As a friend recently blogged that her internship began this past Wednesday, and it got me thinking. My own starts next Saturday.
It's not secret that I've become a lot more cynical since I've begun the Seminary journey, and although my opinion of the process of this education has declined, my faith and admiration in those who teach and guide me on this path remain quite, well, devout.
So I'm beginning to think that at the end of the whole Seminary experience I'll not be a good pastor because I filled my head with all the right dreck in the concrete mausoleum of LTS, but because that building is filled with some of the best pastors I've ever had the privilege to study with.
For that matter, I think that all people at the Seminary can point to at least one pastor in particular who, to them, modeled his or her ordination vows in an inspiring way.
I don't think it's the stuff that I stuff my head with that will help me be a good pastor. Possibly in spite of all that book learning I'll be a good pastor -- because of the people who take the time along the journey to teach -- colleagues, classmates, professors, and pastors. And because I get to serve the greatest people in creation.
thanks.
4 comments:
Mick,
From what I read, I think you'll be a good pastor because of your zeal for the service of the body of Christ.
Isn't that what it's all about?
yeah, but it helps that the people I serve are fantastic!
I too struggle to figure what I need to know to be a pastor. Maybe everyone does, but it seems to be something that is hard to work out with other students. We all need a different answer perhaps.
I found out this year that a lot of what I learned at seminary didn't make sense until I experienced it in a context. Yes there the times when someone asked me about the peasant's war of the 1520's, about the difference between the Roman Catholic understanding of communion and the Lutheran one, or why we interns preach differently than all those old pastors. But that stuff didn't happen everyday.
When you are hiring staff, buying photocopiers, fixing roofs, visting the sick, guiding church council's one can wonder why it was important to learn about literary criticism. But on the other hand, in a weird way I almost can't imagine taking and living the call without knowing it.
And if there seemed to a common thread among pastors that encountered, is that they didn't know (or remember) the dreck of seminary. They are all good pastors, but many are lost in their vocations, because most days they don't know what the church is or what a pastor is.
In my view the church is floundering in some areas because many, too many, have forgotten or didn't bother to learn the first time, or even weren't properly taught the first time all that stuff that we are supposed to learn at the seminary. If don't remember more often that we are an article 7 church, then what do we remember that we are?
*steps out of pulpit*
But of course I could be totally wrong... which is another thing I learned this year.
I hope you find what you need this year, and maybe a little more that you didn't know you needed!
Mick,
Over the past two years I have witnessed an evolution of the Mac Machine. I'll share more of this with you when we see each each other in a few short weeks at Internship Retreat. But suffice to say that it has been incredible watching you.
I too wondered many times what the point of learning all that *stuff* was for. Perhaps during this year we will learn the point of it all. I pray that your time of internship will be blessed and you will continue to evolve and grow into your ministry.
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