YPT Podcast Episode 42: Is Seminary Worth It (Doug Ponder)

Is seminary worth it? It requires a lot of sacrifice, can be expensive, and some of the classes don’t seem too helpful for student ministry. And yet it provides a unique opportunity for training and ministry development. How can youth workers discern whether or not to pursue further education, and how do we choose amidst the many options? 

Discussion Includes: 

• If I can just buy the books off Amazon and follow some nerdy youtube and podcasts then why would anyone enroll in seminary? 

• What are some benefits and shortcomings of the traditional seminary/M.Div. model? 

• If someone listening is feeling compelled towards seminary but they aren’t sure how to discern which school is right for them, what advice do you have for them to make a wise decision? 

• How can seminary students who are listening to this podcast get the most out of their seminary experience… academically, spiritually, and personally? 

• Some of our listeners would probably LOVE to enroll tomorrow, but they simply can’t. How can they continue their theological and ministry formation? 

Excerpt from the Conversation

Mike: I can envision some people who are listening to the podcast who haven't been to seminary and they're not interested. Maybe they’re thinking, “I'm already serving in student ministry, I'm being mentored by my senior pastor and I have Amazon, right? So I can buy books. I have YouTube so I can find videos. I have a phone so I can listen to podcasts. Why bother with seminary in the first place?” What would you say to them?

Doug: That's honestly a fair question, but I would say that a good deal of that probably depends on the kind of person that we're talking about. The truth is that the number of people who possess the ability and the discipline to teach themselves everything that they need to know, just from reading books and listening to podcasts, that is an exceedingly small number of people. In fact, I found that most of the people who seem to be quite convinced that they are among that number are almost certainly not.

And so that is one way to think about how you can answer that question is that the vast majority of people are not what we call autodidacts. They're not good self-learners and self-teachers. And that makes sense. There's a reason why the scriptures say in Ephesians 4 that one of the gifts that God gives to his people through the Holy Spirit is the gift of pastors and teachers, which means that teaching and teachers are a gift from the Lord to the church, that they're needed.

Think about Acts 8, the eunuch, he's reading the Bible and Philip asks him, do you understand what you're reading? And what does he say? Oh, of course I do because I am an autodidact. No, he says, how can I understand unless someone guides me? So the Bible assumes that the vast majority of people need someone to guide them - that we're not very good at guiding ourselves.

And if you do try to guide yourself, what normally happens is this, you end up focusing on the kinds of things you like to listen to, that you like to read, instead of the kinds of things you need to read. And so my favorite sort of analogy or illustration for what that looks like is it's like the guy who loves to bench press, but hates leg day. And the problem is he's not going to be a very well-formed athlete. If he's incredibly strong in his upper body and his legs are just wimpy, tiny puny little things.

That's something like that happens with the vast majority of people who say, well, I've got books, I've got podcasts, I'll just, I'll just teach myself. Well, sure. But probably. You will gravitate toward the things you enjoy and you're going to end up as the pastoral equivalent of the guy who skipped leg day for years.

There's one more thing I think I would say, which is this. That whole understanding, that question, assumes that what education is, is simply the transfer of information into your brain. That really is the most sinister assumption at the core of much of modern education. Education is not simply about the transfer of information. It's really more enculturation, which means a transfer of a way of life.

And the reason why so many pastors, even pastors who graduate seminary, end up failing out of ministry, it's not because they didn't have enough but because they didn't practice what it is that they learned. Or because the kind of education they received wrongly tricked them into thinking that maturity in the faith is equivalent to your knowledge in the faith. And that's just not true.

So I would say that there's that really sinister assumption, that dangerous assumption that, well, I'll just read books. and listen to podcasts. Well, sure, but you better have somebody who knows you well enough and loves you deeply enough to call you out in areas where you desperately need to grow to highlight blind spots that you do not or maybe cannot see and who can help enculturate you in pastoral life, which is so much more than just information.

Links for More Connection

Doug Ponder is a teaching pastor at Remnant Church in Richmond, VA, and Professor of Biblical Studies at Grimke Seminary. 

Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougponder

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YPT has published an ebook that's a free download for subscribers! Youth Ministry is Theological Ministry captures the essence of Youth Pastor Theologian in one ten-chapter book, written by six different contributors from across America, Mexico, and the UK.