{"id":810,"date":"2014-01-30T14:24:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T19:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ptsblog.org\/?p=810"},"modified":"2021-03-19T14:56:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T19:56:54","slug":"outside-the-seminary-gates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/outside-the-seminary-gates\/","title":{"rendered":"Outside the Seminary Gates"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was pretty excited when I got asked to write this week\u2019s post for the PTS\u00a0 blog. I was excited because I was asked to write about something that is very\u00a0important to me and that is something that I believe needs to be talked about a\u00a0lot more. I am going to write about what I do outside of this seminary.<\/p>\n

We always talk about what is going on in classes and in the daily happenings at the\u00a0Seminary but rarely do I hear what people are doing outside of these gates. I just graduated from Eastern University this past spring and every day I see more\u00a0how what I learned there and what I did there have impacted me.<\/p>\n

Eastern is very\u00a0social justice oriented and it has become a part of my ministry whether I wanted\u00a0it to or not. While it will take time, commitment, and more resources than I currently have to figure out how to do both clerical ministry and social justice\u00a0outreach together, I figure for the time being I can start small.<\/p>\n

Through Bellefield Presbyterian Church I have gotten connected with a homeless ministry called L.I.V.I.N.G Ministry with which I\u00a0 volunteer.\u00a0Unfortunately I am only able to volunteer with them once a week and with other occasional events because of time constraints and other obligations.<\/p>\n

This ministry is a unique ministry in that they really emphasize the relational aspect of what they do.\u00a0While it is important to meet the physical needs of the homeless in Pittsburgh, they want to love them and serve them through building relationships with these people and getting to know them on a very real level.<\/p>\n

The staff members for L.I.V.I.N.G Ministry visit the homeless in shelters each and every week so\u00a0that they can create authentic reciprocal relationships with the people who stay in these shelters.\u00a0As well as building relationships at these shelters, they also commit to doing Bible study together and sharing meals with each other.<\/p>\n

On Monday nights I go to Womanspace East Shelter, a shelter for women and their children. The first three Mondays of the month, while one of the volunteers watches their kids, we have a Bible study with the women who are interested. The last Monday of the month is reserved just for cooking dinner and eating together. I normally end up watching the kids so that the moms can be a part of the Bible study.\u00a0At first I was kind of bummed by this because being a \u201cseminarian\u201d and all of course I wanted to be involved in the Bible study (I know for me it has taken awhile to realize that often times it is outside the \u201ctypical\u201d setting of where we see God working that I see Him the most), but then I really began to see the value in the importance of something as little as watching kids.\u00a0Without someone watching these kids, their mothers would not be able to partake in the Bible study. It\u2019s just that practical.\u00a0It also gives me a chance to show these kids some attention and allow them to tell me about who they are.<\/p>\n

I will be honest and say sometimes I leave wondering if I actually portrayed God\u2019s love at all or if my presence there made any difference.\u00a0That, I found, is one of the hard things about working in ministry and in situations where change is a slow, barely visible process. This is where I come to realize that it is not anything that I am doing or saying but rather what Christ is doing through me and through this ministry that is important regardless of if I can evidently see that or not.<\/p>\n

Written by Maggie Smith, first year M.Div. student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.<\/em>
\nInterested in getting involved with L.I.V.I.N.G Ministry? Contact Maggie (<\/em>mtsmith@pts.edu<\/em><\/a>) or visit\u00a0<\/em>http:\/\/livingministry.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was pretty excited when I got asked to write this week\u2019s post for the PTS\u00a0 blog. I was excited because I was asked to write about something that is very\u00a0important to me and that is something that I believe needs to be talked about a\u00a0lot more. I am going to write about what I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[10,19,33,34,36,38,39,40],"series":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ministry","category-social-work","tag-call-to-ministry","tag-homeless-ministry","tag-seminary-experiences","tag-social-justice","tag-spiritual-journeys","tag-urban-ministry","tag-volunteering","tag-women-in-ministry"],"yoast_head":"\r\nOutside the Seminary Gates - Pittsburgh Theological Seminary<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/outside-the-seminary-gates\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Outside the Seminary Gates - Pittsburgh Theological Seminary\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was pretty excited when I got asked to write this week\u2019s post for the PTS\u00a0 blog. 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