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MINISTRY LEADERSHIP
Will This Be On The Test?
by Brett Younger
If you’re lucky, your preparation for ministry includes as many years as you can stay at a scintillating seminary or divinity school. A gifted, caring faculty will teach you and other ministerial students with heavy briefcases so much that you will soon forget.
What do ministers remember years later? If the average seminary student shared what he or she recalls ten years after graduation, their responses might look something like this:
• Chapel—Most students don’t have chapel memories. Seminaries provide chapel so that future ministers will understand people who skip worship.
• Christian classics—Augustine felt really guilty and took way too many pages writing about it. Brother Lawrence loved working in the kitchen. He was Julia Child on Prozac. Teresa of Avila, meanwhile, could have used stronger medication.
• Christian education—Whatever the topic, form small groups, then share what you discussed with the large group.
• Church and community—Inner-city churches have a hard time. Suburban ministry requires a willingness to play golf.
• Church history—There were so many early councils (conventions without exhibits) that they ran together even for the expense accounters who attended them. The Reformation began when Martin Luther nailed ninety-five strong suggestions to an expensive church door and left an unattractive nail hole. During the First Great Awakening, many Americans stopped sleeping in church. During the Second Great Awakening, their children woke up.
• Counseling—“How does that make you feel?” is an acceptable question. “What do you think I’m feeling?” is not.
• Denominational heritage—The church splintered into little pieces, but our denomination (the one that owns your seminary) held Jesus’ view. Most denominations share what they think of as their denomination’s distinctives.
• Ethics—There are at least two sides to every argument, so listen carefully before telling people on the other side why they are wrong.
• Evangelism—Program evangelism doesn’t work. In every church, there are three people, two of whom are married to each other, who will never admit this.
• Greek—There are three New Testament words for love—phileo (fraternal love), agape (self-giving love), and eros (love outside the church).
• Hebrew—Hebrew is read right to left. This makes not remembering any Hebrew more excusable.
• Leadership—Ask smart people to chair committees. Ignore difficult people.
• Missions—The goal of early missionaries was to convince people in other cultures to go to Bible study on Sunday at 9:30 and to worship at 11:00. The invention of the slide projector created the additional responsibility of taking pictures. Conservative seminaries encourage missionaries to “Tell!” while liberal seminaries encourage missionaries to “Listen!”
• New Testament—The Synoptics were Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John wanted to be a Synoptic but was at least twenty years too late. Phylacteries aren’t what they sound like. Revelation is a mystery. Canonization was the process by which publishers decided how many pages the Bible should be. Some could have skipped the twenty pages of mystery at the end.
• Old Testament—The Pentateuch, the highest point of the temple, was written by four friends nicknamed J, E, P, and D. Isaac means laughter, but after his dad pulled out the meat cleaver, Isaac almost never laughed. Nefretiri, Anne Baxter in The Ten Commandments, is disappointingly a figment of Cecil B. Demille’s imagination. In the book of Ruth we read, “Ruth came softly and uncovered his feet and laid her down. . . . And Ruth said, ‘Spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid.’” Don’t speculate on what this means.
• Pastoral care—Don’t sit on the hospital bed. Never say a prayer just to end a visit—unless it’s the only way to get out of the room.
• Philosophy—Philosophy is really complicated.
• Preaching—Sermon preparation is the act of discovering the three points found in every passage of Scripture.
• Theology—Karl Barth was a heretic, a genius, pushy, or all of the above. Eschatology is what happens at the end. Say, “I’m a pan-millennialist—it will all pan out in the end.” It’s never been a funny joke, but it’s easier than explaining the other choices.
Mark Twain argued that education is what’s left after we’ve forgotten the facts. Let’s hope he was right. Even if we remembered all of it, we would leave seminary with a wonderful lack of understanding of how much we don’t know. We might be surprised to learn that most days the Post-Nicene Fathers don’t enter ministers’ thinking.
Excerpt from Who Moved My Pulpit by Brett Younger . To order, call 800-747-3016
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