Seminary has great significance in helping a pastor understand how to dissect the Bible in a scholarly way. It will increase critical thinking skills, teach you to work with deadlines, and expose you to brilliant minds. However, there are things that seminary doesn’t teach you. Why? There isn’t enough time in the program, and it’s not the job of the seminary to teach you everything. Many pastors leave seminary well equipped to teach the Scriptures and study in a scholarly way. Still, they struggle to understand many things in the operations side of ministry and how to reach the common person. So, here are 8 things they don’t teach you in seminary.
1. Emotional and Mental Health Issues will be Magnified
Ministry doesn’t make your emotional and mental health issues go away. The first few years of ministry are fun. It may seem like ministry has “cured” them, but many pastors hit an emotional wall. Years of wounds from rejection that has produced insecurities come to the surface. They find themselves battling anxiety, anger and depression. Pastoral ministry is the very front lines of ministry. Pastors have people betray them, leave, constantly criticize their leadership, and they have to keep up with the non-stop grind. So, their mental health issues that have been hidden for years are now magnified. Pastors need to be equipped to notice this and get professional help before they crash their church, marriage, or family with poor choices.
2. How to Reach People Digitally
COVID-19 accelerated the usage of digital life. So, churches have to be equipped to reach people through a digital strategy. Pastors and churches are generally ill-equipped to reach the digital community. Social Media is a powerful tool to communicate the mission of the church, show the community and church the good that the church does, and a great way to advertise to people where they are located. Google is the top search engine. Unchurched people will go to Google to search for churches. They will usually search for “churches near me,” or “churches in ___________ (city).” The first churches that come up will get a virtual visit via the website from the person searching. This is a wonderful way to reach people in the community and the kicker with Google is that they are searching for the church! The church isn’t advertising to those who aren’t interested. But this is something that is not taught in seminary, so pastors have to learn this on their own.
3. Sermon Series Content Creation
People watch series on TV and on digital platforms such as Netflix or Disney+ regularly. They think thematically or in “series.” They enjoy a focus, theme, and a specific duration. Sermon series are an avenue to help people learn in the way they are used to learning culturally. Series need to have focused content, Biblical narratives, and yes, they need to be creative. Seminary is not going to train pastors on how to create sermon series that keep the congregants engaged as well as reach unchurched people.
4. Resolving Conflict among Staff and Church Members
Figuring out who exactly penned the book of Hebrews or trying to dissect exactly who the Nephilim were in Genesis isn’t generally stressful to a pastor. But pastors do talk about stress from conflict among staff, volunteers, and the congregants. Resolving conflict is something that a pastor or staff member will always have to do to keep the church healthy. It is a primary task, but very few who finish seminary are empowered to do this. They don’t have training in personality profiles or conflict resolution. This is where the stress comes in. They feel like they are always fighting battles they can’t win with conflict management. If a pastor doesn’t figure out how to deal with the stress of always resolving conflict, then it begins to take a toll on them.
5. Growth Engines for a Church
Seminary graduates are taught how to manage the basics of a church, but they are never taught how to specifically grow a church by reaching the unchurched in the community. They are not aware of how to manage or leverage growth engines for their church. Growth engines are leveraging big days (Christmas and Easter) with invites, social media, or online searches and how to craft or create a compelling, prayed-down vision for the church. Because of this, most seminary graduates feel frustrated when attempting to grow their church.
6. Strategic Calendar Planning for the Church
Seminary helps you strategically exegete the Bible, but it doesn’t help you with your strategic planning calendar for the church. There are three times a year that a church can expect to see new faces. Those days are Christmas, Easter, and the Fall. Seminary doesn’t teach you how to leverage the first four weeks leading up to the big day with an invite strategy, how to double in attendance the day of, and how to connect those new guests the following several weeks. There are 3 key 9-week pockets for each of these big days. To reach people for Christ, it is very important for the pastor/team to plan accordingly. The strategic calendar helps pastors plan volunteer recruitment “push” months, rest months, sermon series planning, and even a strategic time to fill flow charts by appointing leaders.
7. Leading a Staff and Board
One of the most important training that is missing from seminary is how to lead effective meetings with staff and a board. Those meetings will dictate the health and direction of the church. Most pastors have no idea what an effective meeting looks like. This makes it very difficult to lead the leaders of the church. An effective meeting has a time limit, objectives, vision, problem-solving, delegation, dreaming, decisions, and a follow-up plan.
8. Crisis/Trauma Response
Pastors end up living in the quadrant of problem solving and crisis. These crises can range from walking with a family through the death of their loved one, experiencing the moral failure of a staff member, or responding to someone who is seriously contemplating suicide; and in some cases, caring for the family of a person that did commit suicide. Seminary doesn’t train pastors on how to handle any of this or how to care for themselves during and after going through this. Pastors need care as well, because of the amount of trauma they deal with on a personal level. It differs from a hospital chaplain. A hospital chaplain normally doesn’t know the family and steps in during crises. Once the crisis is over, they are onto the next family. A pastor usually has built a friendship with the family. Most are members of the church, which brings strong relational ties to the rest of the church family.
H.B London wrote an excellent book called “They Call Me Pastor.” This book intertwines his crisis care with his church and practical applications on how to apply it. A pastor must know two things when dealing with any trauma or crisis. First off, they are not there to fix any problems. They are there simply to be a non-anxious presence. They need to just be there with them. Secondly, the pastor must get time to rest and disengage from caring for others to care for themselves. This may even include counseling for the pastor.
Seminaries are very important to the development of a pastor. They help in many ways, but there is so much that they don’t address. The key for the pastor is to be a life-long learner in practical ministry to handle the multi-faceted demands of the church.
