Seminary Speech

Preliminaries

Thank you Dr. Lugioyo for that wonderful introduction.

First giving honor to God who is the head of my life, to my beautiful Paige, to my pastor and his wife and my mentor Dr. Thurmond, to my mother and father and my entire family that is here, to the APU faculty & staff, to my co-laborers in Christ who are graduating with me, and to all of you that are present, God is good.

I count it as a great honor to be your student speaker.

In ten minutes, my task is two-fold. First, I want to give a quick thank you to all of you and then I want to spend most of the time talking about two things that I think will help me and my classmates as we go forward.

On behalf of the 2019 graduating class, we want to first say thank you to God for providing us with the strength, the study habits and the resources to make it to this grand occasion.

Thank You

On behalf of the 2019 graduating class, we want to first say thank you to God for providing us with the strength, the study habits and the resources to make it to this grand occasion.

To all of you

Second, to all of you. To every husband and wife. To every mother and father. To every brother and sister. To every son and daughter. To every staff and faculty member. To every pastor, relative and friend that is present. We want to say thank you for your love and support on this journey.

Speech

When I was asked to be the student speaker, I immediately asked God “What in the world could I possibly say to my fellow classmates at a seminary graduation?” And the Lord, put on my heart two words: Patience & Humility.

Patience

First patience.

Over the course of my seminary journey, I have read countless books, I have been challenged by professors to think outside the box, I have sat down and had countless conversations with people from different ethnicities, from different denominations, from different cultures and backgrounds, with different ideas and perspectives.

For the past four years my mind has been stretched and challenged to think in different ways, and I am walking out of seminary with a much larger picture of the Kingdom and the mission of God.

And if any of my classmates are like me, there is a passion that has been ignited on the inside of you and you have ideas racing through your brain left and right, up and down. You have a vision rising on the inside of you because you have been equipped with the tools to discern what God is up to in your community, and you can’t wait to get to work and change the world.

But what do you do when God wants you stay and serve in the same context you were in before you went seminary, or send you to serve in a context where the people there don’t share your same level of passion?

What do you do when God has called you to serve people that didn’t read the books you read, didn’t have the cross-cultural conversations you had, and were not exposed to all the ideas you were exposed to during seminary?

What do you do when your desire for change is moving faster than the hearts and thoughts of the people you are called to serve?

What do you do when you are called to serve people that do not share the same vision and urgency that you have bubbling on the inside of you.

What do you do?

My encouragement to you is: BE PATIENT.

says:

Proverbs 16:32 NIV

32 Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city.

When you have vision and passion bubbling on the inside of you, it is easy to approach ministry as a warrior that wants to complete the mission by any means necessary, rather than a gentle servant that is understanding and patient enough to walk alongside people until a fire begins to kindle on the inside of them and they begin to see what you see.

As ministry leaders, we must aim to serve with the same level of patience that God has with us.

Ephesians 4:1–3 NRSV

1 I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

It is the same patience that God had with the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years.

It is the same patience that God had when he sent judge after judge and prophet after prophet, just for the Israelites to still not get it right by the end of the Old Testament.

It is the same patience of a loving God that decides not to send his son as a full grown man, but instead as a baby that he would have to watch grow for 33 years until he accomplished what he ultimately sent him to do.

If you’re anything like me, there is a passion and fire ignited on the inside of you that will bring change and fresh air to your context, but I encourage you to go with patience.

Humility

Before I came to seminary, I had already been preaching for 15 years. And when you have been preaching for 15 years, you may think you know a little something. But it wasn’t until I began to listen to people that didn’t look like me, talk like me and think like me, that I recognized how much I didn’t know.

And I pray that seminary has been a humbling experience for you as it has been for me.

But I must warn you.

After learning how to write 2-3 pages of textual observations on one passage.

After learning how to connect dots that you may not have gotten unless you read chunks of scripture in a short period of time.

After learning the benefit of knowing which subject is nominative and how participles work alongside verbs in the Greek.

After learning about Christian Theology and all the perspectives within Christian Theology.

After learning about Church History and how we have come to be what we call the church today.

After reading thousands of pages and turning in countless papers and assignments.

After reading thousands of pages and turning in countless papers and assignments.

If the truth be told, there might just be a little piece of us on the inside that make us feel like we are qualified. There is a piece of us that may make us feel like we are entitled to certain positions within the Body of Christ. There is a piece of us that may make us feel like we know a little something, or at least we know more than THEY do, whoever THEY are. After being in seminary for 3-4 years, there might just be a little piece of pride that wants to show its face and be catered to. Maybe I’m just talking to myself, but after learning all that we have learned and to be here on this day where we are graduating from seminary, there might just be a little piece of us on the inside that makes us feel a little qualified.

Because if the truth be told, after we have done and learned all of these things, there may be a little piece in all of us that makes us feel like we are qualified. There is a piece of us that may make us feel like we are entitled to certain positions within the Body of Christ. There is a piece of us that may make us feel like we know a little something, or at least we know more THEY do, whoever THEY are. After being in seminary for 3-4 years, there might just be a little piece of pride that wants to show its face and be catered to. Maybe I’m just talking to myself, but there is a piece of me that makes me feel a little qualified.

But may I remind us lest we forget that according to , God loves using the foolish things in the world to shame the wise. God loves using unqualified people to carry out his mission.

He used Moses who had a speech impediment in order to lead the Israelites.

He used young Jeremiah who thought he was too young to be God’s prophet.

He used a young shepherd boy named David, who had no military experience to slay Goliath.

He used Paul, whose use to kill Christians, to write much of the New Testament.

And he allowed his son Jesus, our Savior, to be born to a poor family and grow up in the slums of Nazareth, knowing that people would say “What good could come from Nazareth.”

God specializes in using unqualified people to carry out his mission.

And so the question is how do we live unqualified after we have obtained our seminary degrees?

The first thing is that even after graduating from seminary, we are still messed up and need God’s grace.

And the second thing is to take on the mind of Christ.

In Paul says it like this.

The New Revised Standard Version Imitating Christ’s Humility

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

7 but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

8 he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

The New Revised Standard Version Imitating Christ’s Humility

5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he was in the form of God,

That means Jesus didn’t just have a seminary degree, but He was knowledge itself. But even though he was knowledge itself, the text says he

The New Revised Standard Version Imitating Christ’s Humility

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

7 but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

The New Revised Standard Version Imitating Christ’s Humility

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

7 but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

8 he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

What that means for us is that no matter how much we know or who we think we are, if we are going to serve with a spirit of humility and live as if we are still unqualified before God, then we must learn how to empty ourselves and always posture our hearts to be servants.

Fellow classmates, I don’t know if you are going to pursue a D.Min or a PhD. I don’t know where God is going to send you next. But no matter how much we learn, how many degrees we hold, and how much we become qualified in the eyes of people, may we always preach, teach, lead and serve with patience and as we are always unqualified before God.

Fellow classmates, I don’t know if you are going to pursue a D.Min or a PhD. I don’t where God is going to send you next. But no matter how much we learn, how many degrees we hold, and how much we become qualified in the eyes of people, may we always preach, teach, lead and serve as we are always unqualified before God.

Congratulations to the class of 2019 and God bless you.