Sticks and Snakes

More Advice You Didn't Ask For...

Last year around this time I posted “Letters to a Young Seminarian” in an effort to consolidate and pass on some of the things I learned during my three years in seminary. Now, close to a year after graduation (has it been that long?!) and almost that long into my tenure as an associate rector, I thought it might be a good time to post some reflections on what I have learned about this peculiar and exciting new phase of ministry. I found that I didn’t know a whole lot about being an associate prior to beginning this position, so I hope that these brief thoughts are helpful to others about to embark on a similar journey.

 

Just like last time, these are my reflections on lessons I learned (mostly through trial and error…and error) on the ground and hadn’t been told about already. The stuff you’ve heard about maintaining a healthy spiritual life, strong relationships, and a good self-care routine are true and priceless words of wisdom, but you already know about them.

Of course, this is all based on the first year after ordination, so I reserve the right to change my mind in about fifty years…

Simul-blogging

This has been such a busy week that I practically feel like I am back in school again...in the middle of finals...or the GOE's...yikes! But wanted to take a second to direct you toward Anglican Insights, the blog maintained by my seminary alma mater, Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP).

CDSP asked me to write a blog entry about my transition from seminary to parish ministry and I happily obliged. You can read it here. 

Just to Be on the Safe Side...

...A little gift for the next occupant of Room 309. 

Ugh...

In the time since graduation I have spent a portion of every day packing up my little room and getting my worldly  belongings ready to be shipped to Omaha. Having lived in such a small space for three years, I was convinced that this process would be quick and organized. I don't have much stuff after-all, right? Wrong! My books have bred like bunnies in the last few years and what I lack in clothing and household items I more than make up for in paper: books, files, binders, journals...they are everywhere!! 

Packing a dorm room is like struggling with a Rubik's Cube. The more I pack, the less space I have to move around and get to the other things that need packing. The boxes are accumulating and slowly trapping me in my own room! It's pretty awful. The good news, however, is that I have a huge box all ready to go to the Good Will. I seem to be able to easily part with clothes, but the books...well, that's another story. 

Master of Divinity!

Well, I received the hood, walked across the stage, and sat down with four new little letters after my name: MDiv. The  Master of Divinity degree is both academic and professional. Part theology, part vocational training, the MDiv (or some variation of it) is required for ordination in most Christian denominations. Considered a "terminal degree," the MDiv requires a little more work than most Master's Degrees (or, if not more actual work, more time in school). In Episcopal seminaries, the standard MDiv takes three years, requires Field Education, and does not necessarily require a thesis. 

Here is a picture of my entire graduating class, including the brand new PHD's in the fancy robes. I would love to get a PHD, but I think I am pretty much done with school, at least for a good decade. Right now, I aspire for an honorary doctorate. If you know of any academic institutions who would like to make me a Doctor of Philosophy (or Ministry, or Letters) with no work required, do let me know. 

That's me at the front and center. I am not crying. Rather, in typical fashion, I am laughing at an inappropriate joke. 

photo/flickr

Great Idea

For the last two years I have been meeting a couple of times a month with a small group of other seminarians. We get together--sometimes with food, sometimes without--and check in about what has been going on in our lives and then share in a spiritual exercise of one kind or another. We take turns planning the group and we each bring our personal styles and spiritualities to our time together. The group has been an invaluable source of strength, friendship, and faithful accountability for me and I am going to miss the other members so much after graduation!

This morning our group met for the last time and my friend Richard organized our gathering. Last week he emailed all of us and asked us to submit the titles of a few of our favorite songs without telling the rest of the group what we we chose. He then downloaded all of the songs on iTunes and made a playlist out of them. 

When we arrived this morning, Richard gave us each a sheet of paper with the name of the song, the name of the artist, and then a blank space where we could write in a guess for who picked the song. After taking some time mulling over the list and making as many  guesses as possible, we sat around and listened to a portion of each song, trying to figure out who chose it. It was amazing how right we were most of the time--after three years of studying, worshipping, and just hanging out together, we have really come to know each other's tastes! After going through all the songs, Richard gave us each a CD with the entire playlist on it--a great way to commemorate our time together!

I thought that this was a great idea and it is one that I probably use in the future with other small groups, at retreats, or just with groups of friends. Music is a powerful insight into people's lives, imaginations, and souls, and sometimes a song can say more than we ever could. Also, now I have a whole bunch of new music to add to my library!

(And yes, that is the Virgin Mary on my iPod!)

Clergy...They're Just Like You!

I ran across this article in the New York Times today about how seminary graduates are facing difficulties finding full time calls in the current economy. The article explains that churches are being forced to cut salaried positions from their budgets, often choosing to have one priest/pastor where they had several in the past. 

The article follows a Presbyterian seminarian whose story reveals the problems that many new clergy are facing. For one thing, there are very few full-time jobs available at all. Married or partnered clergy who would been able to get by with only a part-time job because of their spouse's income are in whole different financial ball-game now, as their spouses lose their jobs or become only partially employed themselves. Clergy who needed a full-time call to begin with are now in a bigger pool of applicants than they expected and are facing a much smaller number of open positions. The Times sums it up this way:

...A contracting national economy has led congregations across the religious spectrum to cut or downsize clergy positions, hire part-time lay people instead and delay filling vacancies. Veteran clergy members, watching their retirement accounts wither, are postponing retirement.

All of these factors together combine to create a very difficult climate for newly-minted pastors. 

Money has always been an issue that seminarians and clergy have difficulty talking about, yet have had to confront in most major denominations. With the exception of Roman Catholics, most clergy have to pay for the their seminary education themselves, and therefore graduate with as much educational debt as most every one else with a Master's degree. Those clergy who feel called to marginal ministries (ministering to poor, rural, urban, or homeless populations, for example) are unable to fulfill those calls because they would never make enough money to meet their monthly loan payments. This problem, obviously, is made all the worse in the current economy. 

Anyway, it's an interesting article and an interesting problem--one that my graduating class has definitely been struggling with this  year. Pray that graduating seminarians find jobs ASAP so that they can live into the ministry to which God has called them and for which they have worked so hard to fulfill!

image/cdsp

Some Advice You Didn't Ask For

As graduation approaches, I have found myself spending a lot of time reflecting on my seminary experience and thinking critically about what I have learned and what I wish I had known before I began. So, I have decided to compile a short list of “advice” for new seminarians. Some of these things I learned from trusted mentors, some I learned by myself, and some I learned through trial and error (i.e. failure). 

Seminary is, of course, filled with advice from different voices, and you will have to become adept at filtering through the noise of other people’s opinions. What follows are things that I didn't hear prior to beginning this journey. A lot of the advice that I did receive ended up being life-saving, and I bet that you will end up hearing it too (the basics, like don't forget to pray!), so I'll skip it. This is just one seminarian's opinion, so take what you want and leave the rest!

Seminary in a Box

Last night I began the packing process by organizing all of my seminary notes, handouts, and papers into neat hanging files. Dozens of spiral notebooks and soft-covered folders were reduced into clearly marked and nicely collated files, which all fit snugly into a single box. With the exception of a few big binders from my information-intensive history classes, this box contains everything that I learned in seminary.

Honestly, it's a little unnerving to look at this box now. Such a small collection of concrete knowledge can hardly represent all that I have learned in the last few years and all of the ways that I have grown and changed. But, after three years, this is all that I've got to show for my work! Crazy. 

Oh, and I'm willing to sell you this box for roughly $50,000. Let me know...

Playing Priest

Growing up in the Episcopal Church, I never thought too hard about how priests learned how to do what they do. I guess I knew that they went to a special school to get specific training (seminary), but I didn't give too much thought to how they figured out how to do all the things that go into a regular worship service. In fact, I remember specifically thinking it was weird that the priest had to look at a book during the Eucharist in order to know what prayers to say--I mean, they do it every week! Can't they memorize it? 

Turns out the whole thing is a little more complicated than I realized, and the big picture of seminary focuses a lot more on theology, pastoral skills and parish leadership than it does on what to do with your hands on Sunday morning. 

At my seminary, one of the very last classes that we take before graduation is called "Liturgical Leadership" (we call it "Magic Hands"). In it, we learn how to do the basics of the liturgy, essentially becoming adept at thinking liturgically. There is actually a lot of stuff to know--so much stuff, in fact, that memorization is pretty much out of the question. 

In "Magic Hands," each student is assigned to a particular liturgy. We truncate the service to make it fit into an hour, and then the whole class participates in it together. A few weeks ago I dressed up as the assistant priest in an Easter Vigil liturgy (no one in the class is actually a priest, so we are really just putting on the clothes and doing our best). As I've mentioned before, the Vigil is one of the most important liturgies in the Christian calendar, and also the longest. I was amazed that we were able to it in only an hour. We even had time to baptize some one! 

It felt really strange to put on a priest's stole and lead a congregation through an entire service, and the whole thing managed to feel really prayerful even though we were all basically play acting. Sometimes I wonder if people think that this is all that we do in seminary. Like for three years we try on different fancy outfits and learn how to physically perform sacraments. Of course, it's not like that at all, but the image does have a certain "Harry Potter-esque" feel to it. And like I've said before, seminary is a spitting image of Hogwart's School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.