I grew up in South Florida. I was a native Floridian, which was pretty unusual. In my 9th grade class of 30 students, for instance, only two of us were actually born in Florida. The rest were transplants. Consequently, there wasn’t much of a unique Floridian cultural identity. Mix the Old South, Yankee transplants, immigrants from Mexico & the islands… it was a mish-mash culture, and not a particular source of pride for any of us.

Then I got to Texas. Sweet Moses, was it different! Texas pride-which I still fail to fully understand-was everywhere.

• “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”
• “Everything’s better in Texas.”
• “Texas is the best.”
• “I [heart] Texas.”

Everywhere you turned, there was this rampant Texas nationalism. I wasn’t really offended by it… I just didn’t get it. I looked around and thought to myself, “Yeah, this is nice and all, but c’mon, people.”

One of my Texas friends, a 300 pound air conditioning repairman, said to me once, (just imagine the accent):

“I don’t know why anyone would want to live anywhere else but Texas. Everything you want’s right here.”

I asked him, “Have you ever been anywhere else?”

He replied, “Well, I went to Arkansas once.”

Now, this is not meant to be an anti-Texas screed; I actually really enjoyed my time there. My point is that moving to seminary means moving. It means, in most cases, a different place with a different culture.

Now the consolation, for many, is that the move is temporary. In most cases, you’re not going to settle down and live there at seminary forever, though I’m sure that happens occasionally.

It was interesting to me to see how people responded to the (temporary) culture shift. There was a significant group of people-usually married-that did not really settle into living in Texas. Most notably, they didn’t make friends while they were there. They seemed to keep all their relationships intentionally superficial.

The attitude was: “I don’t like it here, but I’m living here because I have to. So I’m just going to bide my time for (insert timeline; 2-3 years) until I can go back home where people are (insert attitude: better, normal, smarter, etc.).” In my observation, it was more often not the seminary student with this attitude, but his or her spouse.

(I’m curious, incidentally, if that was just unique to my experience, or if students in other places see this happening. I’ll look for your comments below.)

So this brings me to this word of exhortation: while you’re at living at seminary, live! It may not be home for you, but your real home is in heaven anyway. (Philippians 3:20) Even in your hometown, you should be living as a stranger and an alien (1 Peter 2:11)

The exiles from Jerusalem didn’t enjoy living in Babylon (see for example Psalm 137!), but the command to them in Jeremiah 29 was to settle down, build houses and gardens, start families. In other words, live!

According to the scriptures, God “determines the times set for us and the exact places that we should live.” And he does this, the scriptures say, “so that men will reach out for him and perhaps find him.” I understand that to mean that as an agent of God’s kingdom, wherever I’m living, there are people God sovereignly puts in my relational sphere so I can influence them for His purposes, and vice versa.

So live while you’re at seminary. Settle into the local culture. Do all the things you would do to have a normal life… including making friends.

Boy was I surprised. My first semester, I enrolled in Hebrew class, like many beginning M.Div.-ers. I made friends with some other young single guys in the class, and we got together to study. I lived off campus, but they lived in the men’s dorm on campus, so I went over and hung out with them.

One day a group of us got in a conversation about scriptural interpretation. A prominent church leader had shared (in chapel I think) how he had made a major life decision based on a particular verse of scripture…and by the rules we were studying at the time, we agreed that he’d not interpreted the scripture correctly. So we were batting that around.

Somewhere in that conversation one of the guys made a remark I’ll never forget. He said, “Interpreting the Bible properly is so difficult and such hard work, that I don’t even bother to read my Bible devotionally any more.”

This gave me pause. I asked for clarification. I got way more.

I agreed with him about the challenges of proper interpretation, but then I asked him, “You mean to tell me that Farmer Jones out in East Texas can’t sit down with his Bible and his morning coffee, pray that God will speak to him through it and expect reliably to hear from God?”

He said, “No, that’s not possible.”

He went on to say that God could speak just as well through the “funnies” in the newspaper as he could through the Bible.

Wow.

So I chalked it up to him being one of those weird students that you’re bound to run into anywhere. I found out he went to one of the loopier, left-leaning churches in the area, so I figured he was an exception, a little nutty. I’m still pretty sure I was right about this.

But after a while, the others left the room, and I was talking with another friend, one more stable, more normal, more conservative, more in the mainstream of what I considered seminary students to be. The kind of guy you’d want to be on church staff with you.

I was bemoaning the weird guy’s (I thought) abandonment of God, and he said, “Well, to be honest with you, I don’t read my Bible devotionally either.”

He paused.

“And neither does John, or Keith, or….” He went on to name about six guys from his floor that he knew for a fact had abandoned daily time in prayer and in the scriptures.

I was amazed. We talked more. He had been very faithful in personal devotion in college, but somehow just stopped.

These guys, in this atmosphere of saturation of study of the word of God, had abandoned a devotional pursuit of God. They started studying God and stopped loving Him.

I went on to discover that this is very common among seminary students. In all honesty, I struggled very much with this during seminary. By God’s mercy, I managed to keep my habits of prayer maintained, but seminary was a dry and difficult time.

Philosophical riff:

It reminded me of C. S. Lewis’ lament in The Abolition of Man
that the modern world produces men without chests: heavy on reason (the head) and heavy on animal appetites(the belly) but without sentiment (the chest), that ennobling blend of emotion and truth that warms the aridity of cold reason and ennobles the raw impulses of the body. The head, reason, makes us like God; the belly, our appetites, make us like animals. The chest is the mediator that brings them together and makes us really human.

It’s no accident that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God. The basic duty of man to the Lord is worship: an activity of the chest—of the heart—if ever there was one.

The modern man, Lewis said, has a big head and no chest. So apparently, did some of my fellow seminarians.

Conclusion:

Seminary is a dry time for devotion. The easy way out is to blame the seminary: the modern institution produces modern men. I don’t buy it. You and I are responsible for our own growth. In the midst of all your study, be sure you are loving God well.

It’s pretty simple:

• Reserve study blocks beginning about a week before the exam.
• Plan for multiple, short study times rather than longer blocks. Four blocks of 20 minutes each will probably make for better retention than a single two-hour marathon review.
• Reserve this time now, and plan around it.

If you have multiple exams in a single week, like around mid-terms or finals:

• Start a bit earlier.
• Schedule breaks in your study time. You can schedule shorter blocks of study time around other activities, or simply build a ten minute break into each hour of studying.

The point? Be proactive. (This is Habit #1 in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.) If you anticipate your needs ahead of time and provide for them, you won’t have to be reactive and frustrated at exam time.

Also consider these study ideas:

• Swap class notes with someone and read over your friend’s notes. This will help refresh your memory of lectures and pick up things you might have missed.
• If you’ve underlined and/or highlighted your class reading well, it should be relatively easy to review what you’ve read.
• Get a friend to quiz you on points you’ll be tested on. Iron sharpens iron, and it’s a good excuse to get coffee.

Writing papers on the scale that seminary requires can be daunting if you haven’t done it before. Ten page and fifteen page papers are pretty common; even twenty-five page papers aren’t unheard of. Most undergraduate work doesn’t require the level of writing that seminary requires.

I highly recommend creating a writing plan for each major paper you’ll write this semester. Here’s how.

First, Break It Down.

To create a writing plan, begin by breaking down the project into manageable tasks. Make a list of everything you’ll need to do:

• Assess topic choices
• Choose a topic
• Get topic approved by your professor
• Find sources
• Research your sources and take notes on them
• Formulate a thesis
• Create an outline
• Write first draft
• Revise, and write final draft
• Format and print the paper
• Proofread
• Reprint if necessary and submit

The level of detail you choose is partly a function of how you think about the project, and how big the assignment is.

Second, Estimate the Time

Second, estimate how much actual clock time will be needed for each task in the breakdown, and write it down. For instance,

• Assess topic choices (15 minutes)
• Choose a topic (5 minutes)
• Get topic approved by your professor (5 minutes)
• Find sources (3 hours)
• Research your sources and take notes on them. (6 hours)
• Formulate a thesis (20 minutes)
• Create an outline (20 minutes)
• Write first draft (4 hours)
• Revise, and write final draft. (3 hours)
• Proofread. (30 minutes)

Your time estimates will vary depending on the size of each project and the pace at which you work. Watch yourself as you make your first estimates about how long each task will take. Very often, our estimates prove to be way off, in either direction. As you make note of how long these tasks actually take, you’ll be able to make more precise plans for future writing projects.

Third, Reserve the Time Now

Finally-this is important-reserve a block of time in your calendar for each task of the paper. You’ll want to begin anywhere from one to four weeks before the due date. I’d suggest that you plan to finish at least a couple of days before the due date. This will give some leeway if you fall behind schedule.

If possible, start the paper early. In some classes, you have to cover a certain amount of material before you’re prepared to write some papers, but not always.

There may be some classes you can read ahead in more easily.

Look over your assigned reading, and decide which reading will be more challenging and which is more accessible. You may want to wade through the difficult stuff early, or breeze through the easy stuff first. Either way. Just get a jump on it.

Use this reading method for faster comprehension, if you’re not asked to account for your eyes touching every word of your reading.

Even if you can only get an extra six hours or so of reading in during the first few weeks, that will give you six hours you can use later when it’s crunch time.

Extra:

Have trouble with procrastination? Try this.

This is awesome. It’s a time management bonanza. If you take a few moments to plan well, it can make the semester much easier for you. Carpe Diem!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Get your calendar. You should have only one calendar, because you have only one life. (Be sure you coordinate well with your spouse and kids.)

2. Note all the dates of your papers and exams.

3. To the best of your ability keep your schedule clear in the week before each exam, and two weeks before each paper due date

4. Schedule recovery time. Be sure to schedule some down time right after mid-terms, and after big assignments are due. Plan to relax a bit. If you schedule a day trip, a date, or some fun activity just after the crunch, it will give you something to look forward to after the big project.

5. Make a note of when the worst crunch times are. Then, if your job allows for any scheduling leeway, let your boss know early. If you’re a valuable employee, she just might work with you.

Following these suggestions should only take an hour or two, and should save you time and frustration all semester long.

I have a lot of respect for Daryl Eldridge, the founder of Rockbridge Seminary. The traditional seminary has its strengths, but I think there is a lot about online seminary that merits serious consideration.

From the Rockbridge website:

Are you thinking about going to seminary, know someone who is, or someone who should be?

Rockbridge Seminary is waiving tuition for all new students who begin studies in the September term.

Experience Rockbridge for just the $25 application fee and the cost of books (about $50) with no commitment or tuition cost.

Take part in the life changing course: Developing the Focused Life
Connect with students and faculty from all over the world
Experience high quality online learning- this is not a distance ed course!

The application deadline for the September term is August 24.
Apply now to take advantage of this $1,000 savings in tuition.

Make Sure You’re Supposed to Be Here

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Sounding the Call

Part Four

The Calling to Ministry Self-Assessment (pdf)

And as a bonus:

Is “Calling” a Biblical Idea?

(Video not working? try here)

This is a pretty important distinction. In particular, I’ve seen people go into youth ministry because they love working with youth. Then they become full-time ministers and realize that the administration and equipping tasks are something they’re not cut out for.

Thanks to pastor James for good wisdom on this!

HT: Harvest Blog

But let me assure you, especially you new seminarians, that there is another guy you do not want to be.  In the fine tradition of the “Real Men of Genius” radio commercials that salute such men as “Mr. Giant Taco Salad Inventor”, “Mr. Bathroom Toilet Paper Roll Changer”, and “Mr. Scoreboard Marriage Proposal Guy”, I give to you this guy not to be:  ”Mr. Ask a Question in Class to Try to Look Smarter Guy.”

Allow me to illustrate.  While sitting through my first semester of Introduction to the New Testament, I can recall that, almost every day, a particular student would pose at least one question in class.  This event was always special, because, whenever this gentlemen would raise his hand, the sound of other students’ pencils (think pre-laptop saturation) dropping to their desks made it sound as though a tiny little wooden rain storm had somehow begun inside the room.  Undeterred, this student would ask a question that usually began with the phrase “Don’t you think. . . ” and would continue through at least five minutes of him expounding his particular view of some topic for the professor to approve.  Honestly, I never recall this man asking a question that he did not think he already knew the answer to.  All of his questions-all of them-were intended to make sure that the professor would say, “Yes, that’s right.”

Not being Mr. Ask a Question in Class to Try to Look Smarter Guy will aid your survival at seminary.  Why?  First, you will have fewer students plotting your untimely demise (or, in Christian terms, plotting your predetermined entry to glory).  Second, you will actually have time to hear what your professor actually does think about the topic that he actually intends to teach.  Third, you will have a far smaller chance of expounding heresy in a classroom only to have to be publicly corrected by the professor who has so patiently allowed you to jam all ten toes into your mouth.  And fourth, it could be that another student in the class has a question that will be helpful to the entire class, a question that brings forth from the professor greater explanation of the topic at hand.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we all want to participate appropriately in class.  If the professor is asking for your opinion, feel free to give him what he seeks.  If it is a group discussion, join in and have a blast (within limits of courtesy and decency).  But please, for your own ability to learn and for the sake of the sanity of those who sit in class around you, do not ever become Mr. Ask a Question in Class to Try to Look Smarter Guy.