People sometimes ask me, “J Dot, why do you want to go to seminary?” The truth is, I want to sit on the couch watching Netflix and eating pizza. Not everything I want is good for me. I feel called to ministry and seminary, and when pressed, I can give some articulation to that feeling. The essay which follows is a short bit I wrote as a part of my application to Virginia Theological Seminary.
The question is:
What do you believe is the greatest challenge to the Church at the present time and how do you think this challenging situation came about? How is the Church currently rising to meet this challenge and how do you plan to prepare yourself to address it in your time at seminary?Describe two or three initiatives you would undertake to creatively move the church through and beyond this challenge and reflect on how your seminary education might contribute to the articulation of these initiatives.
And my answer:
A young friend of mine, a recent college graduate, took a job with one of the fastest growing retail sites on the Internet. With a budget of several million dollars, she and a colleague were tasked with making this site visible in as many online places as possible. Her job was prestigious and allowed her access to the latest developments from the giants of Silicon Valley. It also made her sick. And it made her coworkers sick. During her two years with this company, seven of the one hundred employees died of stress-related illnesses. What is almost more alarming is that none of her peers were willing to discuss the problem or even perceived it as such.
There are causes worth dying for, but selling khakis on the Internet is not one of them, and while I wish that this story was an anomaly, I am convinced it is just a stark example of the kinds of choices we are making as individuals and as a culture everyday. We remain unwilling or unable to examine these choices, even though they are killing us in very real ways, in part because there is no space in our culture for these questions. It may never have occurred to my friend to seek out spiritual counsel, much less a church, to ask questions that might challenge the prevailing culture. I believe this is true in part because the Church has for so long been complicit with and therefore beholden to a materialistic culture that is not consistent with the teachings of Jesus.
The greatest challenge to the Church in the present time, therefore, is to live as the Body of Christ in a time when to do so may risk alienation from the predominant society. Such alienation could result in decreased church attendance, financial support, or social influence. That is, of course, already happening, and in those places where the Church is embracing this reality as the freedom to experience Incarnation, the Holy Spirit is evident. Whether they attend a new church plant, such as the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, or a century old parish, such as The Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, people are starting to find places where they can question the assumptions our society holds sacrosanct and build lives of meaning and integrity.
When Jesus called James and John to leave their nets and follow Him, Jesus was asking them to put their futures of middle class security and respectability at risk. These fishermen may have known just how illusory this security and respectability was since it always depended on the next catch. He called them to a task which was perhaps less immediately profitable but ultimately much more durable: fishing for people. I hope, during my time in seminary, to explore this call more fully and understand how it led the Apostles to live in the community which is described in Acts.
Life in community is at the heart of what I hope for in my ministry. How this life is made manifest will depend, somewhat, on the place in which I conduct my ministry. If I find myself in a rural parish, I might work with the parishioners to establish a feeding ministry, food pantry, community garden, or similar type of outreach based in the resources available to us. In an urban setting, I may find myself in a parish with substantial building space that could be utilized during the week as a co-working hub or gathering place for a group such as Girls Who Code. Again, the goal would be to use the resources available in that context for the people in the community, whether or not they are parishioners.
I hope that a seminary education might prepare me for this work in two ways. The first is to develop my skills in discernment. Bringing diverse communities together requires listening, analysis, synthesis, and communication, all of which must be done with compassion. While there are secular ways to go about this type of work, I believe that communities are stronger when the Holy Spirit is acknowledged as a part of the process. Inviting God into our midst is, of course, the work of liturgy through the Eucharist. The second way in which I hope seminary will prepare me for initiatives that build community is to form me as a minister of the sacraments and equip me to invite the whole community to participate in them. More than any Church building or small discussion group, the Lord’s table is the place where we can gather to lay open our questions and our hearts, and to be filled with sustenance for carrying out lives of abundant meaning.