The actual subject matter

I chose my seminary mostly because of the community. It's so trite, really, but absolutely true. I felt that I could get as good an education here as at other institutions. I had a generous financial aid package (thank you!), and it is much closer to my parents than any other seminary I looked at. I could start in the summer term, which meant leaving my job sooner, a good thing. So there were plenty of reasons, but I wouldn't have paid much attention to them if the place hadn't felt good to me, welcoming and caring and cozy.

A seminary should always be welcoming because it is a community of God's people striving to do God's work. But the problem is, it's also an academic institution where one gets at least a master's degree. Those usually weed people out to some extent, see that they are made from the stuff of professionals in the field.

So we have a dilemma. We are a graduate school. The admissions department looks at a wide array of factors to tell who might be a good fit. But lots of the people who come here are supposed to be called by God. The admissions department has zilch to do with that, and less to say about it. I sometimes think God could come up with a better system for deciding who to call. A really good idea, for instance, would be for God to call only people who share my values and priorities, and especially my classroom manners.

Alas.

For some reason, being called to ministry--or at least going to seminary--doesn't mean falling in line with me. There are people who are "here to explore," which to me seems like going to med school when what you really want is to take a basic biology course. There are people who seem to be here to argue. There are people who just say things without wondering how people might take them. People who need to be in control. People who think they know the way things need to be.

These people's eyes are so full of specks I'm surprised they can see.

Why is it surprising almost every time I realize I don't have my way? It would be so much easier--for me--if people would just act the way I want them to.

Easier, but not better. If I went to a seminary where everyone thought and acted like me, I would be woefully and dangerously ill-equipped for ministry and for life, unless I could find a church full of me's too. But here, I'm learning about my own reactions to the bizarreries (a top French word) of people, what bothers me and what doesn't, why it got to me one day and not the next. Maddening though it can be, being in class with my classmates, especially those speckly-eyed ones I don't understand, is a more useful preparation for working with people than anything else we do here. For that, I am grudgingly thankful, and I hope over the next two years I can remove that "grudgingly" and give people the grace they give me.