Man Shall Not Live On Pastors Alone...

I am a counseling major in seminary. Specific to the school I attend, this is one of the longer and more involved degrees offered. Now, I realize this seems like it's not that big of a deal but it's important to know how many stereotypes there are about our counseling department. When I've told people what I'm here to study I've received two responses more than any other:

1. "Cool, so that's an easy program. You're only here for like what, one year tops?
and...
2. "Oh, so you're really working on your MRS degree, right? (Twice there was a creepy wink involved)

Most everyone here gets some level of crap if they aren't working on their Masters of Theology (ThM). It's a prestigious degree and requires four years of schooling, but doesn't necessarily require you to be able to carry on a normal conversation-- there are plenty of great people in the program (trust me, I'm friends with them and they're awesome!) Sometimes though, other people here are viewed as slackers for choosing a different degree plan. I'd argue that being a female in this environment makes it even worse because people believe that we would rather sit around and talk about our feelings all day than talk about Jesus.

A few days ago I was talking to a ThM student about a book I just received for class. It's about 940 pages, called Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and it's published by the American Psychiatric Association. Sounds like a blast, right? Well as I'm talking to this student about how important, yet boring the book is we equated it to the Hebrew textbook he had in his hands. Suddenly he says: "Well, at least mine is studying the Bible, right?"

Maybe he meant it to be the silver lining in having to study so much, but I just thought he sounded like an ass.

Listen, I get that being able to translate the Old Testament is a big deal... but only in a certain world. We need more than pastors in the world. We definitely need more than pastors with poor social skills. We need Jesus. It takes counselors, teachers, hairstylists, and even garbage men to spread the hope of Jesus a little more. Believe it or not, you can still be the hands and feet of Jesus without writing a dissertation about covenant theology. At the end of the day, we all just really want the same thing-- to share our hope with a broken world.

Pastors are no closer to Jesus than the rest of us. For our school specifically, most all of the degree plans have a lot of the same core requirements when it comes to Bible and theology classes. So although we may not all be ThM students, I like to think that we still have something to offer. Even if it is a little less douchey and pretentious.