Is Seminary Teaching making a Difference in the Students?
Lyn approached me one day soon after we arrived at the seminary and asked if I would guide her in her spiritual growth. I'll never forget what she told me at our first meeting.
In tears, she related the story of getting her parent's permission to come to seminary. Her parents are non-believers and could not understand why their daughter would leave them, along with a good job, to go to far away Manila to study theology so that she could get such a low-paying and unreliable job as working in a church. How could she honor her parents, so important in both the Bible and her Chinese culture? Yet, how could she also follow God's call in her life?
She told me why she was afraid to ask her parents for permission to study at seminary. It was because of her boyfriend. Now, you might think that her boyfriend was a drunk or drug pusher or some other man of low character. But, he was actually a responsible medical doctor earning a good income, and a committed Christian. He only had one thing against him, in her parents' eyes. He wasn't Chinese. And she knew that she could never ask her parents for two things they did not want for her. She had to choose whether to ask them to allow her to continue with her non-Chinese boyfriend or ask them for permission to go to seminary. Painfully, this 25 year old young woman made the choice to break off with her boyfriend, and ask her parents for permission to go to seminary. It wasn't an easy meeting, but her parents in the end allowed her to go to seminary.
She missed her old boyfriend and felt the pain of breaking up with him every time she thought of him, which was often. Was going to seminary really the right decision? She had sacrificed this wonderful boyfriend for her parents and they seemed not to care or notice. I cried with Lyn and mourned with her. We prayed together. Incredibly, without me preaching at her, she seemed to be encouraged, and went away able to focus again on her studies, with hope, if not precisely joy.
The biggest challenge was that she took the Global Missions Course, taught by Jay, my husband. Part of that course was going on a mission trip to a tribe in another part of the Philippines, a trip which scared her, challenged her, and opened her eyes to both the spiritual needs of other people and to her own abilities to meet them. After the mission trip she was sensing from the course and her devotions that God might be calling her to missions. Her parents had given her permission to go to seminary with the expectation that she would at least serve in a Chinese church not too far from them. How could she ever be a missionary and still be considered a dutiful daughter? Again, we prayed together, left it in God's hands.
In her third year, there were some changes. Lyn is a natural evangelist. She used to share the Good News to the non-Christian employees of the seminary. She shares the Gospel with her non-Christian friends by e-mail and text messages. Quarter after quarter went on until she graduated earlier this year. She returned to her home church and is living with her parents. But, she is now heading up one of the main and most strategic outreach ministries of her church.
Is it worth the effort to invest so much in a seminary student? Ask the students and others who are becoming Christians through Lyn's ministry today. They will tell you it is worth it!
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