What I wish I'd known: six students on the seminary experience

Christian Century, Feb 22, 2003

WHAT HAVE I LEARNED that I wish I knew before I came to seminary? I wish I had known that I'd be enriched far beyond the mere acquisition of knowledge by learning in community, particularly in this community. By engaging scripture, theology, the church and the gospel through the eyes and perspectives of my fellow students, faculty and staff, I have experienced the Spirit moving among us, molding mere knowledge into something that, hopefully, approaches wisdom.

The flippant response is that I would have saved myself a very embarrassing moment if I had known that professor emeritus and theologian Shirley Guthrie--a Columbia Theological Seminary legend--is a man.

The gut response is to wish that I had actually known less. As a middle-aged deacon and elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) who has spent a fair amount of the past 38 years in one church or another, I arrived at seminary with far too many opinions about how the church should be the church--from what constitutes proper worship to the appropriate roles of laity and clergy to the best kind of Christian education. Thirty months later, I understand that those opinions were preventing me from allowing the Holy Spirit to do a new thing, both in the church and in my future ministry.

But that doesn't really answer the question.

Ultimately, I wish I had known enough to have had realistic expectations of my seminary. I've had to learn that a seminary is not a congregation--no matter how faithful its board and administration, or brilliant and devoted its faculty, staff and students may be. Let me be clear: I love it here. I regularly experience this seminary community as one where the Spirit draws women and men together to love, nurture, support and serve God and one another--but that community is not the seminary.

Seminaries are unique institutions. While ideally their chief constituency is the church of Jesus Christ and their chief goal is to provide leaders for that church, in reality, seminaries serve many additional constituencies--denominational governing bodies, contributors, the faculty, the academy, alumni, ecclesial activists of every stripe, cranks, naysayers, students. Of all of these, only the students are transients, passing through in regular three- or four-year cycles. Paradoxically, we are both an essential "product" of the institution and, usually, its least influential constituency.

Recognizing this imposed humility is a hard lesson, but perhaps the process of building community within this context is the best training for future clergy--don't we go from this place to "transient" positions in the institution that is the church? Perhaps our status here will help us to more selflessly and faithfully join the Holy Spirit in the ongoing mission of crafting Christ-centered communities of love, justice and peace within that institution.

--Michael Kirby, a student at Columbia Theological Seminary.

WHEN JESUS was asked what the greatest commandment was, he answered in part, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind." In seminary, our minds are stimulated as we discuss Christology, epistemology, ecclesiology and many other "--ologies." These are the most exciting topics (really!) and stimulate much thought. However, I did not realize that the very love of these subjects can actually deter us from loving the Object. We are called, after all, not to love thinking with our minds, but to love God with our minds.

As a United Methodist ministerial candidate, I am frequently asked by various committees and boards to describe my "call to ministry." Like most of my fellow seminarians, I felt that my call contained a strong spiritual element. This element is fundamental to the decision to attend seminary in the first place. Why else would an engineer, a doctor, a retiree, a college student or a stay-at-home parent completely upset his or her life to attend? Seminary, however, presents the dangerous irony that we may subvert this same spiritual element in the very process of analyzing spirituality. Fortunately, this is not an inevitable process.

What I know now is that the very process of learning about God must be transformed into an intentional spiritual discipline of knowing God. Great professors teach about God, but knowing God comes only from the Holy Spirit. We can read great theology, yet we need to remember that "these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit" (1 Con 2:10)--not through Tertullian, Augustine, Aquinas, Barth and Hauerwas. Paths to the depths of God are paved by Christian pioneers, but the way is lit by our relationship with God.

I could pour over records of my wife's life and talk about her with experts in psychology and women's studies. All this would be interesting, informative and enticing. I could spend a career, if someone would pay me, writing scholarly papers and giving edifying talks (sermons) on how we could better our lives by examining the example of my wife. Yet despite all this effort I would still not know her if I did not spend time with her.