Visit to Seminary Hill

Last week i decided to take a field trip to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. I have been mulling over in my brain and my prayers the possibility of going to seminary so i decided a practical thing to do was to go visit... and i am glad i did. I had a couple of presuppositions about seminary/people who attended seminary that i was hoping to see refuted on my trip. It started with a quick tour of some of the main buildings on campus and then our tour group went to chapel at 10:45. The board of trustees was present and one of the board members gave the message, which was definitely to my liking. He discussed the problem that many christians have about what they should be doing with their life, and the fact that many feel like they are not having a "clear picture" about what God wants them to do. His sermon text was Acts 5:20 and he basically said that God gives us an answer to this question in this verse in Acts. The Apostles were teaching and performing miracles in the town and the temple, and the high priests rose up and put them in the public jail (5:17-18). Then an angel of the lord came and released the men and charged them to "go stand and speak to the people in the temple the whole message of this life".

So as Christians, he said, we should do 3 things:
1) We should GO... we are charged as Christians to share the gospel and to do it. The angel did not say "wait until you feel comfortable", he said go.

2) We should STAND. When we get to where we are going, we should stand up boldly for Christ in this world. We should also be able to rest in the sovereignty of God in the situations that we are put in. He talked at length about what contentment and peace should look like to a Christian.

3) Finally he said that we should SPEAK to the people the whole message of life. This involves not only speaking the word from the pulpit or other office, but speaking about life, a godly life, always. He referenced Deut 6:6-8 which is an awesome text... "talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up". In sum, ALWAYS.

But yes it was a very good message and afterwards we consumed some free lunch and i got to chat with a professor about life in general. Thats the one thing i really liked about it... the sense of community that was displayed by everyone i ran into. Everyone from the students to the staff seemed genuinely interested in the lives of others. It was refreshing. We went on a tour of some housing options and that was the end of the deal. I had a great time on my visit and it was worth every minute. I am going to mull over in my brain the possibility of going to seminary, not necessarily for the pulpit but more so for youth and college ministry/missions. We will see...