Reflections on Seminary

Reflection is good. Oftentimes I learn more as I look back at the lessons I have learned. As I look back at my seminary education I am reminded of many of the lessons I have learned. I see now how many of those lessons fit together to help me be the pastor I am today. Here is a reflection on what I learned during each of these classes.

Child & Adolescent Development

This class helped me dive deeper into understanding those with whom I minister. Working with kids, I have developed an understanding of them simply from experience and relational connection. This class helped me understand more about what is going on in them as they grow and develop. At each stage of development, kids have unique needs. Understanding those needs helps me better plan for our children’s ministry to work with their parents to help meet those needs. Also, I am better able to communicate those changes to parents as they walk alongside their kids and help point them to Jesus.

One of the main theories that impacted my children’s ministry is the observation and modeling theory by Albert Bandura. This has helped me see our ministry in a new light. The theory explains that one of the ways kids learn is through observing those around them and modeling their behavior. As we work to recruit and train high school and adult leaders who serve with our kids, we encourage them to remember this fact as they interact with the kids in their group. Also, we have begun to communicate this to parents as well to help them understand how important their lives are in their kids’ spiritual development. Hopefully, parents have begun to understand the way they live their lives (how they react, the words they say, the tone of their voice, how they run to prayer, etc) is one of the most vital pieces of their child’s spiritual development because their kids are taking their cues from them.

Programming & Development in Family Ministry

This class helped me refine the goals of our children’s ministry. Because of some highly experienced children’s ministry leadership at our church in the past, we had a pretty good backbone of ministry. This class helped me take that structure and tweak and evaluate it. I was able to develop methods of evaluation in this class that have helped us move forward and continue to grow in our ministry.

While this was a helpful class, much of what we discussed our church was already doing. We live in a very corporate area where many of our people work in large businesses. We have developed over the past 20 years a system for evaluation and budgeting that is pretty extensive. But even though we have implemented many of the concepts from this class already, the benefit for me came in being able to evaluate our processes and procedures with a little bit different lens. I was able to notice a few things that needed to change to be made better.

I took this class beginning in August which was a good time to think through these things as we were just beginning our ministry year. Another value in this class was to hear how other ministries implement some of these ideas and concepts. I was able to learn from others in my class and gain different perspectives. As a non-denominational church, I love hearing from other churches that are a part of a denomination to see how these things are handled.

Effective Communication with Children & Youth

I have gotten a chance to teach in our children’s ministry many, many times over the past 18 years of ministry. I have been trained in how to develop and structure effective teachings. This class was very good for me because it had been a while since I had received training in how to think through our teachings. I had fallen into a cycle of teaching and gotten stuck in a certain way of teaching. This class helped me evaluate myself and see how I needed to push myself and grow as a teacher.

This class also helped me develop some formal evaluation tools for our volunteer teachers. This was one of the most valuable aspects to the class. I was able to think through what was most necessary in evaluating a teacher to help them improve. The tools I developed during this class have been helpful as we sit down with each of our large group teachers and evaluate how effectively they are communicating to the kids and how we can help them get better.

Also, I learned the importance of using the God-given strengths and gifts God has given me rather than trying to emulate another popular teacher. It is important for each of us to live in the gifts and talents God has given us. When we begin to compare ourselves to others we may miss getting to do what God has called us to because we are trying to be something other than what he intended.

Family Ministry & the 21st Century Family

Understanding the families we are ministering with is an important aspect of children and family ministry. The development class helped me understand individual people, but this class helped me begin to think about each family as an interaction of individuals. One of the main learning areas for me in this class was the family systems theory. This theory helped me begin to look at each family and think about the factors that influence the way they see and interact with the world. This gave me more empathy for families because I would work to understand their particular situations. Instead of being frustrated that a given family was always late, I could begin to see the factors that contributed to this behavior. I could then work to help them with the needs that they have.

Another major takeaway from this class was seeing how not only individual people need community but also families as a whole. It is very important for a family unit to experience community and belonging as an entire unit. This changed the way I looked at our community groups and our small groups on Sunday mornings. I began to care more about making sure whole families were known rather than only individual kids.

I also began to see the need for a web of relationships. People need close bonds with those in their family. People also need relationships outside of their family. One step further is the need people have for those with whom they have relationships to have relationships with one another. This provides a much deeper community. I saw how the church is perfectly equipped to help meet those needs within a family.

Intergenerational Leadership

This class may have been my favorite class in my seminary experience. I have been processing intergenerational fellowship over the past few years without any sort of direction. This class helped me process the generations and think through how to bring them together in a way that helped me form a plan to integrate the generations at our church.

One of the most valuable exercises in this class was to evaluate the demographics of our city and our church and compare the two. The results of this comparison were fascinating. They were not at all what I expected they would be. We have a much lower percentage of Boomers in our congregation and in our city. This class helped me see that we have a large population of Gen Z in our town, but the demographics at our church don’t quite reflect that. I have been able to use what I learned and discovered in this class to discuss with other staff at our church what we should do moving forward. Many of the people are beginning to see how important it is to incorporate the generations.

Another benefit of this class was gaining an understanding of the strengths of each generation. This has been valuable for me to look at those in our church in a different light. I have begun to focus more on strengths and what these generations bring to the body of Christ rather than focusing on any negative aspects of their generation. We have begun talking about how we could begin to develop discipleship relationships involving 4 generations of believers all discipling one another.

Christmas: The Mystery of the Incarnation

This class was the only class I took on the Wesley Seminary campus. It was a one-week intensive class in January before Covid hit. One of the main benefits of this class for me was to feel a part of the Wesley Seminary family. Being able to be on campus and meet face-to-face with some of the professors under which I had studied was an enriching experience. Though this class came toward the end of my seminary experience, this was the first time I really got to see the heart of the seminary and the care taken to help students love and follow Jesus. I knew this from my past experiences online with the seminary, but being there in person deepened that experience for me.

Also, getting to meet other seminary students and work alongside them for a week was refreshing as well. I got to see how God was using each person in the class in the contexts in which God had them. We all had a shared vision of following Jesus and helping others to do the same, but our experiences and contexts were vastly different.

The class was a history class on understanding the historical understanding and development of the incarnation. This helped me think deeply about the Christmas season and the resources we provide for families. I was able to develop a plan for families to celebrate Advent which we can use this year as we celebrate the season. Also, understanding the history of the way in which the church celebrated the incarnation can deepen our celebration and connect us to believers who have gone before us.