PTS Students

Just for Princeton Theological Seminary Students…

God called, and you answered. Excellent! Now prepare yourself for a time of intensive study, challenge, and self-examination. It’s not always easy; but if you “do your work,” at the end of the three-year program you are sure to leave the Seminary a very different person than when you began.

Seminary Curriculum has a widespread impact.

Here are some possible reactions to the Seminary Curriculum:

• Crisis of faith
• Crisis of identity
• Onset of depression and anxiety
• Reactivation of trauma
• Exacerbation of any existing condition
• Sudden insights into dysfunctional family patterns that bring up strong emotions
• Activation of addictions, including alcohol, drugs, sex, and internet pornography
• Performance anxiety
• Increased marital discord
• Stress over finances
• Your children may pick up on your stress and begin acting out
• Burn out from taking care of everyone else
• Difficulties with anger
• Stress from the challenges unique to gender, LGBTG status, race, or being differently abled
• LGBTQ identity and how it pertains to ministry, ordination, and the Christian faith

What they may not have told you before you started:

Seminary education will challenge you in ways you may not even thought possible.  

Hermeneutics, Exegesis, and Ancient Languages challenge the mind as well as one’s faith.  

All these experiences can rip you open emotionally: Preparing for ordination, participating in field education, such as teaching church, preaching your first sermon, engaging in clinical pastoral education, encountering different groups on campus who have different “agendas”, etc. If like many of us in this field you are a “wounded healer,” you should expect that these wounds will become activated.

The worst thing you can do when this happens is to deny your feelings and/or “pray it away.”  Remember the story of the man on the roof during the terrible flood?  God sent a boat and a helicopter to rescue him; but when he arrived in heaven, the man insisted he was “waiting for God” to rescue him.

God wants to support you in this journey, including professional counseling and/or medication, if needed. Please do not feel that you are alone, that you need to suffer alone, or to solve all of your challenges between yourself and God. Rev. Nancy Schongalla Bowman has created a wonderful counseling referral network at PTS. Your first stop should be her office in Templeton Hall, or a call to 609-497-7891. Ask for a referral to Stacy Hoffer.

I look forward to assisting you on this path that I travelled myself from 1989-1992.