Teresa and I applied to 3 seminaries before deciding to attend Westminster (see earlier posts for which ones we considered). The applications themselves were pretty time-consuming given the fact that we were working at the time and serving as volunteer youth directors at Rock Chinese Church. Between work, church, ministry, family, and friends, we somehow squeezed in seminary apps also! The applications were straightforward:
- Provide info about personal and ministry history
- Write an essay about how we became followers of Christ and how that affects us today. Also discuss why we want to go to seminary and what we think God wants us to do afterwards
- Collect letters of recommendations. All schools required at least one from our pastor. One school had about 5 recommendation forms, including one from our spouse. One school only needed 2.
- Apply for financial aid. This turned out to be more work than we expected. In many cases, we had to repeat steps 1-3 above.
Teresa was a big help in this whole process- collecting and filling out forms for both of us!
We applied to 3 schools: Phoenix, Southern, and Westminster.
We chose Westminster for several reasons. They all ended up starting with the letter "S" for some reason....
1. SAME THEOLOGICAL OUTLOOK FOR ALL CLASSES
Westminster is based on the Westminster Confession (http://www.pcanet.org/general/cof_chapi-v.htm), which goes into considerable detail on Christian beliefs. There are some statements on the nature of God's word, God's power to choose who will be saved, etc... that are not accepted by all Christians. While any system of theology is man's attempt to understand what God's Word says, we agree with the vast majority of the confession and see its value in giving some consistency to theological training. We don't expect to enter a classroom to have one prof contradict what was said by another one.
One seminary we looked at had a very generic statement of faith, and this allows for a greater diversity of views. This has the benefit of giving students greater exposure to different ideas within evangelical Christianity. However, professors may take different positions on different points of doctrine. So, a student may go to one class hearing one thing and then go to another class and hear something completely different. Students are then left to pick and choose which doctrines they like or which ones they don't.
2. STRENGTH IN THE LANGUAGES
Westminster believes very strongly in training up "specialists in the Bible", so it requires 3 semesters of Greek and 3 semesters of Hebrew so that graduates will be equipped to read God's Word in its original languages. This means fewer classes in other areas, though. We felt that other subjects can be learned in-depth by reading good books (e.g. church history). It's not as easy to pick up a book on Biblical Hebrew and teach yourself.
3. SPOUSAL SCHOLARSHIP
Westminster has a 2-for-1 deal if you are married. The spousal tuition waiver means that spouses get to go for free! Teresa still had to apply and get accepted to her MDiv counseling program. But once she did, she is able to take as many classes that I'm taking.
As an added plus, Westminster is well known for training up counselors, and counseling is a field that Teresa wants to learn more about.
In summary, there are lots of great seminaries out there, and there's not a one-size-fits-all. Different seminaries are better suited for different kinds of ministries. This is the journey God led us through, and if any of you have more specific questions, do send us an email or post a question.
Going to seminary and specifically to Westminster has been a journey several years in the making. My earlier posts discussed how God led us to full-time seminary. This post will continue exploring how God led us specifically to Westminster in Philadelphia.
During our search process, we read through the websites of seminaries. But that would not be enough. Visiting would be critical in helping us decide. Choosing a seminary means choosing the instructors and mentors who will shape you, and visiting would help us know these instructors and mentors.
We did our best to pare down our original list of 20-30 seminaries to a small handful that we could actually visit. Since this was such a large list, we had the luxury of being extremely picky.
- We tried to identify seminaries that were passionate about Biblical truth and doctrine (especially in a culture that empowers individuals to define truth for themselves or rejects certain teachings of scripture)
- We tried to identify seminaries that take the gospel of Jesus Christ very seriously (as the gospel is a life-and-death matter with eternal consequences)
- We tried to identify seminaries that combined head-knowledge and heart-knowledge (God's truth is not cold and dead; rather, it should lead us to deeper and greater adoration of God Himself).
Many schools would have these characteristics! This is the list we ended up with:
- Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS) - Wake Forest, NC - One of the first things that caught our eye was a conference that SEBTS was going to host with C.J. Mahaney (author of Cross-Centered Life) on the gospel. SEBTS calls themselves a "Great Commission Seminary", a name that is backed up with actual numbers. Something like 40% of their graduates go into the mission field, which seems higher than other seminaries.
- Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) - Philadelphia, PA - It was founded less than 100 years ago during a time of seismic shifts in American seminaries. Many seminaries in America started rejecting God's Word (the Bible) as the foundation for Christian faith. Slowly and subtly, the Bible was molded to be more acceptable to modern culture. For example, people liked the idea of the Bible as a moral "how-to" book and the notion of Jesus as a teacher with great things to say, but they didn't view the Bible as a book with spiritual truth about the evilness of mankind and the need for a savior. During this spiritual earthquake, several professors from Princeton Theological Seminary left and founded Westminster.
- Phoenix Seminary - Phoenix, AZ - Wayne Grudem teaches at Phoenix, and one of his theology books helped ignite a hunger in me for learning and teaching theology. Phoenix's motto is "Scholarship with a Sheperherd's Heart", and we were impressed with their strong emphasis on heart transformation during seminary. What you learn should flow from your head, into your heart, and into your hands (as service to God and man). This "head, heart, hands" imagery still sticks with me today.
- Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS)- Dallas, TX - We found the academic rigor to be one of their strengths - their degree for pastors is a 4 year (not 3 year) program, and they teach every book of the Bible. We also know a lot of pastors who have come from DTS.
- Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) - Louisville, KY - This was a late visit (we had already submitted our application to WTS). SBTS is a large seminary (4x larger than WTS) and is blessed with lots of resources and great professors. We enjoyed the solid and scriptural teaching from the classes we visited. The professors at Southern seemed more down-to-earth and engaging than the professors at Westminster (Westminster has Presbyterian roots, and we were able to see where the "stuffy Presbyterian" stereotype comes from).
Teresa and I applied to 3 of these schools. Next time I'll share which ones we applied to and how we ended up at Westminster.
