Long-time readers of this little blog know that in the past I have been rather critical of my current educational experience - the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University. I have laid off of this for a while in my ongoing efforts to find a better attitude and to take hold of what God was doing despite my objection to several layers of things that take place in the ivory towers of highbrow religious academia.

God certainly has blessed this. But I want to take a moment to make some comments directed at my fellow participants in this seminary experience. To them, I have one general idea I want to get across:

Lose the ego.

This comment is based on a variety of experiences, but two in particular cropped up the other day. Some fellow GSTers and I were sitting around a table in a class when a conversation cropped up that concerns the church I happen to attend. One guy remarked that he doesn't like the preaching. This is a fair enough assessment, of course, because preaching styles are not going to suit everyone at every church. However, he went on to say that he usually doesn't like the preaching anywhere because he is very critical of it. Whenever he goes somewhere and listens to the preaching he always thinks he can do a better job. At this several of the others sitting around the table concurred.

Really.

Is this what we are producing? A bunch of young homelitical snobs? A crop of hot-shot preaching professionals who somehow have cornered the art of delivering the message of God?

This was followed shortly thereafter by a light-hearted conversations between some friends, one of which is a graduate Marriage and Family Therapy student. She was humorusly pointing out the fact that she was particiapating in some required personal counseling for herself and found that she was paying more attention to and judging the techniques the therapist was using than paying attention to what the counseling was meaning to her personally. At this one of my GST friends remarked that the same goes for he and the others of us in GST when we go to church. He stated that it was hard to be a worshipper as a GST student.

Really.

My fellow seminary students, it is time that we check our spiritual egos at the door and take on the real formation that only comes from God. GST makes you special in no way, regardless of the intellectual high-hats that want to lead you to believe that you are acquiring special knowledge and insight unavailable to the common man. If anything, our systematized journey into the world of scripture, theological reflection, history, and ministry should leave us even more humble at the feet of God. Should this not inspire an even greater level of worship? Does this not leave us with an even bigger awe at the eternal mystery of God and his kingdom? Does this not leave us at the feet of those who have come before and have traveled the firey road of ministry, whether it be preachers, elders, or maintenence workers who sacrifice for international students?

God wants you. God wants your service. God wants you to take this blessing of theological education and use it to understand your place in his glorious kingdom machine. But if even before you have left the tiny ACU Bible Department world of ACU you have already mastered the ins and outs of theological skill, then a tiny world it shall remain.