What's the point part 2
Continuing the motif of why seminary is a good idea.
6. Seminary teaches counseling, at least most seminaries do. Counseling is not something someone can "just figure out". Yes, there are Biblical examples for confrontation and dealing with situations, but there is more to counseling than just turning to a chapter or verse. Now, some people may cringe because I just said that, but there are legitimate areas in which the Bible does not address specific situations which someone we may counsel will encounter. Now, having said that, there are general Biblical principals to apply, but they are rather hard to deal with on our own. This is where training comes in. Most good, accredited seminaries have counseling professors who are licenced counsellors, or psychiatrists, etc, and those are the folks who are best able to teach you how to apply solid principals to a broken marriage, or someone struggling with homosexuality BEFORE you deal with that situation with no experience whatsoever. I can say more, but I will not.
7. Seminaries use specialists. A well staffed seminary will have professors who have expert knowledge in specific fields. For instance, at Covenant Seminary, we have specific professors who specialize in Church History, New Testament Studies, Old Testament Studies, Biblical Theology, Systematic Theology, Practical Theology, Counseling and so on. Why? Well, because one professor cannot be an expert in everything. This is one advantage to seminary. When you attend seminary you are surrounded by these people who can answer almost any question you could possibly ask because in each type of class you have someone who is an expert in what they are teaching you.
8. Seminary is not just academic. In a typical conservative evangelical seminary, you will not simply find stuffy academics. That is an urban legend. Now, that is not to say there are seminaries which employ professors with no practical ministry experience, but if one takes the time to look at a typical seminary like a Southern Seminary, Covenant Seminary, Westminster, or Reformed Theological Seminary, if you search the bios of the professors, more often than not, you see that a lot of the professors (all for Covenant) have pastoral experience and are not solely academics, even if they are Oxford or Cambridge educated.
9. Seminary builds networks and lifelong friends. Face it, if you're headed to the pastoral ministry, you will have a hard time cultivating "real" friendships with people in your congregation who really let you know who they are, or who really want to know you. Most people want their pastor to be perfect and most pastors don't get to see the imperfect goings on of someone's home because it would embarrass someone to think that their pastor knew "how they really were". This is one area seminary comes in. For me, I am making friendships with people who really know me and I really know them. We know each others thoughts and don't think less of one another. In five years, if I'm having a problem, I know I can pick up the phone and call them and talk to them about it. In ten years, if one of them is looking for a pastorate, they can call me and we can all call our friends and be able to network together. It goes on and on and on and on.
10. Seminary teaches you things you don't agree with, and things you may have never been exposed to. Do you know what Open Theism is? What about the Wellhausen Theory? What about the New Perspective on Paul? What if you've never heard of Wellhausen and you preach a sermon on Exodus and someone in your congregation walks up to you afterward and says, "I took an intro to religion class at OU and the professor said that the part of Exodus you preached on wasn't written until after 900AD" and then goes on to give you the citations from his textbook for why that opinion is valid to him. What do you do? Well, seminary exposes you to contraversies and heterodoxy, and gives you the tools and resources to be able to have a working knowledge of many of the ways culture and source critics attempt to undermine Christianity. If someone is faced with questions they cannot answer and yet they are looked at as the leader of a Church, what sort of credibility do you think that gives?
For now...those are my thoughts on the importance of seminary.
Here's a link to a paper by a professor on the need for seminary.
Book of the day is English Standard Version Translation of the Holy Bible.
6. Seminary teaches counseling, at least most seminaries do. Counseling is not something someone can "just figure out". Yes, there are Biblical examples for confrontation and dealing with situations, but there is more to counseling than just turning to a chapter or verse. Now, some people may cringe because I just said that, but there are legitimate areas in which the Bible does not address specific situations which someone we may counsel will encounter. Now, having said that, there are general Biblical principals to apply, but they are rather hard to deal with on our own. This is where training comes in. Most good, accredited seminaries have counseling professors who are licenced counsellors, or psychiatrists, etc, and those are the folks who are best able to teach you how to apply solid principals to a broken marriage, or someone struggling with homosexuality BEFORE you deal with that situation with no experience whatsoever. I can say more, but I will not.
7. Seminaries use specialists. A well staffed seminary will have professors who have expert knowledge in specific fields. For instance, at Covenant Seminary, we have specific professors who specialize in Church History, New Testament Studies, Old Testament Studies, Biblical Theology, Systematic Theology, Practical Theology, Counseling and so on. Why? Well, because one professor cannot be an expert in everything. This is one advantage to seminary. When you attend seminary you are surrounded by these people who can answer almost any question you could possibly ask because in each type of class you have someone who is an expert in what they are teaching you.
8. Seminary is not just academic. In a typical conservative evangelical seminary, you will not simply find stuffy academics. That is an urban legend. Now, that is not to say there are seminaries which employ professors with no practical ministry experience, but if one takes the time to look at a typical seminary like a Southern Seminary, Covenant Seminary, Westminster, or Reformed Theological Seminary, if you search the bios of the professors, more often than not, you see that a lot of the professors (all for Covenant) have pastoral experience and are not solely academics, even if they are Oxford or Cambridge educated.
9. Seminary builds networks and lifelong friends. Face it, if you're headed to the pastoral ministry, you will have a hard time cultivating "real" friendships with people in your congregation who really let you know who they are, or who really want to know you. Most people want their pastor to be perfect and most pastors don't get to see the imperfect goings on of someone's home because it would embarrass someone to think that their pastor knew "how they really were". This is one area seminary comes in. For me, I am making friendships with people who really know me and I really know them. We know each others thoughts and don't think less of one another. In five years, if I'm having a problem, I know I can pick up the phone and call them and talk to them about it. In ten years, if one of them is looking for a pastorate, they can call me and we can all call our friends and be able to network together. It goes on and on and on and on.
10. Seminary teaches you things you don't agree with, and things you may have never been exposed to. Do you know what Open Theism is? What about the Wellhausen Theory? What about the New Perspective on Paul? What if you've never heard of Wellhausen and you preach a sermon on Exodus and someone in your congregation walks up to you afterward and says, "I took an intro to religion class at OU and the professor said that the part of Exodus you preached on wasn't written until after 900AD" and then goes on to give you the citations from his textbook for why that opinion is valid to him. What do you do? Well, seminary exposes you to contraversies and heterodoxy, and gives you the tools and resources to be able to have a working knowledge of many of the ways culture and source critics attempt to undermine Christianity. If someone is faced with questions they cannot answer and yet they are looked at as the leader of a Church, what sort of credibility do you think that gives?
For now...those are my thoughts on the importance of seminary.
Here's a link to a paper by a professor on the need for seminary.
Book of the day is English Standard Version Translation of the Holy Bible.
posted by Bobby's blog at 2:38 PM
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