Pursuing Seminary: Chatting with my Pastor

The day after my 567 question psych inventory, I meandered over to my pastor's house to chat about seminary. He knew I'd be coming - Peter had already warned, er, mentioned it to him.

I was very honest, I told Greg I don't have all the details figured out, not sure how I'll be funding this endeavor, not sure how I'll balance it with my job(s), but right now in my life feels like the right time to actively pursue my Masters of Divinity anyway, despite these uncertainties. I explained my principal of "waiting until the last responsible moment" to make a decision.

Let's be clear: this does not mean waiting until an irresponsible moment; I just mean, for example, if you're building a building, don't waste time picking a brand of soap dispensers when you don't even have blueprints drawn.

Greg might have questioned the wisdom of this approach at first; hopefully I explained myself well enough to alleviate his trepidation.

Honestly I don't remember much of the conversation. We talked about motives people might have when they enroll in seminary, and from the sounds of it, I'm wanting to go for the right reasons. And Greg reminded me that if I go to seminary, God will use that. Whereas if I don't go to seminary, God will use that, too. I don't need to pressure myself into knowing exactly where that road will lead.

I give myself permission to back out at any time, or to delay, or whatever, if I need to. It's not failure, it's just me making the best decisions I can at any moment.

And so my prayer has been this: "God, if this isn't what I'm supposed to do, then take it away, close the door, build a brick wall." So far there have been distractions in the form of other life opportunities, but nothing that leads me to believe God is trying to veer me away. So I'm keeping going.