By Paul Burkhart on June 30, 2016
The Daily Office: Seminarian’s Best Friend For my seminary Internship, each semester we have a different spiritual practice to engage in for the semester. The goal is to expose different people to different ways of engaging God in a deep way so that as they step out in ministry, they have these “tools” in their Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on June 23, 2016
In our previous post, I offered one helpful theological principle that I have found helpful to keep in mind as a seminarian preparing for ministry in which finances is involved. I encouraged us to view God’s creation as one brimming with creational, financial, and resourceful abundance rather than scarcity. Today I offer another idea that has helped Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on June 20, 2016
Having spent time around a lot of seminarians, I can tell you that the nitty-gritty, practical realities of pastoral life don’t get talked about enough. That’s a problem. But the bigger problem, in my view, is that whenever these things are talked about, it’s in a way you can’t really reproduce. I’ve watched too many pastors try Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on June 17, 2016
My one year at the first seminary I attended was perhaps the most formative time of theological change in my life. The seminary itself was in the midst of a redefinition and realigning of its commitments and leanings, and so points and counterpoints accompanied by passions were thick in the air. My views on Scripture—and Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on June 13, 2016
Do you have any rituals? My roommate gets up most every morning at around the same time, goes for a run, makes a French press of coffee and sits out our kitchen table and reads his giant red-leather Study Bible and journals for a long time after. I love that. It’s weird whenever I come Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on March 31, 2016
Confession: I’m a night owl. I can’t do mornings. And yet, there is a long tradition in the Church of beginning your day with devotional meditation with God. I’m working on it. But in the meantime, one of the great ironies is that few things can put a bigger dent in one’s devotional life than Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on March 28, 2016
I write this now after having completed an intensive three-week long course. It was one of those in-between semesters courses that fit a whole semester into a month. The work that would usually be spread over the course of a week was instead crammed in on a daily basis. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. Seminary does Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on March 24, 2016
In one of the first episodes of the U.S. version of The Office (about a paper company), one of the employees is asked why, though he hates his job, he doesn’t quit. He says something like, “Because what would I do with all these useless facts about paper?” I feel like, as seminarians, we can sometimes feel the Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on March 15, 2016
I am notoriously disorganized and undisciplined. I tend to move from thing to thing only as I am inspired to do so. I am not good at putting limits and structure on myself. And yet, Graduate School is something that demands this. It’s a little easier when you are in In-Resident student with a certain rhythm and Read More...
By Paul Burkhart on March 10, 2016
Anyone that’s gone to school over the last two decades knows that more and more of schooling involves the web and technology. At first, this was limited to the fact that we had to type our papers instead of hand-writing them. Then, we started researching things on computers through CD-ROMS and such. Then the web Read More...