Archive for February, 2008
The New Look And A Growing Team
The New Look As is obvious to site visitor, we’re experimenting with a serious upgrade to the look of seminarysurvivalguide.com. I’ve wanted for a while to go to a format that would make browsing by category much easier. If I were all cool and stuff, I’d wait until everything was ready, and roll it out [...]
Category: General
Sobering Quote
From The Reformed Reader: “Sometimes seminarians complain that the seminary’s expectations of them are too demanding, that the course is too difficult, or that it is placing academic burdens upon them that they cannot bear. Perhaps they feel that their sincerity and their sense of vocation are enough to sustain them in their ministry. They [...]
Learn to Share Your Faith
When I was in seminary, I didn’t share my faith much. Most of the time I was pretty nervous about it. Part of this was a horrible misconception about evangelism, and part was the reality that I had not grown comfortable with who I was in Christ. There were plenty of others like me in [...]
Category: Spiritual life
SSG.com Bible Meme
I normally don’t go for these, but I’ll make an exception this time. Thanks for the tag, Shaun 1. What translation of the Bible do you like best? NIV. Dynamic equivalence, 8th grade reading level. It’s a decent standard translation which manages to avoid woodenness (NASB), quirkiness (HCSB), elitism (ESV), and fluffiness (NLT). 2. Old [...]
Category: General
Can’t say no? Try the “Qualified Yes”
Learning to say no is an important survival skill for ministry. People will ask you to do all sorts of things. because you’re nice. You’re in ministry! How could you say no? This will suck your life away if you’re not careful. We must defend our own borders. Of course, most of us in ministry [...]
Category: Links, Time Management
Learn to Pray
This may be the most important post I ever write. While you’re in seminary, before you launch out into full-time ministry, you must learn to pray. Nothing in your life will determine the power of your ministry and your survival in its stresses more than the strength of your personal prayer life. From J. Oswald [...]
Category: Spiritual life
Shorter degrees
Here is an example of a guy who lived out my counsel on being judicious with your choice of degree. This is a sensible exercise of triage.
No one cares what your grades are, part two
Part one was addressed to the grade nerds. Today, I speak to the rest of you. No one else may care what your grades are in seminary…. but you should. (Fair warning. Those who know me know that one of my finger wagging episodes is only moments away.) You should care about your grades, to [...]
Category: Academics, Time Management
No one cares what your grades are, part one
In seminary, I was a grade-nerd. It started early in my academic career. I was in the gifted program from 3rd grade through high school. Once I discovered that I had academic gifts, I found I liked achieving well in that arena. And my parents never settled for less than I could do. In high [...]
Category: Academics, Time Management
I decided to quit my job to go to seminary
(This story–our first!!–comes from the webmaster at goingtoseminary.com. – Mark) About four years ago my wife and I moved from the south to the not-quite-north. The move had lots of factors… FAR too many to go into here. But we packed the car and headed on the journey with a couple thousand dollars in the [...]
