Seminary is a Garden

Next month, we look forward to celebrating the end of another academic year at Bethlehem College and Seminary with our commencement. As a professor, there are few better ways to wrap up the year than with the encouragement of seeing our students receive the reward for their hard work. Watching them walk across the finish line, seeing the joy on their faces (along with the many who supported them—shout out to our seminary wives), hearing testimonies of God’s goodness over their academic journey, and being freshly reminded of why we do what we do—it’s a gift.

Last year’s commencement was a special one for me because it marked the graduation of the first undergraduate class I taught from their first year to the finish line. This year’s commencement brings another milestone. When the students walk in May, it will mark ten years since I walked those same steps. In May 2015, I received my Master of Divinity from Bethlehem Seminary. Where has the time gone?

Reflecting on my four years at Bethlehem Seminary, I’m exceedingly grateful to look back fondly. I remember telling people I wanted to go to seminary, and more often than I expected, I received cautionary advice about how many leave seminary worse off than when they came. Many referred to seminary as “cemetery school”—where faith goes to die a cold death. I thank God Bethlehem Seminary was not a graveyard for my pastoral development. It was a garden—where the seeds of a future pastoral habitus (a pastoral temperament or character worked by the Holy Spirit through his means — Care of Souls, 17) were planted, watered, pruned, and cultivated by a faculty who loved Jesus, loved his church, loved their families, loved their scholarship, loved their school, and loved us. And by a cohort of brothers who spurred me on.

I recently told an audience I would do Bethlehem Seminary ten times over. Don’t get me wrong—it was hard. But it was a good hard. It was a good hard, like a workout that pushes you to the limit but leaves you in better shape. A good hard like a seed exerting energy to crack out of the shell, break through the earth, and flower into what it was created to be.

Ten years later, now in my ninth year of pastoral ministry, I can say—with ten toes down—that seminary was well worth the rigor, sacrifice, time, effort, and commitment it calls for from the man who aims to shepherd the flock purchased by the blood of Christ. We rightly demand rigorous training from our doctors. None of us would go to a doctor without training. We rightly demand thorough training from our lawyers. Few would go to trial with their life on the line with an untrained attorney. How much more, then, should we encourage future pastors—so far as it is in their power—to pursue the kind of preparation that befits those who will handle the word of God for the good of the church and the glory of Christ?

My experience in seminary doesn’t guarantee that current or future seminarians will have the same. But what the seminary does offer is a muddy garden bed, ready to be planted with seeds that will sprout into future pastoral ministry. Seminary allows one to study the great works of the Lord in delight (Psalm 111:2). It offers time—set apart—for the seminarian to prepare for the work of ministry. Time which, I can say ten years later, you will not have once your hands are on the plow.

Seminary—especially in person—will give a future pastor the essential friendship of a band of brothers. It will provide the necessary tools for handling God’s word and shepherding God’s flock. You won’t learn everything in seminary—it’s not meant for that impossible task. There are some things you’ll only learn in the pastorate. But seminary will work on the man who, by God’s kindness, will grow into a pastor.

Lewis Guest, IV, M.Div.
Assistant Professor of Bible and Theology