Reflecting on my time at The Master’s Seminary

THE MASTER’S SEMINARY – REFLECTIONS ON DIVINE TRAINING

A pupil is not above his teacher.  But everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.

~Luke 6:40.

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

~2 Timothy 2:15

 

There were mixed emotions as I walked out of my final academic class at The Master’s Seminary.  There was an immense amount of joy over the prospect that this rigorous portion of divine training was finished, mixed with the sorrow of knowing that I would in one sense miss it.  There was a huge degree of excitement in knowing that I would finally be able to do ministry undistracted from the commute, and yet an equal sense of fear upon knowing what kind of roads faithful pastors have had to tread over the centuries.  There was a sense of satisfaction upon knowing how hard I had to work to complete the training, yet also a sense of regret upon feeling like I could have done better.  In the end, however, the resonating tone in my heart was that of gratitude.  It was a deep gratitude – both for being able to experience firsthand the immense of grace of God in extending the gift of seminary training to me as well as for the faithfulness of God in carrying me through it.

 

It’s one thing to desire to attend seminary to experience this divine training.  Experiencing it is a whole new story.  The training was, quite frankly, intense.  Anyone who starts going to The Master’s Seminary and commits himself to finishing up the course load in all integrity and diligence will witness first-hand just how serious the Lord is about having his workmen unashamed before him as they accurately handle the word of truth.  The Scriptures’ relationship to humanity is one that has quite an interesting dynamic, to say the least.  Its words are one that five year olds can understand and comprehend, yet ones that even the sharpest and most ambitious of scholars mightily struggle to interpret.  I went into seminary already afraid of the course load; as one who always excelled in math and science, writing and history and foreign languages were always the subjects that had shaved massive points off of my high school and college GPA.  Add to that the fact that, upon taking a standard reading test in high school, I scored below the average in both reading speed and reading comprehension.  And yet, for these four and a half years, my geeky science brain was pushed to do nothing but read, write, study church history, and learn two foreign languages – one of them which reads from right to left.  The massive amounts of reading left me often left me shell-shocked – at times having read up to 400 pages in one night (It was during seminary that I learned to regularly read 200+ page books in detail with highlighting in a day’s span).  The foreign languages were, quite honestly, difficult for me to learn.  Of all of my scholastic weaknesses, foreign languages had been by far the weakest – and yet I was told that learning Greek and Hebrew really was the emphasis of the seminary.  The helplessness that was edged on my face during those times when I had to translate one text after another for hours at a time is one that I never wished for anyone to see.  As much work as translating was, it was the writing that took up the most time and energy.  I recall one week – towards the end of my last semester – where I had to write and complete three major 20-page papers all within that week, and all of them were ones that had a required number of secondary sources.  It was in this writing process that I was forced to respond to some of the deepest, most difficult topics in today’s evangelical circle – the problem of evil, the roles of men and women, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the true meaning of worship, repentance and penance, animal rights, sanctification, double predestination, God’s sovereignty reconciled to man’s responsibility were some of many.  It was certainly holy ground to tread, for only a fool would dare to write about these things unlearned and uncertain that how his response be nothing short of faithful to the Scriptures.  And then, there was the preaching.  Eight sermons preached in front of a professor and fellow students – the first being 10 minutes long, and the last seven being 30 minutes long.  In the midst of all the thinking, reading, and writing, I was to channel what I was learning in school through this vehicle of my voice and body with a passion and conviction that indicated that the lives of men were on the line.  As one who always had a fear of public speaking and often shivered both in voice and knees when asked to speak in front of people, this appeared to be more than a stretch.

If the scholastic rigors of seminary weren’t enough of training, the commute that God ordained for me to make to and from school more than supplemented.  For the first four years, I had to make the 130-mile drive from my home in San Diego to the seminary in Sun Valley.  In order to avoid the famous L.A. traffic and make it to class in time, I had to wake myself at around 3:00 am every morning and leave by 4:00 am, in order get to my 7:30 class with enough down time to have some devotional reading before the school day began.  And for the last semester, with the dilemma of wanting to move to San Jose with the church plant and needing to finish my studies, I was left with no better choice than to make the 330-mile commute by plane every week from San Jose – leaving my wife and child behind at home.  The commute grew more and more intense as I progressed through the training.  For the first year, I commuted one day a week to school as part-time student.  In my second year, I drove up to the seminary on day and took the train the other day in order to make the Tuesday/Thursday schedule work.  For my third year, I had to drive both days.  For my fourth year, I not only had to drive both days, but also for a third day for half of each semester.  Then came the summer session after my fourth year, where for nine straight weeks I had to drive up and down every day for five days of the week (a total of nearly 45 drives from San Diego to L.A.).  Overall, it amounted to approximately 67,000 miles by driving and train, and nearly 10,000 miles by flying – making the commute approximately 77,000 miles for those 4.5 years.  The commute was as difficult as it was daunting.  Getting up at 3:00 am when the rest of your community is fast asleep – after you yourself had only had three hours of sleep – to drive to L.A. and be in class from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm was both energy consuming and at times emotionally draining.  I often found myself pulling over at multiple gas stations to try to get in a quick 10 minute power nap – one time even pulling over to the shoulder of the 101 freeway to sleep (two cops checked up on me to see what was going on that morning, and both were sympathetic to my fatigue and let me sleep on the shoulder for as long as I needed to).  There were times when I screamed, and other times when I simply cried from being so tired.  I recall another time when I arrived home from a church leadership meeting at 11:00 pm, and still hadn’t finished studying for my mid-term the next day.  After studying from 11:00 pm to 2:00 am, I simply got up and took a shower and left for L.A. an hour later without sleeping.  Truly did my trust in the empowering grace of God to labor for the kingdom grow during those mornings and nights?  Knowing that I had this kind of a commuting schedule coupled with the academic rigors of the classes and the fact that I did not want to sacrifice investing in the people in my church, I had to be equally intense with physical disciplines.  With the training being so physically and mentally demanding, there were times when choosing to eat a healthy salad over a hearty burrito would make the difference, and likewise in choosing to eat a cliff bar over a snickers bar for a mid-afternoon snack.  There were times when running 9 miles instead of 3 would make the difference in both adding extra cardiac strength as well as ridding myself of any toxins through physical sweat (thus, as the training grew tougher, the running and exercising increased).  People wondered why I spent so much of my lunch-breaks running up and down a 4+ mile hill close to the church office and back, and my response sounded like this: “If I don’t do this, I won’t have a body in strong enough condition to make the commute and meet with you regularly.”  And with this kind of a schedule, it would only be foolish to keep a TV in the house, and so I didn’t.  It was by God’s grace that – despite the number of times that I nearly fell asleep on the road – I only got into one car accident throughout all those years (and it wasn’t because I was tired; it was because I was angry).

 

Yet, amidst the intensity of the training, it still holds true that the sleep of a working man is pleasant. In the end, the temporary rigors of seminary are small in comparison to the eternal value that I gained from it.  It goes to say that, aside from salvation, God aspires for us to perspire in order to acquire the great things that we desire.  I have certainly, with much joy and satisfaction, tasted the fruits of the labor.  The training really did, in that sense, train me.  I went into the seminary with the desire to go into full-time ministry, but without the tools to do so.  After those years of rigor and pain, I leave not necessarily with the wisdom to handle it all, but with the proper equipment and tools which wisdom will be able to use to minister to others in the future.  I am the last to say that I am the sharpest knife in the drawer, but am the first to say that my edges are indeed far sharper than they were when I came in.  After even just the first semester, upon reading a portion of Scripture, I would find myself almost instinctively snooping for observations, surveying broader and immediate contexts, and quickly finding the structure of the verses without being told to.  Throughout my time at the seminary, my mind was trained not only to love the Word, but to learn it and handle it with caution, precision, and fear.  Those hours spent arduously translating Greek and Hebrew texts were painful, yes, but the pain was small in comparison to the fruit of now being able to pick up a Greek and Hebrew Bible and read from the original languages during devotional times.  Oh the riches and treasures that I now can gather whenever I open up God’s holy Word – even if it be just for my own personal growth.  Being quizzed on Bible book outlines each week from a cumulative system was difficult for one whose short term memory is not the sharpest, but what fruit I gained from it in having the big picture of the Bible now firmly and forever engraved in my heart.  And of course, there is the preaching.  What good is a pastor to his people if he has learned before them but cannot preach is to them?  As I stood week after week before the beloved people of my church – whether it be the children or the youth or the college students or the married couples – and delivered God’s truth to them in a way that fueled them to change for the purpose of godliness, I could only thank Him for all those assignments given to me where I was required to synthesize long passages, formulate propositions, and emphasize certain grammatical insights in such a way that would be understood.  Each time a brother or sister approached me to tell me that whatever message I preached brought conviction upon their hearts – whether it be from my home church or from the Philippines or from Argentina – it made me smile upon the rigors of the seminary’s preaching program.  God takes His Word seriously, and He takes His people seriously; the man of God better, then, be one who skillfully wields the Word in such a way that if affects His people.  Truly is there no better way to do that than to be under the tutelage of skilled professors who train men to know the Word as if lives depended on it.

But as equipping as the training was, it was equally edifying.  In the end, pastor or no pastor, man’s greatest need is an intimate knowledge of God.  It doesn’t take much to realize that we are still in our earthly forms and have yet to reach heaven, and thus God’s Word is the sole source by which we can know His truth and from which faith is produced.  For is it not that faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes from the Word of God?  Is it not true that the man who flourishes in all that he does is the man who truly delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night?  Is it not true that sanctification comes by no other means than the Word of truth doing its work in a person’s sinful heart?  As a Christian – both in my early years and in my later ones – my heart’s greatest need was to know God from what His Word said.  Contrary to what many perceive, my ultimate purpose in going to seminary was not to be trained for pastoral ministry, but rather to be trained for godliness.  I knew that there was the real possibility that I may not be fit or qualified for such a calling as shepherding the church of God, but I knew that there was the calling to be conformed to the Son of God – and I knew that this would come by no other means that the Words of Christ dwelling richly in my heart such that I be transformed into His image.  With this, it was an absolute joy to spend all those hours studying God’s Word.  As much as I learned from the program scholastically, I gained much more from it devotionally.  I remember one Greek professor who told us frankly that the ultimate purpose of learning Greek was none other than to know the mind of Christ – and that is exactly what I set my mind to do.  I wanted no other than to know the heart of the God who created me, saved me, and called me to Himself.  From this perspective, then, how can one complain when that same God calls Him to spend time in His Word?  I can recall numerous times where, while in the middle of a difficult assignment, I would open up my e-mail account and send a note to my professor to genuinely thank him for the assignment, as it was doing work in both my mind and heart.  I can recall numerous other times when, upon being assigned an essay on a certain text, I would journal about what I was learning first out of a desire to record how my life was being transformed.  Through the seminary training, my awareness of the holiness and majesty of my Creator, and so did my awareness of the wretched nature of my flesh.  Through the seminary training, my affection for Christ and trust in the gospel grew, as did my resolve to repent and entrust my life into His hands.  There is no better education than the one that teaches you about the glory of God as seen through the Scriptures.

 

It’s interesting, however, when one asks me how I changed over the course of my time in training.  I say that it’s interesting, because it’s ironic as it is interesting.  As much as I have changed over the course of the last four years, what is most significant about this period is how I have not changed.  I went into seminary knowing that I wretched sinner wholly deserving of hell and wholly undeserving of God’s grace.  I went into training painfully aware of my past sins as a young believer, and feeling completely unworthy of being trained to be an under shepherd for God’s flock.  I went into this time really believing that I was the least of the saints and the foremost of sinners – at times wondering why God had called me into this kind of ministry and not others who I knew were better, godlier, and more mature.  I’m leaving seminary now – with all of those same sentiments.  My awareness of my sinfulness has only grown, and I find myself in tears because of my sin and dishonoring God in my life more than I did when I wasn’t seminary-trained.  I was undeserving then of the privilege of training, and I am undeserving now.  Having four years of Bible-training under my belt made me no more deserving of it than I was when I first started.  That I stand before God as a sinner in need of His grace everyday has not changed.  Before and after seminary, my relationship with Jesus Christ has remained simple: He is my Lord and Savior who loves me, and I love Him and trust Him.  There were many external changes that took place in my life over the course of the training – I was hired as a pastor, I assisted with a church plant, I married a beautiful woman and shortly after had my first child – but the essence of my relationship with the Savior did not.  I have to, each, day, humble myself before Him and confess my sins.  Each day, I must still trust in His saving grace and work on the cross.  Each day, I thank Him still for the undeserved blessings.  Each day, I find refreshment from His Word.  Each day, I speak to Him in prayer.  Oh the simplicity of devotion to Christ!

 

As I embark on this new chapter of life, I’m ultimately thankful for what God revealed to me more intimately about Himself through the time I had in seminary.  I grew more aware of His holiness, His grace, His faithfulness, and His love.  Things will change from now on.  Ministry will be busier, and trials will become more intense.  I will be stretched further than I have before, and I am aware that I may be pushed to the brink of quitting.  But I only hope that it is not what I learned about myself, but what I learned about my Creator that will both sustain and empower me to be a useful tool for His kingdom.  For it is not great talent that He is looking for, but great likeness to Him.  A holy minister is indeed, a mighty weapon in the hands of God.  May I rest assured, that it was He who both called me into the ministry and trained me for such a noble task.

 

To Him be the glory!