Road Trip Seminary, Road Trip Church

I’ll be 35 at the end of May.

Of that, three years was spent in half day pre-school and kindergarten.  Twelve years was elementary, middle, and high school.  I had summer school once between my freshman and sophomore years because I failed a semester of algebra.  I spent six months in basic and advanced military training.  Another six months was spent in military language school.  I took a summer class the summer between leaving the Army and starting at a four-year university.  I spent five years in undergraduate schooling to inclue three summers where I carried a full course load.  My masters program–seminary–took five years.

By my next birthday, I’ll have been in school eighteen years and one month of my life.  Fifty-five percent of my life in a classroom or under formal instruction.  Seven twelve-continuous month cycles not in school, three of which I don’t remember because I was, well, under the age of three.

My life is 55% school.

And I want to go back for another couple years.

So I can be a teacher.

Big surprise.  Why leave now?  It’s what I know.

But I want to focus on those last five years–seminary.

I got a 79%. That means 21% of me died in seminary.

Alan Hirsch rightly observes that seminary students–many who are pastors-in-training–are “subjected to an immense amount of complex information realting to biblical disciplines, theology, ethics, church history, pastoral theology, etc. (121)” in a three to five year period.  This is not a good thing, and I’m inclined to agree.  You see, a pastor’s primary calling is to embody the leadership of Christ in a particular community, by doing the things that Christ modeled for us to do, and valuing the things Jesus valued, and loving the people God loves (which would be everyone).  Jesus did this by spending a whole butt-load of time with regular people while they did regular people things, like working, eating, and hanging out.  Even when a cild was accepted to an apprenticeship to become a rabbi, the training happened not so much in the classroom, but in the context of the larger local community.  That’s because a rabbi that doesn’t share life with the people over whom he was responsible, doesn’t have much to offer those people.  However, in seminary, the pastor-to-be spend his or her time entirely engrossed in academia, wrapped up in a culture of reading and writing using specialized jargon while a part of a small and closed sub-culture.

Because of that, sometimes I feel like, as a pastor, I don’t have much to offer people.

What’s more, what I’m trained to do–as I think many pastors are–is to run a church like school.  The church provides opportunity for seminar or lecture style Christian education for a few hours a week.  Worship services have everyone sitting quietly in rows while someone up front tells you want to do and lectures on what you should know.  In some churches, it even starts and end at the ringing of a bell.And in the summer-for some bizarre reason, most of a church’s programing goes on vacation.

And if you don’t come to the church buidling, well, I don’t have much to offer you.

I read the New Testament and I read early church history.  There weren’t seminaries.  There wasn’t the academy.  Someone would come to your town, tell you about Jesus, and instruct you on how to be the church, and in a week, leave.  And the church did better than fine doing it like that.

Jesus trained future church leaders largely on the road, over dinner, and on fishing trips.  He showed them what to do, told them to do it, then they talked about it afterward.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Or did I miss the part where the twelve spent 3-5 years in a classroom reading peer reviewed articles and writing 30 page papers?

So…why do we do seminary again (and the whole silly ordination processes, too)?

Now what if there was no church building?  What if, as a pastor, I had to live a regular life like everyone else?  What if my education as a pastor didn’t happen primarily in a classroom, but where I worked; where I ate; where I hung out with my friends, family, and community?

What if being a pastor wasn’t primarily concerned with teaching people what to know, but leading, inspiring, influencing and modeling what God is calling us to be and thus what to do?

But first, I have to get out of the academy (and the academy out of me).  I need to get out of the institution (and the institution out of me).  I need to get into the real world where God and people are, and where the church (and it’s leaders) should be.

I don’t want the next thirty five years to be the same as the first.

Lord, have mercy.

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Part 12 of a roughly 28 part series of working through Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways.

~ by kurtboemler on February 6, 2012.