How do I Choose a Seminary?

by Sarah Irwin  

Okay. You’ve prayed and discerned and thought about your calling, and now it’s time to think about seminary.  How does anyone make a decision like that?  Is it like going to college?  Or choosing a place to live?  A lot of factors will go into your decision about which seminary you choose to attend. This is a time when you want to make as many contacts as possible with as many different people as you can.  Where did your parish priest or college chaplain go to seminary?  Where did your bishop go?  Does he or she want you to attend a particular school?  At first, there seems to be a bewildering number of choices to make.  The range of seminaries in the Episcopal Church is very, very broad. With a few categories of thought in mind, though, you can start to think concretely about where you are called to be. 

God Equips the Called

by Nathan Humphrey

A few years ago I participated in a weekend retreat on “discerning your spiritual gifts.” I was excited. We were going to harness the powers of modern diagnostic tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, as well as the traditional methods of Bible study and prayer, to probe deep into our hearts and psyches and to find where our true gifts lie. And the procedure worked–by the end of the weekend, I knew I have gifts for teaching, writing, and leading worship. There was only one problem: I knew all of this before the retreat! It was nice to have my gifts affirmed in this way, but when a group of us got together at the end of the weekend to discuss how to use the gifts we had discerned, it was all speculation. We had discerned our talents and gifts, but we still hadn’t a clue what, if anything, we ought to do with them. I left the retreat confused and disappointed, praying: “God, I thank you for all your gifts, both large and small, but what can I do with my life that will be most pleasing to you?” I didn’t even know if I should base my life on my already-known talents.

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