The Seminary Wife: Here I Am; Send Me
March 13, 2012
Jessica Haberkern
I never imagined that I’d call New England home, and yet this morning I am here. The sun greets me by melting the frost gathered like crystals in the corners of my windowpane and casts shadows from the birch trees onto my bed. A few weeks ago, the scene was different—I had a job and friends and a loft situated in the heart of a concrete jungle. Now I am living on the campus of a seminary, which is as foreign to me as taking up residence at a convent.
I remember the day my husband told me he wanted to quit his career as a motion graphic designer and go to seminary. We were on an afternoon stroll through the park behind our street. The heat lingering over the sidewalk rivaled the stagnancy of our marriage. Not seeing eye to eye was new to us, and the summer had felt like a disaster. Seminary, I said, us? I fumbled over the words strung together, but I sensed that my husband was right.
We were both frustrated with detaching our Sundays from the workweek—Christian one day and ordinary members of society another. Sure, we read our Bibles, a lot in fact. We engaged in ministry and attended small groups. We prayed together and occasionally brought food to the homeless and jobless on our street. Still, something was missing, and its gaping hole was growing wider.
We had assembled our lives like giant puzzle pieces, arranging the God-piece where we thought it fit. Our foundation was in Christ, yes, but the rest of our puzzle created a picture of us. How do I want to follow Jesus? What does God want me to do? These questions were legitimate, but through trying to serve God on our terms, we were only serving ourselves.
In his book Radical, writer David Platt says that if you ask the average American Christian to summarize the message of his or her faith, the response will go something like this: God loves me enough to send His Son Jesus to die for me. Sounds good, right? But that’s not all, Platt argues. “The message of biblical Christianity is not ‘God loves me, period,’ as if we were the object of our own faith,” he writes. That account of the Christian narrative stops short of the full story. Instead, the message of Christianity is “God loves me so that I might make Him—His ways, His salvation, His glory, and His greatness—known among all nations.”
God loves me so that I can make His name known. How simple of a truth. I am not the end of the gospel, God is. And yet how often do I need to be reminded that all of my puzzle pieces should reflect the glory of Christ Jesus.
My husband and I are not the first people to have uprooted our life to attend seminary. We are not special in that sense. Nearly every family in our new home has experienced some sort of reckoning, either by leaving a job or church or simply abandoning their plans at the feet of Jesus. I pray, though, that as my husband and I enter into community and classes and begin to reshape our life around God’s word, that we would do so in the crux of the gospel truth. Every circumstance in my life up until this very moment has occurred to make His name known. That is my story. It is my husband’s story, and it is yours.
Sometimes I’m prone to think that the writers of scripture wrestled with different questions than I. Surely the fathers of our faith weren’t surrounded with uncertainty about their direction or purpose! And then I page through their words and discover that they were often just as lost. Though there are many stories of encouragement in the scriptures, I find Isaiah’s particularly pertinent to my current season of life. In Isaiah 6, God is holding court with His angels. They are in intense discussion. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah overhears God (6:8).
Notice that God did not single out Isaiah and beg—His will illuminated in flashing lights—or even charge Isaiah with the call to go. Isaiah is privy to God’s heavenly conversation because he is still and quiet and found in prayer. “Whether or not [we] hear God’s call depends on the state of [our] ears,” Oswald Chambers says.
Lend an attentive ear to the throne. What plans does God have in the works? Are you willing to say, here I am Lord, send me? The gospel, after all, does not end with you or me. It ends with Christ, His name glorified.
Are you listening?
—The Seminary Wife
Jessica Haberkern is a creative writer and violinist once local to Atlanta. She teaches writing for Ashford University’s online program and writes for The Oxford American, In Touch, and Scoutmob, among other publications. She chronicles her and [her uber cool] husband’s eats + beats on their blog, thehaberkerns.tumblr.com.
Tags: Author: Jessica Haberkern , current students , thoughtfully evangelical
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The Seven Year M.Div.: Two Reflections on the Seminary Experience
February 08, 2012
Brian
Author’s Note: Journeys are strange. You hardly ever end up where you thought you would, and you definitely never get there in the manner that you conceived. That has been as true for me as it was for Jonah the morning he woke up to take a leisurely cruise to Tarshish. Over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of blog posts exploring how I came to and through seminary. It’s a strange tale with no straight lines. But it’s my story, and it is the path that the Lord has led our family down. It’s not idyllic. I hope that encourages you. Also, in case you just joined the conversation, Part 1 can be found here; Part 2 can be found here; Part 3 can be found here; Part 4 can be found here; Part 5 can be found here; Part 6 can be found here. Part 7 can be found here; Part 8 can be found here; Part 9 can be found here.
Non intratur in veritatem, nisi per caritatem.
-Augustine of Hippo, Contra Faustum 41, 32, 18
In May 2010 I finally finished a seven-year journey towards a master’s degree. If you have been reading along, you know that the path was much different than I had expected. I learned a lot, but not everything. I read a lot, but not everything. And it drew me closer to God, but did not answer all of my questions.
[I want to confess something at this point. I re-wrote this post three different times. Why? Because it seems like it should be a significant piece since it is the terminus of the series. And such posts usually involve a reflection by the author about their experience. And such reflections, like a Twitter account, usually assume that people care to hear your thoughts. Then I realized that I already have a Twitter account, so here you go.]
If two imagined friends, one considering seminary and one already halfway through his/her degree, sat me down one day and asked for my perspective on the process after finishing, I would sum everything up in two thoughts.
First, do it.
If you have a desire to study God and his people – for that is pretty much what we do in seminary – indulge it. The process may become disconcerting or arduous at times, but it is worth it. If I had not gone, my curiosity would have continued to eat away at me. I suspect that there are others out there who are in similar situations. So, go. And when you’re in the middle of the process, if you can, stay and finish. The evangelical movement in the world needs many things today, and one of the most vital necessities is theological training. We are great at loving God with our hearts, but if our minds are not also engaged we are creating a false dichotomy within ourselves. So, if you can, go.
Second, however, realize that the seminary experience will be hard on your faith in at least two ways. First, your mind and heart are tied together. What affects one also affects the other. In the course of your studies you will be forced to ask questions that others have the luxury of avoiding. And, most of the answers to those questions will involve slight, if not major, shifts in your belief and practice. This can unsettling, but good guides who have been there before are helpful to lean on whenever you grow weary on such paths as textual criticism, Trinitarian doctrine, and diagramming the Greek text of Ephesians. Yet, the pressure on your faith is not only due to these profound shifts. It is also due to the fact that seminary is not the Church. To study and to submit to God are two entirely different things. One involves observation and analysis, and the other involves participation, service, and worship. Like quarreling siblings you will want to separate those two from each other, but do not do it. You need to fully engage both, to love God with your heart and mind, and to let the siblings influence one another.
There is a lot more to be said, but I think this is a good place to stop. Want to go to seminary? You should. Are you in seminary? Remember to fully engage your heart and mind, although the road may seem daunting. And, finally, don’t give up. By God’s grace I was able to hang on for seven years - through two presidents, the birth of two of our children, my wife’s return to school, my wife’s completion of her second degree, a job change, and a move across the country. You can do it, too. Just remember to engage your heart and your mind along the way.
Non intratur in veritatem, nisi per caritatem.
“One cannot enter into truth, unless through love.”
-Augustine of Hippo, Contra Faustum 41, 32, 18
Brian has an M.Div. (2010) from Gordon-Conwell’s Charlotte campus, a Th.M. (2011) in Historical Theology from the South Hamilton campus, and is currently strengthening his language skills while in the MACH program. He hopes to matriculate into a doctoral program in August 2012 that will allow him to continue in his study of the thought of Augustine of Hippo. He has a wonderful wife, three great children, and spent ten years in ministry to teenagers, primarily with Young Life International.
Tags: Author: Brian , current students , equipping leaders for the church and society , future students , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical , training
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Alumni Profile: Dr. Paul Borthwick
January 18, 2012
Ever wonder what people do after seminary? In the video below, we talk with Dr. Paul Borthwick (M.Div. '80, D.Min. '07), professor at Gordon College and on staff with Development Associates International about how his experience at Gordon-Conwell equipped him for a lifetime of missions work.
Tags: Alumni , current students , future students
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Full-Tuition Scholarship at Gordon-Conwell
January 04, 2012
Gordon-Conwell recently announced the new Partnership Program, which provides a full-tuition scholarship and biblical stewardship training. Take a moment to watch the video below to hear some of our Partnership students share their thoughts and experiences with this program.
Tags: current students , equipping leaders for the church and society , future students , training
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Learning from Our Church Fathers: Part 2
December 07, 2011
This is Part 2 in a series about why evangelicals should care about the early church. If you are just now joining us, you can read Part 1 here.
Why should evangelicals care about the early church, about the first several centuries after the end of the New Testament? Of the many answers one could give to this question, perhaps the most important answer is that we should care about the early church precisely because we are committed to the authority of Scripture alone. Since we have that commitment, we want to know as precisely and comprehensively as we can what Scripture actually means. And this brings us to a fundamental claim that I often make: What we think the Bible means is influenced by what we think the church has said the Bible means.
Consider this claim for a moment. As faithfully and carefully as we may read the Bible, we never come to Scripture as a blank slate. There is a long history of biblical interpretation that influences what we are looking for as we read Scripture—whether we know that history or not, whether we realize its influence on us or not. In particular, the great issues of the Protestant Reformation (16th and 17th centuries) and the subsequent issues of Pietism and revivalism 18th-20th centuries) have set up the categories with which you and I approach the Bible.
For example, one of the legacies of the Reformation (a legacy that the Reformation itself owes to High Medieval Roman Catholicism) is the tendency to think about the meaning of biblical passages in terms of clear-cut, either/or alternatives. “It has to be either x or y, so let’s go to the Bible to decide which it is.” Salvation has to be by faith (the right answer) or by works (the wrong answer). Sanctification is either distinct from justification (the right answer) or the same as justification (the wrong answer). The atonement has to be either limited or unlimited. (On this one we disagree about which is the right answer.) A true believer either can or cannot lose his/her salvation. (Here again we disagree about which is the right answer.) On these points and countless others, we usually accept the questions the way they are presented to us, and we inquire of the Scriptures to see which of the options is right.
When we read the great thinkers of the early church, however, we find that they often had a different way of posing the issues than we do. Rather than arguing over whether salvation was by faith or by works, they demonstrated their complete reliance on Christ by talking about him, rather than about their own faith or their own works. They regarded both justification andsanctification as things that God gives us at the beginning of salvation, and they defined both as the righteousness that we receive when we are united to Christ, who is the righteous one. And their whole conception of the atonement was one in which the question of limited vs. unlimited could not even arise.
My point here is not that we should necessarily follow the way the early church described Christianity. Rather, it is that by reading the church fathers, we gain another vantage point from which to look at Scripture. By seeing the Bible through their eyes, we can also see the way our own history has shaped the way we inquire of Scripture, the kinds of questions we ask of the Bible. What we think the Bible means is shaped by what the church has said the Bible means. Thus, understanding the history that has led our branch of the church to ask the questions we ask, and also gaining potential insights from Christians who had a different set of questions, can help us move closer to understanding the Bible fully, comprehensively, and accurately.
Dr. Donald Fairbairn is the Robert E. Cooley Professor of Early Christianity. His responsibilities include further developing the Robert C. Cooley Center for the Study of Early Christianity at the Charlotte campus, which explores the historical foundations of the Christian faith.
Tags: Author: Donald Fairbairn , biblically-grounded , current students , equipping leaders for the church and society , faculty blogger
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