His Plan (part 1)

I've been thinking about a lot of stuff lately, related to church and our lives as a "pastor's family". I wanted to write my thoughts out, but decided to start from the beginning.

When Max first mentioned going to seminary, I was VERY opposed to it, because he said he wanted to go full time and NOT WORK! I did not like the idea of being the SOLE supporter of our family. I remember mentioning that I went to school, worked almost full time while planning a wedding! Why can't you do the same? I asked.

He tried to explain to me that Westminster is NOT like UMBC, and you really have to use ALL of your extra free time to study. I really could not comprehend this concept. Then I decided I did NOT want him to go to Westminster if that's how it was! I was pushing for Covenant seminary because it was the "easier" school and more family minded. Westminster had a reputation of being TOO academic and more geared towards single men who wanted to maybe be a professor or something. We drove out to Covenant seminary to check into it, although we both had a sick feeling in our stomachs while we were there, just thinking about being so far away from home.

It was October of 2002, and we were planning on going to Covenant in January (I had even reserved a moving truck), but I woke up one morning and said, "why don't you call Jerry McFarland and just ASK about Westminster, maybe we could at least visit ". (The Lord was obviously changing my heart about the whole thing!) Wouldn't you know that their PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS DAY WAS THE NEXT DAY!!! AND I, the workaholic, was miraculously OFF work!

We went up and LOVED it! They treated us all like kings with their fancy lunch and dinner! It was not at all what we had expected. People were really nice and there were plenty of "family men" that we met. Jerry McFarland was the dean of students and his job was to keep guys focused on Christ and WHY they were there, and not let them get carried away with "book knowledge". We really liked that their focus was on the right things. THAT'S what its all about, right?

Max never really knew what he wanted to do after seminary, but he always thought he would go the teaching route. We began to realize that Westminster may be the better choice because it was academically probably the best seminary around. We finally decided we would move there the following fall. I was finally okay with going AND being the sole provider, just as long as he didn't want to be a pastor! . . . .