I have asked myself what was the need to go to seminary. I am asked weekly by others should I go to seminary and my response is simply, “Get you a degree you can eat from.” Now I am not saying that folks should not go to seminary but make sure you understand what you are getting into. There must to be a clear understanding of calling and a love for theology that drives you to seminary. If you think that seminary will get you into the big church on the hill where you make $100,000 a year, it is highly unlikely –do not be fooled by the prosperity gospel’s “paraphernalia of destruction.”

If by chance you get to a church or organization that can pay you with that type of salary, you will have put your work in and set a pattern of success; a success that is often based around the fickle projection of church membership and book sells. Seminary has the uncanny ability to develop a humbleness leveraged by a call of God that is in constant “beast mode.”

Seminary is full of men and women that serve God through their time of study. It is a place where poverty is experienced in proxy –institutionalized debt as one my classmates called it- but masked with student loans and scholarships. Seminary flexes as a necessity but is frowned upon by many but unbeknownst to most congregations is the underpinning of the very faith they proclaim.

Only seminarians really understand the paradox of a theological degree –a degree that takes you to the edge of mental anguish in Hebrew to display the love of God through worship. It is G.K. Chesterton who says that a “paradox is truth standing on its head to attract attention” for seminarians we just preach, teach, and live the word of God for attention.

Just thinking