Gordon-Conwell: A Place of Spiritual Formation

Many of my fellow seminarians  are probably going to think I made a typo in this title.  I did not.  GCTS is a great place to learn how to strengthen your prayer life and your spiritual life.

There's a pretty big stereotype/generalization that Gordon-Conwell (and many other seminaries for that matter), are all about academics and not about spiritual formation, that one can "spiritually die" here as a Christian if one is not careful.  Actually, this is pretty accurate, but whereas most would see this as a problem to be addressed, I have made a realization:  This is exactly how it should be.

Let me explain.  Many people come in with the mistaken notion that GCTS should make it ridiculously easy to grow in your faith and walk with God, some even to the point where they expect to be spoon fed spiritual formation.  All that would do is make lazy Christians who will have no idea how to spiritually form themselves.  Hate to break it to you, but the world and the mission field is an even more spiritually dead place than GCTS will ever be.  Actually, GCTS makes it look like a cakewalk with chapel services every Wednesday, ministry opportunities, prayer events as well as a body of Christians so you are never far from a Soul Care Group or a prayer buddy or Scripture study.  That is, of course, you show up to any of these things.

If the goal of GCTS is to "equip Church leaders to think theologically, engage globally and live Biblically", it certainly isn't going to do it by making us dependent on Mother Institution.  Here, like everywhere else, if you aren't paying attention to your walk with God, you are going to "die".  People here are more lulled into a false sense of security because they assume the seminary will handle their spiritual formation for them.  Rubbish.  By giving us an environment similar to what we will have to face outside of here, they do far more to equip us to handle it than by coddling us and leading us each step of the way.

Your spiritual formation is up to you.  Only you can work out your salvation with fear and trembling.  It is hard to live like a disciple unto Christ.  At times, we all must carve out minutes into our hectic schedules to pray and read scripture.  It's a struggle and it's not meant to be easy.  If it were easy, it wouldn't be worthwhile and it certainly wouldn't have required Christ to come down and die on a cross in perfect obedience.

So I say to you all, Gordon-Conwell is the perfect place to learn the spiritual disciplines in order to feed yourself from the Word of God.  Everywhere else is much less forgiving.