Growing up I was not a star student, did not enjoy school, nor did I have high hopes of what I wanted to accomplish in the world. As a high schooler though, God lit a fire in my heart for Him and I really did not want to do anything other than serve Christ. As I explored various vocations, I landed on attending a small Christian college to prepare for ministry.

When I set out for my undergrad, I had no idea what I was doing. I kind of approached ministry preparation in college as a necessity to do what I felt I was already capable of doing. I was arrogant and assumed that all the study was simply to give me a piece of paper that verified the passion that God had already burned in my heart. If you attended college with me, you undoubtedly saw this arrogance and short-sightedness at times. Towards the end of my college though, I noticed that I had a real interest in the Academy, enjoyed writing, and I began to realize how little I knew about most things.

I applied and was accepted into seminary right out of college but rather than step immediately into that I decided to enter the ministry. At age 22 and being newly married, my first assignment was rough. I was not ready for the task and my first job only lasted a few months. I left embarrassed and took a year to sit on the sidelines. During that time, I did a lot of soul searching. I began to lose my eyesight rapidly and ended up working at a plastic factory to make ends meet. In my brokenness I admitted that I wanted to get some more years of study underneath me and I basically entered grad school by default. In retrospect it seems like seminary right after college may have been useful and saved me some pain but who knows. Hindsight is not 20/20; it does not exist. Maybe I needed to learn the hard lessons.

I ended up attending seminary in the Philippines because I had a desire to study in a cross-cultural setting. It was one of the wisest and best decisions I ever made. I became a particularly good student and saw for the first time that I really enjoyed the academy. I found myself being able to write and research at a high level and I felt like I was contributing. I was encouraged to pursue teaching after I finished seminary, but I opted to enter the area of pioneer missions ministry (church work, church planting, community development, etc.) as this is where my heart and passion was.

For the next 15 years or so I was involved in all the traditional things that you would expect of someone on the front lines. We saw churches succeed and fail, initiatives grow and fade, relationships come and go – the hot mess of ministry was our lot. These years taught me so much and the relationships we made along the way have changed our lives forever. Charity and I dug our heels in the ground to learn language, plant the church where it was not, and roll with people that few in this world wanted to be around. In the process though, we learned that these were our people. Those on the margins of society became and remain our best friends in the universe.

Through the years, the love for the Academy and to pour back into the Church never left me. I continued to write articles, think critically, and did my best to document things as they unfolded. When we were facing a transition in the fall of 2019, I knew deep within my bones that training and the Academy would play a big role in the next season of ministry. I am looking at one week out before entering a doctoral program at Fuller and it seems as things have come full circle. I am months away from stepping into a more formal teaching/training role in our new mission and it is just such a unique feeling to be showing up to a classroom as a primary focus. 

My story likely is not all that unique but I think sometimes seminary gets a bad rap. The picture of a bunch of uptight white guys debating every jot and tiddle of the Bible comes to my mind. There are though some who straddle the Academy and the streets, and it can be a funny dance. I am at home in the academy. I am at home in the hood. I can speak street-level Nepali and sophisticated English. These are the two “mess”, but they are the exact way God has wired me. In our new neighborhood I get both worlds at once; God knows what He is doing.

The journey has been a long one, but I wonder how complicated the journey of the Church and Academy is for many. I presume that everyone has a unique story in how God has shaped them. I am so grateful that our new mission has an entry level mission program that people can come and sit at the feet of Jesus for 5 months. It is a wonderful place to learn, grow, and get some maturity beneath you. I am also thankful for the high-level doctoral programs of this world that push thinkers to shape and reshape ministries and culture. I am indebted to the people on the frontlines who do not want to mess with seminary and find that receiving and education in a much informal way is really their gig.

Seminary is not for everyone. That is certain. It is for some. Wherever you are in the journey of ministry, know that the desire to learn is still burning somewhere in your heart. It may be ultra-formal like seminary, somewhere in the middle like GFM where I serve, or it may be learning from those on the streets. That fire is there somewhere. May we all fan it into flame as we seek to make Jesus famous in our homes and communities.