This book is about getting the most out of seminary. Seminary can be rich and rewarding, but also disorienting. In addition to the typical challenges of doing graduate studies, your experiences in seminary have the potential to affect how you see God, other people, and yourself. The stakes are high, but the good news is that you are not alone! In Surviving and Thriving in Seminary, two experienced professors (and former seminary students) tell you what to expect and how to navigate your years in seminary. They give you advice on how to prepare your own heart and relationships, how to manage your time and energy, and how to acquire the study skills you need. This essential book encourages and equips current and prospective seminary students to get the most out of their time in seminary. - Publisher.
Seminary can be rich and rewarding, but also disorienting. In addition to the typical challenges of doing graduate studies, your experiences in seminary have the potential to affect how you see God, other people, and yourself. The stakes are high, but the good news is that you are not alone! In Surviving and Thriving in Seminary, two experienced professors (and former seminary students) tell you what to expect and how to navigate your years in seminary. They give you advice on how to prepare your own heart and relationships, how to manage your time and energy, and how to acquire the study skills you need. This essential book encourages and equips current and prospective seminary students to get the most out of their time in seminary.
Seminary is dangerous. Really dangerous. The hard truth is that many seminarians enter pastoral ministry feeling drained, disillusioned, and dissatisfied. But the problem isn't with the faculty or the material. Rather, the most perilous danger to the soul of the pastor-in-training is the sin residing deep within his own heart. Drawing on their years of pastoral ministry and seminary experience, David Mathis and Jonathan Parnell take a refreshingly honest look at this oft-neglected—yet all too common—experience, offering real-world advice for students eager to survive seminary with their faith intact. In seven short but challenging chapters, the authors remind readers of the foundational role of the gospel in the life of ministry, equipping them with the keys to grow in their faith while making the most of their education.
Why does one well-equipped, well-meaning person in ministry succeed while another fails? Bob Burns, Tasha Chapman and Donald Guthrie undertook a five-year intensive research project on the frontlines of pastoral ministry to answer that question. What they found was nothing less than the DNA of thriving ministry today.
Everything that’s taught in seminary . . . all in one place! Maybe you’re involved in ministry but you never had the chance to go to seminary. Maybe it was many years ago and you need a refresher. Or maybe you just graduated and you don’t want to forget it all. If any of these descriptions fits you, One Volume Seminary is the resource you need. This book is written by former and current faculty of Moody Bible Institute and Moody Theological Seminary. Editors Michael Boyle, Laurie Norris, and Kerwin Rodriguez combine their years of pastoral wisdom, one-on-one counseling, high-level scholarship, and savvy street-smarts from the church’s frontlines to offer you a one-stop-shop for ministry training. One Volume Seminary provides sixty essays with practical advice for every aspect of church life—always grounded in the Word of God—under six main headings: Doctrinal Basics General Ministry to the Local Church Special Situations in Ministry Ministry to the World Proclaiming the Word in Worship and Preaching Practical Church Skills From baptizing a convert to balancing a budget . . . from preaching the Word to premarital counseling . . . from soteriology to spiritual warfare . . . from the Trinity to the teenager . . . this book covers it all. Though a seminary education is irreplaceable, One Volume Seminary is the next best thing to give you the training and equipping you need to succeed in ministry.
"Margarita Mooney's path-breaking book, Faith Makes us Live, is the first-ever comparative study of how religious faith and practice affect immigrant adaptation and assimilation. Her imaginative analysis of Haitian immigrants in Miami, Montreal, and Paris shows how religious faith serves to mediate culturally between immigrants and their host societies, but also reveals that by itself faith is not enough to achieve successful integration. Host societies must also be receptive to the religious institutions that serve immigrants if integration is to be achieved. Her book is essential reading for students of both religion and immigration."—Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University "Margarita Mooney's research on Haitian Catholic immigrants in three settings is elegant in design, assiduous in execution, and compelling in presentation. Mooney's immigrants bring a deep piety with them across the ocean, but the different contexts of reception they encounter in Miami, Montreal, and Paris significantly influence their differential adaptation to their new homes in the U.S., Canada, and France. Faith Makes Us Live is an essential contribution to the growing body of literature on religion and immigration."—R. Stephen Warner, University of Illinois at Chicago "Faith Makes Us Live is one of those rare books that succeeds in making a valuable contribution on at least three fronts: it extends the literature on religion and immigration by showing how religious organizations serve as mediating structures between immigrants and their host communities, it demonstrates to scholars interested in faith-based service organizations that the larger relationships between church and state must be considered carefully through a comparative framework, and it provides students of religion with a compelling, up-close-and-personal account of how faith matters in the daily lives of Haitian immigrants."—Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University "What excites me most about Faith Makes Us Live is that it analyzes the role played by the Catholic Church in immigrant incorporation while taking into consideration the distinctive challenges met by Haitians in three societies that treat the poor, immigrants and people of color quite differently. The comparison between Miami, Paris, and Montreal is particularly felicitous given differences in the position and influence of the Church, the characteristics of the Haitian populations, and the public resources available to immigrants across these three contexts. By showing how religion sustains resilience and empowerment for a particularly vulnerable group of individuals, Mooney demonstrates the crucial role of meaning-making matters for immigrant incorporation."—Michele Lamont, Harvard University. "This book teaches us an important lesson: When immigrants are religious—and so many are—pragmatic cooperation between church and state can hasten their acculturation and improve their well-being. Faith Makes Us Live is essential reading for those who want to better understand the role of religion and religious institutions in immigrants' lives."—Mark Chaves, Duke University "An examplar of theory-driven ethnographic research. Professor Mooney provides an ambitious, comparative study at once rich in detail and grand in scope. By systematically comparing three countries on two continents, this book uncovers crucial patterns of relationships among church, state, and civil society and how they affect immigrants on the ground. This is what ethnography should be: rooted in the lived experience of everyday life and yet motivated by the need to understand human social processes in general."—Andy Perrin, University of North Carolina "Thoroughly sociological in design and analysis, this study opens new vistas for the field of religion and immigration. Leaving behind celebratory or critical accounts of the role of religious beliefs in the adaptation of immigrant minorities, Mooney makes clear that processes and outcomes depend on the interaction between religious institutions and the broader socio-political context. An original contribution, made even more valuable by its focus on one of the most downtrodden groups in the migrant world."—Alejandro Portes, Princeton University
In churches today, there are ever fewer older pastors speaking into the lives of younger leaders, and fewer younger leaders feeling there is much to be learned from the experience of their elders. Street-smart wisdom is gone from training as there are many men and women preparing pastors who have never themselves pastored a church. Intriguingly, even older, more seasoned pastors yearn for insight into their task, as they remain "undiscipled" in the school of leadership. In What They Didn't Teach You in Seminary, veteran pastor James Emery White provides the kind of mentoring young pastors desperately need but cannot get from academia or leadership books. These "from the trenches" insights will help them transform their relationships with staff and parishoners, develop healthy boundaries, deliver hard truths, avoid spiritual pitfalls, use their time effectively, and much more.
Storms in life are inevitable. Eventually everyone faces one. Sometimes difficult circumstances continue with no end in sight while prayers for miracles seem to go unanswered. For the past three decades, pastor Ben Young has worked with families and individuals struggling to cope with the harsh realities of major life crisis. He also knows personally what it’s like to endure an ongoing storm. Through his own trials, he has learned not only to survive each dark day, but to live every day in ways that make a person stronger, wiser, and more at peace.
An Introduction to Ministry is a comprehensive and ecumenical introduction to the craft of ministry for ministers, pastors, and priests that make up the mainline denominations in the United States. Ecumenically-focused, It offers a grounded account of ministry, covering areas such as vocation, congregational leadership, and cultivation of skills for an effective ministry. Covers the key components of the M.Div. curriculum, offering a map and guide to the central skills and issues in training Explores the areas of vocation, skills for ministry, and issues around congregational leadership Each topic ends with an annotated bibliography providing an indispensable gateway to further study Helps students understand both the distinctive approach of their denomination and the relationship of that approach to other mainline denominations Advocates and defends a generous understanding of the Christian tradition in its openness and commitment to broad conversation
Christian psychologists Michael Misja and Chuck Misja show you how to be free from shame if your marriage is not “successful” by conventional Christian standards. Learn: the practical theology of desire how the battlefield of the soul impacts your life the relational process for moving from hoping in your marriage to hoping in God how to love from godly strength, without asking for a response from your spouse
