How to Stay Christian in Seminary - Softcover

Mathis, David; Parnell, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1433540304 ISBN 13: 9781433540301

Verlag: CROSSWAY BOOKS, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

This short book gives pastors-in-training the keys not only to survive seminary, but also to keep their faith intact during a season that leaves many feeling drained, disillusioned, and dissatisfied.

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David Mathis serves as senior teacher and executive editor at desiringGod.org, a pastor at Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and an adjunct professor at Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis. He and his wife, Megan, have four children. He is the author of several books, including Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.

Jonathan Parnell (MDiv, Bethlehem College & Seminary) serves as the lead pastor of Cities Church in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota. He and his wife, Melissa, have five children.

John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Providence.

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How to Stay Christian in Seminary

By David Mathis, Jonathan Parnell

Good News Publishers

Copyright © 2014 David Mathis and Jonathan Parnell
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4335-4030-1

Contents

Foreword by John Piper, 
Introduction: Seminary: Life or Death?, 
David Mathis and Jonathan Parnell, 
1 Know Your Value of Values Jonathan Parnell, 
2 Be Fascinated with Grace David Mathis, 
3 Study the Word for More Than Words David Mathis, 
4 Push Your Books Aside and Pray Jonathan Parnell, 
5 Love That Jesus Calls the Weak Jonathan Parnell, 
6 Be a Real Husband and Dad Jonathan Parnell, 
7 Keep Both Eyes Peeled for Jesus David Mathis, 
Conclusion: Be a Christian in Seminary David Mathis, 
Recommended Reading, 
Acknowledgments, 

CHAPTER 1

KNOW YOUR VALUE OF VALUES

JONATHAN PARNELL

Jesus saved me. It really is amazing, though the story is simple.

I grew up in church, walked an aisle when I was eight, re-prayed "the prayer" when I was fifteen, wandered when I got my driver's license, and was finally awakened after surviving a car wreck my senior year. Soon I found myself asking big questions: "Why am I alive? What am I supposed to do?" During my first semester of college, one thing became clear: I wanted to teach the Bible. And so began formal theological training.

It started with a holy, even jolly, ambition. I wanted to learn as much about Jesus as I could and then show him to others. What fueled my pursuit of ministry and the training involved was not how much I already knew but how much I already loved. Jesus had saved me, remember. He had saved me. I knew that, and I wanted more.

There are some things it is good to figure out before you start seminary. Sure, there's a lot to learn, and you must come with humility. But if you don't drop the anchor early, the calmest of seas will make you drift. Call it conviction, resolve, or whatever, but the first question to answer in seminary is why you're there. Why are you doing this? What is your rallying cry? What is the heart that pumps life into all your studies and ministry dreams?

LOOKING FOR STEEL

You can easily characterize the season of training by all the things you don't know. The conversations become fairly common. One classmate asks another about future plans. The answer is nothing certain. The second classmate then turns the question around and the dialogue stays squishy. No one really knows where he'll be after graduation. Even the tidiest of plans can fall through. Some theological commitments will be intensified; others will be recalibrated to a proper balance. It doesn't take long to see that you are surrounded by open-endedness. The seminary experience starts to feel like you're leaning on stained-glass windows when you need to be standing on brazen steel — the kind of steel that doesn't move.

On top of the uncertainty, the knowledge you are acquiring has a sneaky undercurrent. Before long, it subtly starts to pull. The more of it you get, the easier it becomes to slip into a mode of life that assumes accumulated information equals gospel maturity. This is what Paul Tripp calls "academizing our faith." No one does this on purpose. It's like setting out with the good intention of building a bonfire but ending up with a mountain of sticks and no flame. The pile of wood may look impressive, but it fails to serve its function. It misses the point. Likewise, unless your resolve is as solid as steel, the stress of gained knowledge morphs and manipulates (if not shatters) the locus of our learning.

So, amid all the unknowns and the dangers of increased knowing, it is crucial to know this: your value of values.

Be clear on what you care about the most, which, if we're faithful to the Bible, is not a multiple-choice question. The great foundation and goal of the universe is the glory of God. The foundation and goal of your studies and ministry should be no different. More than anything else, energized by grace, you want our triune God to be high and lifted up. You treasure him. You delight in him. You hallow his name. You are committed to his fame and renown. You are about the glory of God.

But what does that mean? What is the glory of God? And how can you make it the foundation and goal of your seminary years? There are two more steps on the way out of this chapter. First, I want to define the glory of God, and second, I want to suggest a practical way to integrate this chief value into the details of your training.

THE GLORY OF GOD DEFINED

What is the glory of God? What is it that Moses asked to see in Exodus 33:18? What is it that John 1:14 declares the apostles saw in Jesus?

Consider that holy exchange between Moses and God in Exodus 33. We see that Moses's request to see God's glory follows a previous request: "Please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight" (v. 13). Though he says it in different ways, in both instances Moses is asking to behold the same thing. When he asks to see God's ways, he asks for something that can be shown — God's glory.

The apostle John affirms this same concept in the opening of his Gospel account. The glory of God is indeed something seen. John declares that the apostles saw the glory of God in the person of his Son. Jesus came to embody and display the ways of God, and to that end, he was full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

For starters, then, we learn that the glory of God is not a distant attribute. Neither is it some abstract description of God's mysterious wonders. Rather, the glory of God is a showcase. It is, by its very nature, something revealed. It is a manifestation. For God to glorify himself is for him to communicate who he is. As Jonathan Edwards writes, "God glorifies himself in communicating himself, and he communicates himself in glorifying himself."

God hears Moses and answers, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD'" (Ex. 33:19). The glory of the Lord is to "pass by" Moses (v. 22), which it soon does:

The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." (34:5–7)

So the glory of God is something seen — revealed — and something proclaimed. Answering Moses's prayer, God descended and proclaimed his name. For God to proclaim his name is another way of saying God showcases his ways. God's name is his "enacted identity." It is the banner of how God acts based upon who he is, full of grace and truth.

Make no mistake, God is utterly incomparable and eternally inexhaustible. Only he knows himself fully. But he has told us something about himself. He has told us his name, revealing that he is a certain kind of God who acts in certain ways. God's glory, then, is the picture he gives of who he is, seen preeminently in the person of Jesus. God's glory is the proclamation of his name, the shining forth of his ways.

Therefore, for us to say that we are about the glory of God means that we are about God being seen for who he is. The steel foundation and center for our learning is that God...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: CROSSWAY BOOKS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1433540304
• ISBN 13: 9781433540301
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 80
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar