I graduated from Pittsburgh Seminary last June with my M.Div. Six months ago, I began my first call. As the temporary, solo pastor at Mt. Nebo United Presbyterian Church.<\/p>\n
One of the unexpected blessings to my current call is that I manage a preschool. Last week I met with my head preschool teacher to discuss payroll, registration, and teacher evaluations. As I held my own in a conversation about registration protocol, Miss Beth exclaimed, \u201cI bet they didn\u2019t teach you this in seminary!\u201d<\/p>\n
If I had a dollar for every time someone has said this to me in the last six months, I would be a rich woman. But I don\u2019t think that it\u2019s a helpful way for us to evaluate seminary education. Sure, there are plenty of things I\u2019ve had to learn on the job. But I couldn\u2019t have learned them without the foundation that is my seminary education. Let me explain what I mean, by giving you a list of the 10 things I\u2019m glad I learned in seminary:<\/p>\n
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A former professor taught us this chant in homiletics. Having spent time with the text, she explained, how can we not climb into the pulpit and preach the good news? In my ministry, I am learning that Sunday comes every single week, whether I are ready or not. It comes every week because the gospel we proclaim every week demands a weekly proclamation within the gathered community.<\/p>\n
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When I was a student at Pittsburgh Seminary, we welcomed five new faculty members, one passed away unexpectedly, one retired, one became Dean of Faculty, and four took positions elsewhere. All of these things taught me to accept change as a natural part of ministry. God calls specific people, to specific places, for a specific time. Learning this in seminary helps me to face changes in my congregation without anxiousness.<\/p>\n
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In my current call, I am following a pastor who served Mt. Nebo for 16 years. My time at Mt. Nebo thus far has been a time of transition as the congregation gets used to someone of a different generation, gender, and theological perspective than its former pastor. In the midst of this transition, I\u2019m so glad that I studied at a seminary with such diversity amongst its faculty and student body.<\/p>\n
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If I learned nothing else in pastoral care, and parish leadership, I learned about boundaries\u2014learning to say no to things that are not your responsibility. I admit that I still struggle with this. There is so much need, and there is only so much of me to go around. One way that I practice boundaries in my ministry is by not working on Fridays. I snooze my e-mails. I let my assistant screen church phone calls. I unplug from my phone and computer. Setting this boundary allows me to offer my best self to the congregation on Sunday mornings in worship.<\/p>\n
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Money can be a huge source of anxiety in a congregation. Especially around budget season. If you don\u2019t know how to read them, they can look like someone took a big red pen and wrote HERE\u2019S WHERE WE MESSED UP LAST YEAR!!!! Thankfully I learned in my Theological Reflection on Ministry class that budgets are theological documents. They are a way that our church leaders can put into writing where we believe that God is leading our congregations. God is in control of our budgets; our job is to get in on what God is already doing.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019m really lucky to be ministering in Pittsburgh Presbytery, the same presbytery Pittsburgh Seminary is a part of. When I graduated, I had a whole network of contacts to help me navigate the first few months of new ministry. I\u2019m so grateful to Pittsburgh Seminary for helping me develop this network of colleagues.<\/p>\n
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In seminary, you read to pass your classes. In parish ministry, you read because no one person can know how do to every aspect of ministry. I try to read two books a month that are not part of my sermon preparation. Sometimes these books help me work through a particular challenge of ministry. But mostly they remind me that I am not alone, that God is with me, and the call is to be faithful, not perfect.<\/p>\n
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My field education supervisor told me that she would never get a smart phone because she didn\u2019t know how to impose boundaries on technology. I thought this was a generational problem. A problem that this millennial wouldn\u2019t have to worry about. Well I didn\u2019t sleep for the first month of my call because one of my volunteers is a night owl, and would be e-mailing me into the wee hours of the morning. Now I only leave e-mail on my phone when I\u2019m working.<\/p>\n
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You know how they say a party without cake is just a meeting? Well a meeting without an agenda should be done over e-mail. I learned this from my time serving in leadership in the seminary\u2019s Woman\u2019s Caucus. Meetings without agendas do not respect people\u2019s time, and rarely accomplish anything. I view a well-run meeting as an act of pastoral care to the lay leadership of my church. And I always have a written agenda.<\/p>\n
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Every seminary student can point to a moment where they persevered in their preparation for ministry despite seemingly insurmountable odds. Some call it luck, but I believe it is God\u2019s grace that sustains us for ministry. When I look back at my first six months at Mt. Nebo I have no justification for our thriving preschool, amazing, high functioning staff, dedicated lay leaders, and a pastor who really loves her job, other than God\u2019s grace. God\u2019s grace is enough. In all times, in all places, and in all seasons.<\/p>\n
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The Rev. Rebecca DePoe \u201916 is the pastor of Mt. Nebo United Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, Pa. She earned her MDiv degree<\/a> from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. A member of Pittsburgh Presbytery, she served on the Administrative Commission for Transformation (ACT). Rebecca blogs at mtneboupc.com\/pastor-s-corner<\/a>, and tweets @RebeccaDePoe<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I graduated from Pittsburgh Seminary last June with my M.Div. Six months ago, I began my first call. As the temporary, solo pastor at Mt. Nebo United Presbyterian Church. One of the unexpected blessings to my current call is that I manage a preschool. Last week I met with my head preschool teacher to discuss…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2312,"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":true,"_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],"tags":[297,298,296,295],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ministry","tag-boundaries-in-pastoral-ministry","tag-setting-boundaries-in-ministry","tag-surviving-as-a-new-pastor","tag-what-i-learned-in-seminary"],"yoast_head":"\r\n