SPE Program Spotlight:
PSALM Project Helps Seminarians Plant Roots of Ministry
With a degree in business and several years' experience in the corporate world, Shawn Smith entered Asbury Theological Seminary a few years ago expecting to be given a list of methods and techniques needed to build a successful church. Even before seminary, he had read the latest popular books on pastoral leadership and saw that many were basically business texts with a veneer of Christianity.
“It was part of the world I was coming from,” he says. “I was like ‘Just tell me the 10 things I need to do to be a pastor and let me get on with it.’ That's what I was expecting.”
Elsewhere at Asbury, midway through her studies, fellow student Annette Fetzer was already burned out. In addition to her classes, she worked two jobs--one off campus and another as a resident advisor in the dorm.
“I was taking Hebrew and had my studies and work and all these people coming to me for care, and I was overwhelmed,” she says.
But now, as the two graduate from Asbury—he, last month, and she, this spring—they are both very much changed. Transformed even.
Today, Smith has a different vision of pastoral ministry than can be found in any management book, one that is rooted in God's narrative and grounded in specific practices such as friendship, fasting, prayer, and living into the liturgical calendar.
“Now, rather than looking for five disembodied principles that we can pull out of the air and put some Scripture around, I focus on shared practices that we can embody together, rooted in a common authority,” he says.
And Fetzer takes better care of herself, sets clear personal boundaries, and finds support in spiritual friendships with others.
“I have the pace of grace in my life,” she says. “When I feel this sense of busyness, I think about the pace of grace and I don't allow the busyness to overwhelm me anymore. I let the Lord order my day, and I live a balanced life. I don't ever want to go back to that craziness.”
Asked what made the difference, both Smith and Fetzer readily point to Asbury's PSALM project, in particular the Seminarius portion of that initiative. A Sustaining Pastoral Excellence project funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., PSALM — Pastoral Seasons as Life and Ministry--seeks to promote excellence across the entire span of a pastor's life in ministry.
The project's inspiration comes from the third verse of Psalm 1: “They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.”
To Leslie Andrews, director of PSALM and professor of pastoral leadership and research, the verse offers a key to excellent ministry.
While few if any pastors prosper in all that they do, it's clear that excellent pastors need to be fed and nourished across the entire course of their ministry. Given proper sustenance, they don't fade and wither. They begin as seedlings, grow and blossom into maturity, and produce fruit. And they do have seasons.
“Those verses in Psalm 1 launched us to think about pastors and the seasons of life, both chronologically and internally in the transitions that they go through if they are going to be sustained in an excellent way throughout their life and ministry,” she says.
As a result, PSALM takes a comprehensive approach to pastoral excellence. In addition to Seminarius, which as the name suggests is aimed at the seminary years, PSALM has four other separate “streams,” or programs:
- The Spiritual Leaders Academy , launched last fall, brings together groups of pastors who meet twice a year over three years for sustained learning, including sessions with lay leaders from their congregations.
- Spiritual Friends conducts seminars for pastors and their spouses, helping couples to address the complexities of balancing marriage and ministry and the need for negotiating boundaries between family and church life.
- Theological Reflection Weeks bring mid-career pastors to campus in groups of four or five for a week of learning, working closely with a faculty member and attending classes, chapel and other activities.
- The Research Collaboratory, conducted by seven faculty members, is surveying clergy and conducting focus groups to further identify and develop the notion of seasons in pastoral ministry, and the specific issues and challenges that come with each season.
But at least in its early stages, PSALM has focused much of its work on Seminarius--on strengthening the initial roots of a pastor's life, ensuring that they extend deep into fertile soil, firmly anchoring and nourishing a lifetime of ministry.
Steve Moore, former senior vice president at Asbury and PSALM's first director, said Seminarius is intended to help students cultivate specific practices that will keep them in ministry and sustain them through the rough patches that occur in any pastor's life.
“So many studies have confirmed the critical importance of those first five years of ministry,” he said. “That's when the realities of the work of ministry begin to sink in. It can be a time when discouragement and disenchantment take root and a sense of disconnectedness creeps in.”
When such moments come, Moore said, pastors will need to draw from those life-giving streams, from practices such as friendship, self-care, fasting and prayer.
The Rev. John David Walt, dean of Asbury's chapel and vice president for community life, oversees the Seminarius stream. Seminarius, he says, is premised on the belief that the seminary years are not preparatory to ministry, but are itself a season of ministry.
“It's a time of trying to engage the soil and sow good seed in the lives of people who are trying to proclaim and live out the Gospel,” he said. “We are trying to help teach, equip and nurture students in the establishment of practices that will give them a fullness of life and of excellence in pastoral ministry.”
All seminaries, of course, seek to do that, though with mixed success in recent years as evidenced by clergy dropout figures. At Asbury, the Seminarius stream is not something separate and distinct from the rest of seminary, but is woven into the school's life at both its Kentucky and Florida campuses, supplementing and enriching what students are already learning both inside and outside the classroom.
Much of the Seminarius experience takes place primarily through two avenues: Covenant Friends and Practice and Grow. In Covenant Friends, students meet regularly in small groups, learning the practices of deep friendships such as storytelling, wisdom sharing and guidance and direction. Through Practice and Grow, they can participate in a series of retreats and short courses on everything from health and wellness to the arts, classic devotional works to healthy sexuality.
In conjunction with the school's chapel, Seminarius is also trying to lead students to a practice of worship that embraces the cruciform life, developing and deepening students' understanding of the church's sense of time, through creatively engaging the Christian calendar.
Like most seminaries today, Asbury enrolls an increasing number of second-career and other students who perhaps did not grow up in the church and might not fully understand many of the church's traditions.
“In some respects, we're going back and establishing basic practices that nourish Christian faith,” says Andrews.
One way they've tried to do that is by finding avenues for the entire community to walk a common journey, using the Christian calendar as a guide, in essence taking it beyond the formal worship setting.
“We're trying to take the Christian calendar, which can be lifeless in many of its expressions, and recontextualize it,” said Walt. “We're trying to strip it from much of its association with a purely liturgical style of worship and say to students, ‘This is a map for a shared journey that impacts people at the most fundamental building block of life, their time.'”
As part of that effort, the students each season create a “common reader,” a daily devotional guide that incorporates scripture, prayers, and quotations from the saints and is read, studied and discussed by the entire community--faculty, staff, and students. With each season, Seminarius also features certain formative practices to be engaged in community. Last year, throughout Lent for example, they held weekly gatherings called “Feasting and Fasting.” Held every Wednesday after Eucharist, the gatherings were a time of teaching, prayer and fasting.
For those not raised in such traditions, this introduction to the church calendar and its related practices is powerful.
“Living by the liturgical calendar has transformed my life and spirituality,” says Brian Rhea, an Asbury student.
The rhythm of fasting and feasting, Lent and Easter, cross and resurrection makes the entire year “a celebration of Jesus,” he says.
“When we live into these realities, for instance through fasting and feasting, our daily lives are transformed by the mysteries of Christ,” says Rhea. “Crucifixion becomes a more significant reality when we start fasting on Fridays; resurrection becomes sweeter when we feast on Sundays. God is not relegated to an hour Sunday morning and a daily 15-minute quiet time; hunger pangs and the joy of feasting let Christ begin to permeate our lives.”
But for Seminarius, Fetzer says she would probably have become a statistic, just one more pastor ready to quit after a few years. But now, having learned to live a more balanced and grounded life, she's ready for the long haul.
It's all about becoming a tree, says Fetzer, one that's “firmly planted by that stream of water.”
For more information on the PSALM project at Asbury Theological Seminary, visit the program Web site at http://www.psalmats.org/
