New Series at Said at Southern: Seasons of a Seminarian, Part One

I'm itching to write a number of things this week, but I first want to tell you about a series of articles I'm writing at Said at Southern, the SBTS metablog, about seminary. If you've ever wanted a kind of overview of the seminary experience from a student's perspective, you might find this series interesting. It's nothing special, but in it, I do seek to tell the seminary "story" generally, though I do so from my own experience, mixing in my own anecdotes and memories. I think it does a reasonable job of recounting the average seminarian's experience. Though I tell it from my own personal history, one need not have gone to Southern to resonate with its ideas and happenings.

Here is a paragraph from the first part of the three-part series.

"We come to seminary from a wide range of backgrounds. Some have worked in campus ministry, some in local churches, some have been missionaries, some were accountants or lawyers or investment bankers in past times. This is part of what makes seminary a profitable experience: the wealth of diversity accrued to a campus that pursues a common goal, namely, training for the ministry of the gospel. I came to Southern after an action-packed year in Washington, DC, where I interned at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and the U. S. Department of State. Like many seminarians, I had thought it best to take a bit of time off from school following college graduation, as I was a bit weary of books and quizzes and papers and classes. After a year in “local church bootcamp” (I assure you, an affectionate moniker for the CHBC internship and church experience), I felt ready for the Christian academy. Like many prospective seminarians, I knew some theology and had read through the Bible, but I had little sense of the bigger picture behind it all. I wanted to really know the Bible, to be able to read it for myself in the original languages, and to learn the history, philosophy, and theology that it birthed. I was old enough to know a little, but young enough to be aware of the same. I was young and hungry, and seminary was the answer."

I'll have more on this series in days to come.