It\u2019s a genre now: the article or blog post about how seminary fails to teach the practical things pastors need to know. \u201cFive Things They Didn\u2019t Teach in Seminary.\u201d The piece usually mentions monthly finance reports and broken air conditioners.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sympathetic. For five years I co-pastored an urban church with my wife. Each month, when the financial secretary put the five-page, six-column per page finance report in my mailbox, I\u2019d walk into my wife\u2019s office and ask, \u201cWhich line am I supposed to look at, again?\u201d<\/p>\n
Now I teach the courses that teach the things they supposedly don\u2019t teach you in seminary\u2014with a guest lecturer for the week on finance reports and air conditioners.<\/p>\n
These days I don\u2019t worry about the things seminary didn\u2019t teach, but about the habits pastors pick up that are counter to what seminary did teach, or should have.<\/p>\n
Here are two things I sometimes see that I hope they didn\u2019t teach in seminary.<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t teach you that you need to be in control<\/em>. My mom used to say, \u201cIf you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.\u201d Many pastors seem to have taken this to heart.<\/p>\n One of the assignments I have my students do is interview a lay person who chairs a church committee so they can hear from a lay leader\u2019s perspective how a pastor can most helpfully equip lay leaders to do their work. The number one complaint heard in these interviews? Pastors who can\u2019t let go, who don\u2019t understand this is our <\/em>ministry. The word micromanaging <\/em>comes up a lot.<\/p>\n Pastors who have to control everything limit the scope of a church\u2019s ministry to what the pastor can have his thumb on.<\/p>\n Instead, I hope seminaries taught that congregations are extraordinary reservoirs of giftedness, creativity, and vision\u2014much of which is latent. A wise pastor, instead of controlling, will seek to create the space where these latent gifts can be discovered and unleashed, and then help channel them in the most fruitful directions. This will mean letting go of the idea that I<\/em> know how it needs to be; setting aside agendas however ostensibly holy.<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t teach you that you can buy the solution<\/em>. Whenever I\u2019m in a pastor\u2019s office, I like to look around, and I\u2019ve noticed an alarming trend: Boxes on chairs or bookshelves containing pre-packaged programs: group studies, stewardship campaigns, evangelism initiatives. You name it, you can buy it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s tempting to think a pre-packaged program is an easy solution. If it worked somewhere else, why not here? While we can learn from what\u2019s happening well in other places, every place is local. The particular grain of a given context needs to shape the way we do ministry here<\/em>.<\/p>\n Worse still is the mindset that churches are problems to be fixed. Rather, they are deep mysteries in which God dwells. Yes, congregations face challenges. But I hope seminary taught that faithful pastors, instead of offering quick fixes, will seek to raise the capacity of the congregation to discern and respond to God\u2019s leading in their midst.<\/p>\n I know seminary taught pneumatology, those doctrines concerning the Holy Spirit. And each of these bad habits arises from a pneumatological problem. We don\u2019t actually trust the power of the Holy Spirit, present and active in our congregations. Nor do we trust that the people, when well led, will be able or willing to discern the Spirit\u2019s work and respond with faithfulness and enthusiasm. So we seek to control and offer quick-fixes. We engage in what some have called \u201cpractical atheism.\u201d How else will we get results?<\/p>\n No, the Spirit won\u2019t teach you how to read a spread sheet. That\u2019s why I teach the classes I teach\u2014because not everyone has the luxury of co-pastoring with my wife. But the Spirit can teach us the humility and the trust necessary to let go of our agendas and respond courageously to the Spirit\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n God\u2019s Spirit can teach us that<\/em>, even if seminary didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens is associate professor of leadership and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and teaches courses in the MDiv, Doctor of Ministry, and Continuing Education programs. Before coming to PTS he served urban and rural churches for eight years in North Carolina as co-pastor with his wife Ginger. He has written multiple books including <\/em>The Shape of Participation: A Theology of Church Practices which was called \u201cthis decades best work in ecclesiology\u201d by <\/em>The Christian Century.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s a genre now: the article or blog post about how seminary fails to teach the practical things pastors need to know. \u201cFive Things They Didn\u2019t Teach in Seminary.\u201d The piece usually mentions monthly finance reports and broken air conditioners. I\u2019m sympathetic. For five years I co-pastored an urban church with my wife. Each month,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[121,122,120],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ministry","category-theological-reflection","tag-didnt-learn-in-seminary","tag-didnt-teach-in-seminary","tag-seminary-education"],"yoast_head":"\r\n