminary and expect the school to fix the character flaws in these men.

If you have a bachelors and masters from a seminary, trained all your life for ministry, and no one offered you a ministry job, maybe, just maybe, you should go to some large city with a dearth of churches, and start one. Problem solved.

[T Howard]

Once again I beat my drum for bi-vocational ministry… Get a marketable degree then go to seminary.

My path led along these lines.

I got a BA in Bible with a minor in history from BJU. I loaded up on liberal arts classes: calculus, debate, historiography; did lots of extra-curricular activities; worked as a reference librarian. I got my MA in Church history while writing for BJU Press. After that, I thought it was time to get a taste of adult life outside academia before pursuing any ministry, so my wife and I decided to spend 5-10 years helping a church before applying to Westminster (Philadelphia). We wound up spending 8 years in Omaha, NE and had 4 of our 5 children there. When we moved to Omaha, we had a nest egg to go without jobs for a few months if needed. We calculated how much we’d need to live on assuming I’d be the only one working once children arrived. I got a decent entry-level job for a real estate title company, and eventually used my liberal arts background to head up their training overhaul, and then later became an IT resource for HR building intranet applications, then a business analyst, and now a corporate policy writer who still has fingers in training, IT, HR, etc. It’s not entry-level anymore. But all the while I was active leading and teaching at church (unpaid).

But this job has allowed me now to work from home full-time in Philadelphia and support a family while I chip away at a PhD, and stay active with church.

There is some discomfort in never feeling like I can really throw myself into one or the other, read all the books I’d like to read, etc. But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I am paying cash for my classes. No loans. I’m in the business world and so can readily relate to other people in the congregation. Among other advantages. It wouldn’t be a bad way to start a ministry like a church plant, if the Lord were to ever lead in such a direction.

[M. Osborne] But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I am paying cash for my classes. No loans. I’m in the business world and so can readily relate to other people in the congregation. Among other advantages. It wouldn’t be a bad way to start a ministry like a church plant, if the Lord were to ever lead in such a direction.

Yes! I’ve been an online MDiv student since 2009. I’m an analytic marketing professional, with my BA in English and an MBA in marketing. I, too, have been able to pay cash for all my seminary classes, support my family of six, and actively serve in my church in various teaching and leadership roles. My original goal was to be part of a bi-vocational church planting team in my city. We’ll see what ministry opportunities are available in a year, but I desire to remain in a bi-vocational situation.

The Ministry …who has it … who’s “in it”:

2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

Every Christian has been given “the ministry of reconciliation”. Every Christian is an “ambassadors for Christ”. There are jobs that pay …. everyone should work … there is ministry … every Christian is “in it” … then there is the intersection of jobs that pay and ministry.

Whining: Not to be harsh but … “what is that to you? You follow Me” John 21:22. God is sovereign over these things. He is the Lord of the harvest Who assigns positions and rank. Our responsibility is to give ourselves to Him which is our “reasonable service” (Romans 12:1) .

Someone with 2 seminary degrees should understand these elemental truths. On his blog he asks: “Then the proverbial elephant in the room – if there is such an imbalance within fundamentalism then why do seminaries keep recruiting students if there is such a backlog of people who are already trained for ministry?” Answered: Because they need students.

…I’m in the business world and so can readily relate to other people in the congregation. Among other advantages. It wouldn’t be a bad way to start a ministry like a church plant, if the Lord were to ever lead in such a direction.

To be honest, given what we’re seeing in society now, like Frank Bruni’s “Bow the Knee” Op-Ed in the NY Times last week, I’m not sure that there will be such a thing as a full time vocational church pastor ten years from now. And I think that people will applaud that move when it finally comes as ‘encouraging’, ‘relevant’, and ‘enlightened’, but Al Mohler’s take on it is so much better than I could do.

But that’s for then, and I want to talk about now.

Yes, it’s difficult to have studied for six years and not be in a church. A few years ago I asked my wife to put my diplomas away because I felt like they were mocking me every time I looked at them - something akin, I guess, to Luke 14:28-30. My attitude has changed a lot since then, but the thing that is hardest for me to stomach, actually, is watching the men who are currently in pulpits and who shouldn’t be. They are ‘pastors’ who are great academians, or great managers, or great guys in general, but who just don’t love the idea of shepherding and work of the ministry. They do it because they love to study or run the business, but when the rubber hits the road, they’d rather be doing that than feeding God’s sheep (contrast Ezekiel 34 with John 10 and 1 Peter 5)

On several occasions, there have been people who have come to me with issues that they wouldn’t take to their pastor, or I have had opportunities to talk with someone who is not even a believer about serious issues that demanded spiritual care. I have usually found that these issues are deep and very painful - some of them have been issues of verbal, physical, or sexual abuse (or some combination thereof) - and for them not to be able to go to a shepherd and get the spiritual help that they need from their pastor infuriates me to no end. That’s a big part of why the failures at BJU bother me so. But the best I can do is help them bind their wounds, tell them to look to Jesus, and to do the work that I can to help them with the tools God has given me through my education. Being in the ‘business’ world has taught me how to care about people and how to approach their needs with the Gospel or with scripture. It’s done a lot to disillusion me with pop psychology or false shepherds; it’s pushed me further towards the Cross, and it’s really opened my eyes to the work of the ministry even though I’m not ‘Pastor’ Jay. On the flip side, I’ve had some amazing opportunities to share the gospel with people who would never in a zillion years voluntarily enter a church building or crack a Bible. Just this week I was able to explain the truths of the Resurrection to a humanist and several Jews who didn’t understand who Jesus was or why Easter was necessary.

These years away from seminary have been the best Seminary training that I think that I could have ever had. In the book The Coming Evangelical Crisis, someone remarked about Levitical priests not being able to minister as priests until they were thirty years old. I don’t know that I’d limit it to thirty, but I do think - and have come to value - the idea of sending ‘pastoral trainees’ into the real world for five to ten years and letting them deal with that first. After the survivors come back, then we can talk about pastoring and eldership issues. Jesus did that with his disciples, and I think we’d be very, very wise to stop pushing 20-25 year old men out of our schools as ‘ready’ when they are really just getting started, especially as newlyweds or new parents.