{"id":784,"date":"2006-11-27T14:05:27","date_gmt":"2006-11-27T22:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2006\/11\/27\/successful-seminarians\/"},"modified":"2006-11-27T14:05:27","modified_gmt":"2006-11-27T22:05:27","slug":"successful-seminarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/11\/27\/successful-seminarians","title":{"rendered":"Successful Seminarians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Somewhere I heard that most of today\u2019s best-known pastors didn\u2019t go to seminary. As I recall, this observation was brought up in the context of criticizing the very concept of graduate-level ministerial training. The implication was that the time spent learning about the Bible would have been better spent learning about marketing (or the internet or psychology or something practical).<\/p>\n<p>This criticism didn\u2019t have a lot of weight for me \u2014 I just knew seminary had been good for me and I continued to recommend it to any minister who loved learning.<\/p>\n<p>But I realized this morning that the allegation was untrue. Not only have lots of the big-name pastors gone to seminary, I would say that the majority of those that we first think of are seminarians.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Andy Stanley \u2014 Dallas Theological Seminary<\/li>\n<li>Craig Groeschel \u2014 Phillips Theological Seminary<\/li>\n<li>Rob Bell \u2014 Fuller Theological Seminary<\/li>\n<li>John Ortberg \u2014 Fuller Theological Seminary<\/li>\n<li>John Piper \u2014 Fuller and the University of Munich (Ph.D.)<\/li>\n<li>Tim Keller \u2014 Gordon Conwell and Westminster Theological Seminary (Ph.D.)<\/li>\n<li>Rick Warren \u2014 Fuller Theological Seminary<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are several who haven\u2019t. Bill Hybels hasn\u2019t gone to seminary, for example. I don\u2019t think Ed Young, Jr. has, either. Joel Osteen hasn\u2019t. Mark Driscoll is, I believe, finishing up a seminary degree right&nbsp;now.<\/p>\n<p>But from what I can tell the majority of nationally-known Christian pastors have gone to seminary.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not saying that going to seminary will guarantee you a numerically fruitful ministry \u2014 but I can guarantee you that it won\u2019t prevent you from building a numerically fruitful ministry, either. And you\u2019ll be a better person for having gone.<\/p>\n<p>In an age when seminary gets a lot of knocks, I thought that was worth sharing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Somewhere I heard that most of today\u2019s best-known pastors didn\u2019t go to seminary. As I recall, this observation was brought up in the context of criticizing the very concept of graduate-level ministerial training. The implication was that the time spent learning about the Bible would have been better spent learning about marketing (or the internet \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/11\/27\/successful-seminarians\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cSuccessful Seminarians\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-opinions-and-general-contrariness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-cE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}