Summary
Surviving and Thriving in Seminary is a book focused on, well, surviving and thriving in seminary. Shocking, I know. But do not let the title deceive you. It is a worthwhile read even if you do not plan on going into seminary. That said, the book is intended for seminarians or soon-to-be seminarians. It goes over three distinct areas. Initially, it focuses on preparing your mind, heart, and family for the rigors ahead. This section is highly valuable even for non-seminarians as it applies across the gamut of ministry contexts. Any time you or I begin a ministry, even as a layperson, we need to recognize what is to come.
Second, the middle part of the book is dedicated to managing your time. It gives practical ways to get everything you need to get done and gives helpful insights into the things that any given person needs to focus on, especially those who are going into seminary. Again, this is absolutely worthwhile for the average Christian.
Thirdly, the final part of the book is more hyper-focused on Bible college or seminary students. It teaches research skills and gives beneficial tools for managing the intense workload associated with research.
Strengths
This book, I would argue, has many strengths and few weaknesses. One of its biggest strengths is its no-nonsense approach to teaching. It gets right into the meat of the discussion and turns what could be an exceptionally long book into a manageable length. That said, this also involves a weakness which will be addressed in the next section.
Another strength is in just how practical this book is for someone who is in ministry of any kind. It is easy to get lost in ministry if we do not take steps to make sure our walk with Christ is good. It is exceedingly common for those in ministry to treat ministry as their personal walk with God even though it is entirely possible to “do” ministry while not personally walking with God. This book fights against this tendency from the lens of those who went through it and continue to go through it during their time in seminary as both students and professors. It really is a book written to help avoid some of the pitfalls and challenges that the authors have had to wade through without the help of this book. They call it “wisdom from the trenches” (3). It lives up to that claim.
Weaknesses
I noted that this book has few weaknesses, and I was telling the truth, but it does have some weaknesses that need to be addressed. To begin with, since this book is so densely packed with information, it is a challenging read in the sense that you are not likely to glean everything from it in one go. For seminary students, this is a good thing that helps them begin to do research well by giving an example of something that is packed with information that needs to be sifted to uncover the important stuff for whoever is reading it. However, a lot of people will likely struggle to actually apply the things in this book to their lives simply because there is so much to keep track of.
The other two weaknesses that I want to engage with I want to do under the next section as they are both theological/exegetical weaknesses.
Theological Engagement
Surviving and Thriving in Seminary is not primarily, or even secondarily, a theology book. Its goal is only obliquely related to theology in that, theoretically, those who read the book are or hope to be professional theologians of some type. Overall, the theology presented in the book is really quite solid. That said, there were two things that I noticed as I was reading that I had issues with regarding theology and hermeneutics.
The first issue is found on page 25. This is the intro for a chapter on preparing your heart for seminary and the authors state, “If you don’t love yourself, you can’t properly love others” (25). This is found immediately after referencing Matthew 22:39 where Jesus commands his listeners to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The difficulty here lies in the use of that particular passage to discuss loving yourself. Jesus does not say, as many seem to want to believe, that we need to learn to love ourselves. He states that we do love ourselves and thus need to love others in the way that we love ourselves. It is more of a “do unto others as you would have them do to you” type of teaching. However, many, including the authors, use this verse to teach the need to love yourself and how you are to go about doing that. There are other passages that are better for what they were trying to get across that would have been less of a reach. This isn’t a huge deal, especially considering how they followed up their introduction, but it is a dangerous thing to do.
The second issue is a much bigger deal. It is actually not just this book though. This issue is problematic at many seminaries. On pages 147-150 of the book, the authors go over a rough outline of how to take a research paper from topic to completion. In my experience, this is a typical workflow from a blank page to a completed manuscript. The issue lies in a major omission from what should be included in developing a research paper in any Christian field. The omission is a significant engagement with Scripture. This should be the first major portion of any Christian research paper. What does the Bible say about X. How does the Apostle Paul treat Y and so on and so forth. Instead, the focus is almost entirely on scholars. What do fellow scholars have to say on X. Zacharias and Forrest only briefly allude to Scripture in their example. The example they use is “Jesus’ teaching on divorce” which should have the primary focus on God’s Word since that is the topic. What did Jesus say about divorce? Yet, on step four, they only write, “Read articles on divorce in Bible dictionaries. Make notes and identify key Bible passages” (148). They immediately move on to sources outside of Scripture after that. This does include commentaries, but commentaries are not the first place we should go to understand Scripture. We should go to Scripture itself first and then go to commentaries after we have properly engaged the text. Going directly to commentaries is a really bad habit to get into.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a common problem in Christian academia. You can almost make it entirely through seminary with perfect grades even if you do not engage directly with Scripture once. I say “almost” because there are occasionally classes where that does not fly (a class on hermeneutics, for example). Generally speaking, a syllabus requires that you engage only with a certain number of scholarly sources. They rarely require you to engage with God’s Word itself. Of course, you are encouraged to do so, but that is the extent of it. This is fundamentally wrong. If anything, it should be completely flipped on its head. Engaging with the Bible well is the first and foremost job of the theologian. Engaging with other theologians is, at best, a secondary expectation. As far as I can tell, this is a systemwide issue in seminary. That said, whether you are a brand-new Christian or have a PhD in Theology and 40 years in ministry, you must work on reading and understanding Scripture first and foremost. Only then should you engage with scholars. After all, our goal is not to understand what scholars teach. Our goal is to understand and obey what God has laid out in his Word.
Takeaways
Because there were so many good things in this book, I decided to limit myself to three of the things found within the book for me to begin working on. I, personally, would rather apply three things well than six things poorly. I recommend doing the same if you decide to read the book.
Zacharias and Forrest write, “You must be ruthless with yourself and be your own taskmaster” (81). While this quote is in the context of ruthlessly making time for classes and following through with the plan, it is honestly great advice outside of academia as well. I know that if I do not ruthlessly force myself to do the things that I need to do (or things that I want to do that take significant time and effort, like writing books), I end up just not doing them. Or I seriously stress myself out by leaving something I could have gotten done a week ago for the last minute. Additionally, this advice is completely biblical. Paul puts it this way, “So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1 Corinthians 9:26-27, English Standard Version). Paul is talking about running the Christian life well here. If we do not learn to beat our flesh into submission, or as the authors put it “be ruthless with yourself” like a “taskmaster,” then our flesh is going to win out.
Similar to the last point, but one of particular importance for me is “In the time left over after the foundation stone of your relationship with God is inserted into its proper spot, then you will get to fit secondary priorities, like your family and schoolwork, and tertiary ones, such as your hobbies and interests” (29). I love learning new hobbies. Some shiny new hobby regularly catches my eye and I dive headlong into it. This is something that has been a major struggle for me in my walk with God. These hobbies often take his place in my life. This last year and a half or so has been a season of refocusing on God and putting hobbies in their proper place. I am getting better, but this quote was an excellent reminder for me to continue to place God first.
“If you are not taking notes when reading, you are not doing it right” (139). This quote, obviously, is about non-fiction rather than fiction. Though I suppose that there is no reason why someone couldn’t write notes as they read fiction if they wanted to. I chose this one as my third takeaway simply because it is the entire concept behind these book reviews. Initially, I had planned on reading one book per month just to keep my learning going once I completed my master’s degree. However, I realized that if I did not have to engage with them somehow, I was not going to learn much from them. So I decided to both write and record a review for each of these monthly books. This helps me out, but I hope that it also helps my readers and listeners out as well.
Conclusion
Surviving and Thriving in Seminary is full of valuable information. If you are a seminary student or considering going down that path, I would say that this is a must-read book. However, I also believe that anyone who is involved in ministry could benefit from it in many ways.
If you are interested in reading this book, you can buy it here. If you do end up reading it, please come back and leave a comment to let us know what you thought about it!
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L. J. Anderson - Author and Blogger 