6 Months After Seminary

So I have been graduated since January, still had to work on my Presbyterian ordination process, working in the mean time and still figuring out life in general. The whole church thing is really slow and filled with more hurdles than a marathon with hurdles. I’m still only beginning to come out of the cloud from the explosion that blew my brain to bits as I went through seminary. I’m still picking up some of the pieces. Here is what I know so far…

Seminary can take it apart but doesn’t know how to put it back together: Seriously. I’m still trying to reconstruct a complete understanding of my theology. I have a statement of faith that is getting nitpicked on the ‘conjunctions’ level (What is the difference between ‘with’ and ‘within’ in the context of a sentence.) You would think they would want to put that stuff back together before they sent us out to be pastors and actually engage with people, novel concept. Now that I’m sitting on the outside I’m realizing that I am NOT ready to be a pastor. My friend Sarah basically said that the degree of Master of Divinity is an oxymoron. Some of me is worried and wants to be an associate of some larger church, but in all honesty I’m not sure I’m supposed to be that guy. The more I understand my call, it is a call to youth ministry. I just wish I had someone help me out with that.

There is no time to think: Between finals, midterms, papers, reading, lectures, money, food, laundry, bills, parents, going crazy, coming back from crazy, going back to crazy because you forgot something there, getting lost in crazy, … you get the point … there is no space or time to actually think for yourself. Some of this goes up to point 1, but still what free time I had I spent in the space of napping and recovering sleep that was lost due to school work. The last thing anyone wants to really do is talk about class outside of class either. Some people do, but I think they are a bit wrong in the head. I can understand some discussion but I don’t want to be in a place of just living in the realm of theological thinking. I would like to think I have some humanity in me still.

The Academy needs more Teachers: NOT scholars. Looking at most of our scholarship we have done such a good job of writing down everything we do and we no longer have to think for ourselves. I might be guilty of this but I don’t care about the Greek and Hebrew because I have commentaries, computer software, and other tools that allow me to just slack off on that stuff. On some level I think that there are some very brilliant minds who have no idea how to communicate that information. I relate much better with professors who have been pastors, or who have a pastoral like nature.

Somehow we have gotten it backwards: A friend of mine once told me about the praise band he was in “We don’t have our own sound we just copy everyone else’s note for note.” I understood him and about 4 months later I realized that it ran deeper. There was a point in time when there was no internet and while we had a hymnal the only way new music would come into being was if someone from the church wrote it. Go a little bit bigger picture and we have churches who write libraries on how to build, nurture, and manage a church. I’m kinda in the nay say-er category with the idea that you can’t just plug and play someone else’s game plan. So we learn about things and then are told to go do them and when they don’t work (and most of the time they won’t) we throw up our hands and wonder what went wrong. We have lost our ability to listen to God for his guidance and direction in navigating the church. Some churches do and they HEAR from God that their ministry will be small, and yet they embrace it.

I had a good friend who is a very gifted believer, could have been a pastor if God had called him to it, who was offered a job as a part time pastor in a small church of under 50. The pastor only made 30k living in a town where that was probably below poverty line. The church couldn’t pay my friend, and the pastor offered him 10k OUT OF HIS OWN SALARY to have my friend on staff. My friend prayed and couldn’t take the job but found in that moment a sense of what God’s purpose was for people. I still love that story because I’m not sure I could do it. Drop 1/3 of my salary to someone who is gifted in pastoral ministry to allow them to be on staff of the church

I wish we could change our culture to that of the Acts church. Where everyone gave so that no one would suffer. I’m in a time in my life where I’m accepting and looking for handouts till I get back on my feet. It sucks and I don’t always like to be in that spot, I do like to give away what I have. Is it a bad thing if that I want to own two houses for the sole purpose of letting seminary students have housing on a seminary budget? Is it odd that I wonder why the church in Africa will pay for their pastors in full, and America will just let us graduate with piles of debt?

I find that the fringes of my theology shift depending on what my life situation is. This is probably obvious to most people who know me, but it is new to me.