Why an MDiv?

Several weeks ago I raised the question, “Why seminary?” and I suggested that formal theological education in community remains the ideal strategy for equipping new leaders to shepherd the flock of Jesus Christ. But once an institutional seminary is up and running, and once a critical mass of eager seminarians have inscribed themselves, further questions assert themselves: What should students spend their time on? And how should their activities be structured into an overarching course of study? Or, to professionalize these further: What kind of degree program will be the “bread and butter” of a modern seminary seeking the best way to resource the broader church?

The MDiv: Gold Standard for Modern Ministry Preparation

There are countless ways (as they say) to slice a pie, to peel an orange, to crack an egg, or – if everything else has failed – to skin a cat. Along these lines, there is also more than one way to prepare a candidate for full-time ministry in the church. Presently, since the 1960s and ’70s, the standard degree for forming new ministers in North America has been the Master of Divinity (MDiv). Let me add at the outset here that “divinity” does not, of course, mean “being a deity” but refers rather to  those skills and disciplines necessary to the office of a “divine,” that is, a minister of Jesus Christ.

The MDiv is a three-year professional graduate degree that began as a rebrand of the three-year post-baccalaureate Bachelor of Divinity (BD) seminaries had been awarding for hundreds of years. Its goal has been to make a future pastors proficient in each area of study necessary for preaching the gospel faithfully and caring for the health of the church and its members. Meant to follow a prior degree in the arts and sciences, the MDiv traditionally requires students to take a battery of coursework in the Old and New Testament (often including mastery of Greek and Hebrew), Dogmatics and Systematic Theology (including ethics and moral theology), Church History and Historical Theology, and Practical Theology (including preaching, liturgics, counseling, and evangelism).

On top of all this, the capstone project of nearly all MDiv programs is some kind of practical experience – usually an internship at a church or some other ministry placement – rather than the crafting of a thesis.

By the end of those three years, a freshly minted MDiv graduate should be competent to pass a denominational ordination exam and avoid certain catastrophic errors that most typically threaten the efficacy of one’s pastorate.

The Current Trend away from Pursuing an MDiv

However, recent years have seen North American seminarians trending away from pursuing the MDiv degree in favor of other degrees in ministry, theology, and biblical studies that require two years (and sometimes only one) of full-time study. For some it may be a more introductory Master of Theological Studies (MTS), while for others a research-oriented Master of Arts (MA) in religion or theology or an advanced Master of Theology (ThM) might be their preference. But the fact is, for several years now only a minority of students are pursuing the traditional MDiv at seminaries and theological colleges accredited by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). And in response to these shifts in demand, many schools are also opting to reduce the number of credit hours required for completing their MDiv, while also permitting Bachelor-level courses in Bible or theology to count toward this professional Masters degree (see, for example, the accelerated 5-year BA–MDiv combination now being offered at my undergraduate alma mater).

This shift away from what was once the gold standard stems, in part, from financial decisions made by ministry candidates and denominations alike. Gone are the days when large churches and denominations were expected to fund years of study, and these costs are now borne increasingly by students (and, in many cases, their families). Every extra year of study often means a hefty hike in educational debt or a longer path toward graduation and ordination.

Also, because most other graduate theological degrees are oriented toward undertaking research and producing a thesis rather than being formed as a pastor, these alternative Masters programs are more likely to offer a fully online track for non-traditional students who are not prepared to move to a brick-and-mortar seminary. This means that home life and family budgets are less likely to be disrupted by the chaos and cost of relocating.

As a result, because few  North American churches are willing to subsidize the cost of pursuing ordained ministry, these bodies are also recognizing the need to “meet people where they are.” There is significant pressure on denominational gatekeepers to recognize a BA, MTS, or MA as sufficient academic preparation for the pastors of tomorrow, many of whom are experiencing financial constraints that their predecessors often did not.

All this is to say that, when I first began looking at seminaries in the early ’00s I did not have to think twice about applying to an MDiv program; today, both ordinands and ordaining bodies are rethinking the utility of a degree that in the late ’20s requires ever more time and sacrifice.

Europe’s Unfamiliarity with the North American MDiv

In addition to the real concerns of churches and seminarians here in North America, I am getting ready to teach in Europe, a place where the MDiv never gained popularity or took root. Most candidates for ministry in the Netherlands, where my family and I will be located, tend to work toward an MA in theology at a wetenschappelijk onderwijs (WO) – that is, a “research university” – before receiving further training under the mentorship of church leaders in their denominations. In this alternate educational system, it can be hard to sell European students who desire to minister the gospel in their local churches on a strange degree with which most are unfamiliar.

In fact, however, I am headed to teach as part of the faculty of Tyndale Theological Seminary, a higher-ed institution classified by the Dutch government as a hoger beroepsonderwijs (HBO) – that is, a “school of applied sciences.” While Tyndale offers a government-accredited Masters of Evangelical Theology (MET), its most popular program by far is an old-school North American-style MDiv. This popularity, moreover, is driven by the fact that a majority of its students come from Africa and Asia, and they have decided that this degree is what will best equip them for their own contextualized ministries at home and around the world. European students are catching enthusiasm for this degree as they study alongside their counterparts from across the globe.

So, I return to the question: Why should a seminary encourage its students to pursue an MDiv? What does this degree program offer that adds value beyond another, shorter Masters program taken through the same institution with the same professors and same resources? If these are just different ways of slicing the same ministry pie or peeling the same pastoral orange, why put such a heavy emphasis on this lengthy and demanding path to a professional degree?

Three Reasons to Pursue an MDiv over the Alternatives

To give something of an answer, let me draw from my experience as a one-time seminarian, ordained pastor, and theologian to offer a few observations on why the MDiv still warrants the pride of place among a seminary’s degree curricula, especially one that seeks to prepare leaders for the church all around the world.

First, an MDiv aims at both breadth and depth. Like the BD of old, this Masters covers the entire field of “divinity,” with the goal that a ministerial candidate might become a “worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). In the view of previous generations, a pastor needed to have achieved genuine mastery of many related, yet independent fields of study. While a two-year Masters program does well creating a specialist – whether in biblical studies, church history, dogmatic theology, or homiletics – the three-year MDiv is designed to birth a generalist in all these areas, yet one who nevertheless has taken all the same classes that a specialist in each area would also have taken and so possesses real professional expertise in each.

As you can imagine, this results in a demanding, supersized curriculum that presumes prior baccalaureate formation in the humanities. My own MDiv curriculum expected 110 credit hours of study from us: 20 credit hours of Greek and Hebrew, 26 of biblical studies, 24 of systematic theology, 10 of church history, and 23 of practical theology – with only 7 credit hours reserved for electives. What is more, these courses were intended to be taken while we were undergoing internships at local churches! Although ATS requires only 72 credit hours for an accredited MDiv (the average sits around 90) most seminaries retain the same goal as mine had: those headed for leadership in the church should be expert generalists in her scriptures, theology, history, and practices.

And my experience in pastoral ministry – in North America and also in the developing world – has shown me that this comprehensive expertise is what is needed in churches today. Any academic degree is only a beginning, of course, and an MDiv does not pretend to transmit all the information that an ordained leader might need for decades of ministry in the pulpit or in the streets. But being forced to read broadly and engage critically with primary sources, to read the Old and New Testaments closely, to take on research and write within different disciplines, to speak publicly with a wide range of audiences and occasions in view, and to master multiple languages at the same time: all these academic tasks help form the mind – and, hopefully, the heart – of the one who would want to “rightly handle the word of truth.” Without early, broad exposure to the depths of scripture, theology, and history, and without consistent drilling in the disciplines of preaching, counseling, and leading worship, there will be gaps that decrease a minister’s effectiveness in the Christian ministry in the long run. A good MDiv program can do exactly this – and more.

Second, an MDiv intentionally bridges academic theory and interpersonal praxis. Beyond the breadth and length of study, what sets an MDiv apart from other degree programs is the requirement that students undertake an internship at a church. While it is true that students can (and often will) receive mentorship and supervision in their ministry placements following graduation, it is crucial that students get a picture of the practical importance of their studies while they are still studying.

It is so easy to assume that what happens in the seminary classroom stays in the classroom; that parsing verbs and splitting theological hairs has little-to-no relevance for the lives of ordinary Christians – let alone non-Christians. Many ordinands have wondered if seminary is something to be endured only for the sake of pleasing Man – or an ornery committee of Men – rather than pleasing God who may very well consider such endless scholarly volumes and their countless footnotes as but filthy rags before him.

But the basic assumption of the MDiv’s internship requirement (and, ideally, of the classes themselves) is that these academic disciplines are always relevant – whether directly or indirectly – to the scope of what a minister of God’s Word is called to administer on God’s behalf. The corollary to this is that it is a minister “in the wild,” an imperfect pastor of an imperfect church, who ought to mentor these burgeoning practical theologians as they are being formed. Only in this way will they perceive the vital “whys” that lie behind the seemingly irrelevant debates taking place in their course readings and in the student lounge.

This involves too a recognition that it is not good enough to have good teachers in the seminary itself: the formation of clergy in the church is a task of the whole church. This strategic partnership in the MDiv between gown and town, at least as it has usually been thought out for a capstone internship, carries with it the possibility of mirroring the practical bent of all theological inquiry and the academic methods in which aspirants to ministry are being trained.

Third and finally, an MDiv forges resilience through real community and common worship. We as faculty hope that the weight of all these academic and practical requirements will push students together, each helping the other to develop the disciplines needed to withstand the future pressures of pastoral ministry. That is, the stress of an MDiv is a feature, not a bug, of the curriculum. Think about it: ministry candidates studying at seminary confront the difficulty of averaging more than 18 credit hours per term, with graduate-level reading and writing expected across multiple academic disciplines, all while juggling an internship at a local church. This requires MDiv students not only to get good at budgeting their time and energy, but also to acquire new skills for maintaining spiritually equilibrium in this midst of these demands.

Such skills are are best developed as part of the worshipping community that historically was always the frame of the traditional MDiv curriculum. To return to my hobbyhorse from last month, seminaries work best when students are living close and worshipping regularly with one another. Situated in this kind of community, students are forced by circumstance and necessity to turn to one another for companionship, encouragement, correction, and advice, just as they are positioned in prayer to turn their hearts and minds to the Lord as they pass through the storms of papers and final exams.

This is not to say that other theological degrees cannot be difficult, stressful, and sanctifying in their own ways (I just completed my PhD at Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto, after all!). But the MDiv, more than any other degree of which I am aware, requires a student who is living and praying with other students to erect a massive obstacle course of academic and professional obligations while simultaneously clearing a direct path toward spiritual maturity – if students choose to take it. For this reason, when MDiv students are absent from refectory meals or chapel services, they end up missing out on an essential component of their degree program.

The Global Demand for the North American MDiv

These three reasons, I think, lie behind the demand that students from around the Global South have shown for Tyndale’s MDiv. Churches everywhere are hungry for leaders who are well formed in every aspect of ministry. Tyndale puts this general expertise and professional proficiency front and center in its own MDiv curriculum, which remains quite traditional when compared with its competitors. While North Americans are watering down their MDiv programs and theological curricula, churches in the developing world are seeking out the formational legacy of this old-school North American preparation for ministry.

What is more, as an academically rigorous HBO (school of applied sciences), Tyndale is committed to combining theory and practice in all its degrees, but first and foremost in its MDiv. African and Asian students are discovering new insights through their internships in churches across the Netherlands, just as they are constantly challenged to assess the local relevance of what they are learning in the classroom for their ministries in the countries of origin to which they are committed to returning.

International students at Tyndale benefit too from the normative requirement (uncommon these days) that they will attend class entirely in person, that they will live, dine, and fellowship on campus, and that their lives will be shared with one another as they pull all-nighters in the library. This mutual ministry goes hand-in-hand with the planned intensity of Tyndale’s MDiv curriculum that my wife and I witnessed firsthand, as students burrowed into the library for late night studying in the middle of term. Although the faculty regularly reassess the school’s curriculum to ensure it does not overly challenge learners for whom English is their second or third language, the seminary has not shied away from the combining curriculum stress with community support and corporate worship to mold its students during their three years in residence.

The proof of this philosophy of professional ministerial development at Tyndale can be found not only in these global students’ desire to undertake an MDiv on campus in the Netherlands, but also because these same students often leave with the intention of replicating this same model of education in their home churches and communities – even to the point of founding new seminaries. They may not expect to confer a formal MDiv – there is, after all, more than one way to slice a pie! – but the formation they received at Tyndale is now continuing on in how they then form their own students.

Whatever name you give it – whether a BD, an MDiv, an in-house certificate, or something else entirely – I firmly believe that this kind of education, formation, and preparation is desperately needed in churches around the world to equip leaders for a new generation of Christ’s body. This is why my family and I are investing ourselves in Tyndale Theological Seminary and raising the support through SAMS and IATW to serve on the faculty there.

And this is why I also believe that, despite the crises being experienced across higher education today, despite the strains on denominations, and despite the sacrifices demanded of students, the MDiv should continue to be a degree of choice for Americans, Canadians, and Europeans who are interested in connecting not only with the Christian heritage of their heirloom churches, but with the fullness of Christ’s body as it lives and breathes around the world.

Why Seminary?

I first began taking seriously the Lord’s call to pastoral ministry during the summer of 2003. I still had two years of undergraduate study to complete, but this time would allow me to consider how I was to pursue the vocation to which I was being led. Looking back, I find it striking that I took for granted then what is increasingly questioned now in North America: I knew for sure that the next step was to enter residence at a theological college or seminary.

Now, there obviously were questions I had to address. For starters, what kind of seminary should I attend? I faced a choice between domestic (that is, American) and overseas (mostly British) theological institutions, the former more oriented toward breadth of study, the latter toward a greater depth of specialization. Next, I had to decide whether to attend a divinity school attached to a research university (like Yale or Duke) or instead a seminary devoted more toward formation of pastors and preachers than producing published research (like Dallas or Southern). Finally, would I prioritize a church denomination or theological tradition (like Covenant for the Presbyterians and Concordia for the Lutherans) or an interdenominational seminary that hoped to bridge those divides (like Fuller or Regent)? It took me many months to sift through these alternatives, seek expert, godly counsel, and then apply to the programs that seemed best to fit the decisions I made. And for the record: I have no regrets about my choice of seminary for my Masters degree (Westminster Seminary California class of 2009, in case you were curious!).

Still, while sorting through all these questions, I never once questioned the basic premise behind them: that I would have to relocate my life to a brick-and-mortar theological college and earn a graduate degree in divinity or theology to prepare for a lifetime of ministry.

Today in North America, that basic premise has largely gone out the window.

Seminary today: hard questions and real challenges

The people I speak to regarding our upcoming ministry teaching students from around the world routinely question the need for pastors to attend seminary – and even the idea of seminary itself. In fact, I am meeting more people in pastoral leadership who have not studied at a seminary, and many of those who have undertaken theological studies have done so part time, and often online.

Recent statistical trends (check out Ryan Burge and Ed Stetzer here and here on the 2026 data reported by the Association of Theological Schools) regarding those who do end up attending seminary bear my experience out: among graduate theological schools in North America, it is small, residential seminaries associated with a denominational identity or tradition that are more likely to be in decline, while large, interdenominational seminaries that permit coursework to be carried out entirely online are fully ascendent today.

What’s more, now that higher education is staring down the rise of a (so-called) Artificial Intelligence that can find, analyze and synthesize biblical and theological information at the push of a few buttons, the utility of a seminary degree and the necessity of the personal sacrifice required to pursue it can seem outdated, even illogical. Why not simply serve in one’s local church and turn to a nearby mentor – or the internet – for guidance?

This new environment can force professors and seminary staff onto their back foot, as it were, trying to justify their institutions to students and donors in North America. But for missionaries trying to make the case for offering a robust, in-person theological education to church leaders from all around the world, promoting this kind of a traditional seminary model can be a hard sell for donors and other new ministry partners. Why form leaders for the church in ways that demand so much time, money and human resources?

In what follows, I want to take some time and look at where seminaries came from, what they have to offer those who study in residence, and why they remain crucial for training leaders in the global church. Some of this might seem long (skip the next section if you want to avoid all the history!), but I think it’s really important to understand how seminaries were designed to be “seedbeds” for new ministers, and so also how new leaders lose out when they don’t have affordable access to this kind of formation.

Seminary in years past: the “seedbed” for new ministers

In his 2015 History of Theological Education, the venerable church historian Justo González observes that in early Christianity, theological education was not a specialty reserved for pastors and priests. Rather, the church saw its vocation in the world, at least in part, as theological and educational: as people came to faith in Christ, they were taught to study the scriptures, to speak of God and for God, to grow in Christian maturity as part of a larger community of disciples (apprentices) who were being trained by Jesus their Master. Yes, pastors were expected to have this formation – but so were all the faithful who had been baptized into Christ! For centuries, training in scripture, theology, and the church’s history was an activity of the whole church for the whole church.

However, as the Western Roman empire began crumbling in the fourth and fifth centuries, a period of societal chaos soon reigned in many parts of Europe. In this period, those who came together to obey Christ’s commandments while living in community assumed many of the roles that had been the responsibility of the whole church, including those of Christian thought and education. Monasteries and mendicants carried on the task of searching the scriptures and speaking well of God, and in time their books and universities spread out all over Europe. But these schools had little to do with the training of the average clergyman, who might have had a smattering of Latin and nothing more.

The Reformation in the sixteenth century seized on these universities to raise up generations of new preachers who were trained in God’s word. Combining a humanities curriculum offering training in the liberal arts and sciences with a theological curriculum dedicated to scripture, schools like Wittenberg in Germany or Cambridge in England produced not only well-rounded scholars but also faithful pastors who fanned out over Protestant Europe. And new, similar institutions were popping up around Switzerland, the Palatinate, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia – all with the same vision of integrating the academic study of scripture and theology with the practical care of souls.

As a reaction to the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican insistence on formation in community, the Roman Catholics began what they referred to as “seedbeds” (seminaria): schools where a practical training in ministry would be combined with an education in philosophy, theology, and history. These Roman Catholic “seminaries” offered what Protestant colleges in Europe, and then evangelical seminaries in North America had on offer as well: a community of teachers and learners who would study scripture, doctrine, languages, and history, all the while living and worshiping together to prepare for ministry in the church.

Not all clergy attended their denomination’s seminary, of course, especially in the United States where pioneering families were often days away from a church, let alone from Harvard or Princeton. Nevertheless, as in many parts of the developing world today, a seminary education served to prepare senior church leaders while establishing a pattern to which other clergy were often expected to approximate, even if they hadn’t had the benefit of attending.

There were certainly weaknesses to this model for forming new ministers, chief among them the seminary “bubble” that isolated students from local churches and places to engage in ministry. And space does not permit me to discuss how the rise of the German research university contributed to this divide between the specialized theological “sciences” divorced from piety and the practice of Christian ministry among the people. However, despite these concerns, many churches shared vision for ministry formation that set out a holistic ideal for preparing the church’s leaders. This ideal prioritized 1) corporate worship, 2) community fellowship, 3) in-person mentorship, 4) leisure to study, and 5) mastery of God’s word and the shared inheritance of the Christian church.

So, why make attending a seminary a priority today?

This ideal of the “seedbed” remains my preferred way to prepare leaders for the church all around the world. Like González, I hesitate to draw a line between our catechesis and our colleges, between Sunday School and seminary studies: the whole church is called to explore the things of God and make him better known!

But we live in a time when the average Christian has not been formed well at home or in the pew, and certainly not well enough to take the reins of a church and lead Christ’s flock as a shepherd in his name.

Most people who are called to ministry need extra study, extra exposure to the Word of God, extra time spent in worship with others who are preparing. This means having access not only to professors to guide these studies, and not only to libraries whose contents can challenge and awaken us to new ideas, but also to the freedom that comes from having other obligations and responsibilities taken off of our vocational plates. Perhaps not everyone in the church is called to spend the time and money to receive this kind of maximalized education, but some are – and above all, those who are called to lead.

Along those same lines, so few of us who have come up in the church have experienced living together with other Christians in this kind of intentional community. All seminaries – even the Protestant ones! – used to be set up as a kind of monastic fellowship, devoted both to a common mission and to one’s fellow missioners. And the “life together” that happens as we prepare to serve Christ’s church is (as Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us) supremely difficult, painful, bewildering, and yet –above all – profoundly sanctifying. While a fantastic local church should offer us the opportunity to go deeply into this kind of Christian fellowship and intentional community, the vast majority simply don’t. For most of us, our first experience of being a part of a daily fellowship of worshipers, students, and (above all) servants of Jesus Christ takes place when we arrive at seminary.

I know that this conventional seminary model of preparing leaders for the church has shortcomings: not only are they expensive to run without the old monastic vows of poverty, but the strain of study can deprive students of the leisure and space required to absorb the ideas and skills being fostered, not to mention the time to “touch grass” (as the kids are calling it) with people who aren’t theological weirdos. No, really, I do get it: there’s a reason for the old joke about seminaries being “cemeteries” rather than “seedbeds” of ministers!

But the models of ministry formation that are increasingly replacing the old residential seminary model of academic rigor and community life cannot – at least in the aggregate – measure up to the older ideals of relational mentorship and skillful mastery. The new models for pastoral training may be necessary, at least for economic reasons: after all, these days very few seminary professors are taking monastic vows of poverty, and fewer and fewer churches are feeling called to send away their best young people to receive their education far from home with little chance of their returning. Better, perhaps, to train them in-house for free, or to send them online for asynchronous coursework or AI-assisted queries than to pay for at least three years of study living at a college somewhere else around the world.

However, I am convinced that the Lord honors what we give away with no expectation of a return on the congregation’s investment. Planting a young person in a “seedbed” far away is to store up treasures in heaven rather than build the kingdom on earth, to cast one’s bread upon the water in hope that it will somehow return. I myself have witnessed the Lord bless the (Baptist) church that first encouraged me to go to seminary, and I have seen the Lord prosper those in the (Anglican) church who helped sustain me while I was studying at a (Presbyterian) seminary. Which is to say, to commission a seminarian to study is a collective effort, not unlike sending a missionary to unknown lands. In both cases, we should be confident that obedience to Christ’s command and trust in his promises will yield a plentiful harvest of righteousness that will redound to those who scattered those seeds.

Seminary life and the call to global mission today

I see these two streams coming together in my own life, as I look forward as a missionary to teaching at Tyndale Theological Seminary, a theological college that is equipping new missionaries to serve Christ around the world by giving them full access to an affordable postgraduate education.

Most of my missionary work until this point has been in contexts that lacked affordable access to this “seedbed” model of ministry formation. While God was certainly at work in these communities and churches – and in incredible ways! – my wife and I also witnessed the effects of this lack. Whether in South America, Central America, or the Caribbean, it was hard for cash-strapped families and churches to place a candidate for ministry in a seminary far away from home.

For some – Anglicans, traditional Protestants, and Roman Catholics, among others – this difficulty meant that fewer people were sent to train for ministry, and so smaller and more rural churches (like ours) rarely enjoyed clergy residing in the parish and depended instead on lay ministers to teach the Word and care for the flock. For others – most notably Pentecostals and non-denominational churches – this meant that many ordained pastors never received the fuller formation that seminaries were set up to provide. In this latter case, beyond the risk of unintended error in doctrine, we found that under-equipped leaders were at greater risk of emotional burnout and vocational shipwreck.

As missionaries, we came away from these experiences with the conviction that while a seminary education is not the only path to effective ministry, and while there can be disadvantages to depending on these schools for formation, they are ordinarily still the best way to equip Christians to serve Jesus Christ by leading his church.

And this is one of the reasons we are so excited about serving at Tyndale! I love telling people how this old-school curriculum in biblical studies, systematic theology, and church history flows into the practical ministry of our students in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and how their sacrifices are enabling faithful pastoral ministry throughout the church.

I intend in a future Muddling to go into more detail about the coursework that a seminary like this requires. But in the meantime, if you have doubts about the relevance of this ministry of the church – of preparing its leaders by guiding them in community through scripture and the church’s tradition – I encourage you to pray about it, and reach out to me if you’re interested in speaking more.

Desiring Easter

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

— Colossians 3:1–4

“Desire” is not the first word that I typically associate with my celebration of Easter – at least, not when I feel like I am at my most devout. Yes, in many Christian traditions Easter concludes a long season of Lenten fasting prior to the biggest Sunday of the year, and so there are often delicious goodies waiting for us on the other side of Holy Week: Avgolemono Soup for some, Cadbury Cream Eggs for others. But I often slip into treating these delicacies as a worldly prize for the spiritually strong-willed who have successfully managed their forty days of purgatorial abstinence. Instead, in my own paschal devotions, I tend to dwell on the third-day reality of Jesus’s divinely human victory over death, sin, and hell. The fact of his victory, I am convinced, should be acknowledged, its significance assimilated, its truth announced far and wide to all who will listen. Something happened on the first Easter, regardless of our reaction to it, our feelings about it, or our own individual wants or desires.

But as I was praying in church with my family on Easter Sunday this year, I was struck by the way in which the traditional Collect (the concise prayer that pulls all the scripture readings together) makes “desires” a key part of the Christian message of the resurrection:

Almighty God, who through thine only begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special grace preventing us, thou doest put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, and the holy Ghost, ever one God world without end. Amen.

The reference here to “good desires” implanted in our minds echoes the Epistle reading for the day, Colossians 3:1–4. There, the apostle Paul not only assumes already that Christ has been raised from the dead, but he also insists that in our baptism into his death and resurrection (2:12) we too have been raised up with him. So what does he urge? “Seek the things that are above (τὰ ἄνω ζητεῖτε) where Christ is,” and, “Set your minds on things that are above (τὰ ἄνω φρονεῖτε), not on things that are on earth” (3:1–2).

Paul’s verbs in these verses are imperatives of wanting and desiring: they entail an existential need, a passionate longing, an intentional pursuit, and the hope of consummation. To “seek” and “set our minds on things above” is to remove our hearts from the treasures around us in this world (Mt 6:19–24) since they cannot sate our deeper hungers or quench our spiritual thirst. The risen Christ alone is our true life, and so he alone must become the object of our truest wants. To celebrate Easter truly, then, is to reorient our desires from earth toward the one seated at the Father’s right hand, just as it means being retrained in patience to await his coming in glory (Col 3:2, 4).

It is so difficult, however, to crave things above or things to come that cannot be seen or felt or smelt by us here and now. In fact, we have in the Gospels only the barest glimpses into Christ’s own life following his triumph over death. Even his disciples have a hard time recognizing him themselves; it takes the whisper of a name (Jn 20:16), the marks of his sufferings (20:20), the breaking of bread (Lk 24:30–31), the repetition of a miracle (Jn 21:7), or the assertion of his authority (Mt 28:18) to open the eyes of his followers so that they could see him right in front of them and remove all doubt. And if we are to set our hearts on the kingdom of God and the Lord of glory and the day of our own resurrection, don’t we need at least a foretaste of the feast to come, some present way of experiencing this eternal reality? How can we access this heavenly experience when we are not only  here on earth, but are ourselves made of earth (1 Cor 15:47–49)?

Paul, however, does not seem particularly bothered by this question: after all, in the waters of baptism we have experienced these heavenly realities already: “You have been raised with Christ,” and “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:1, 3; emphasis added). As we hear the good news of Jesus, as we approach him through faith, as we become one with him in the Spirit, we do taste the new cosmos that was birthed on Easter morning – and it leaves us wanting more, even if initially it is only at a subconscious level. So, having “put off the old self” and “put on the new” (3:9–10), he now encourages us to “put to death what is earthly” in ourselves (3:5) and instead to “put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (3:14). And so, through the private habits and community disciplines that Paul enumerates in the verses that follow, God cultivates these affective first fruits of the resurrection within our hearts and prepares our palates for the life of the world to come by making us yearn for them. Or, to put it in the words of the Collect for Easter Day, just as his grace alone “prevents” (goes before) our genuine desire for this transfigured life, so also his help alone enables us to bring that desire to “good effect” day after day.

This Easter, I am trying to get out of my head a bit and instead pray to desire new things in new ways: to want not only those good things that can be found in this world – and they are indeed good gifts from the hand of God himself – but also the better things that the world cannot give. I am, in other words, praying to desire Jesus himself more and above everything else.

In Gethsemane

So, could you not watch with me one hour?

We’re in the middle of Holy Week. This has always been my favorite week in the church calendar. So much happens in the last week of Jesus’ life – in the final hours even. I could pick any number of moments in those final hours meditating on God’s Word, but I keep coming back to the Garden.

Just a few verses earlier, Peter boldly proclaims that he would die before denying Jesus. Now we see him and just two other disciples being asked to stay with Jesus as he prays … a seemingly easy task. After all, Jesus is the one who is suffering. Jesus is the one who is “sorrowful, even to death.” Jesus is the one who is about to die. But even in this small thing – staying with a friend in need – they fail. When I read Jesus coming back to Peter and saying, “So, could you not watch with me one hour?” I hear Peter’s declaration of standing with Jesus even to death still ringing. And yet, before he even got to the true test of faith, he failed in this small thing. “Stay with me.”

It’s hard to read this and not see my own life playing out with the disciples. I live in a place where I can worship our Lord freely. I have the amazing privilege right now of getting to visit different churches, in many different states, and share about being missionaries for the sake of the Gospel. I can sit here on my bed and write this meditation thinking, “Yes, I will stand with Jesus even unto death.” And I pray that if that ever comes to be tested, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I will remain true to Christ. But unlike Peter, the rest of the disciples, and many of our fellow Christians around the world, I don’t know if that is where God is going to test me. Where I do see myself, almost daily, is in the sleeping disciples.

The disciples were tired – for very real and understandable reasons, I might add. I’m tired. There’s the physical tired that comes with being a mom of three young kids, homeschooling, and being in a period of transition. There’s the emotional tired that comes with being a mom of three young kids, homeschooling, and being in a period of transition. And there’s just the mental tired that comes from being a mom of three young kids, homeschooling, and being in a period of transition. I realize this is repetitive – maybe because I’m tired. It can even sound down, or unhappy, but in truth, it’s just busy. And in its busyness, it is very easy for me to find that I could not stop and watch with my Lord. That in my busy, chaotic life (which I love!), this small task of spending time with Christ can be overlooked. I’m not standing up and denying Christ, but I am placing things, sometimes even sleep, in front of him.

But the burdens I carry are not unknown to Him. He says he will take them on himself and give me rest. The stresses I have about life right now are not surprises to him, but things he prays with me. But I do have to actually stop, watch, and pray. I have to take the time to spend with Christ in His Word and pray. Sometimes that will be an hour. Sometimes it’s five minutes. And sometimes it’s only when we come together in our family prayers. But it’s not a passing thing. It’s a deliberate decision to “stay awake.” He tells the disciples, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” My temptation is to put things ahead of Christ and run, run, run. Lord God, give me your Spirit that I may watch and pray with you.