Why Should You Go to Seminary?

Why should you go to seminary? Fuller professors share their answers.

Seminary Allows Us to Think Critically and Carefully in Community

There are two major reasons to choose to go to seminary. The first is to learn to think critically about who God is, who we are as human beings, and what the created order is that God has given us. The second is to learn to ask big questions in community. We can ask many big questions about God and about ourselves alone with our Bibles, but there is something significant about asking those questions with other people from all over the world—from different countries, different cultures, different languages—all in one space, wrestling together about these big and important questions. It’s a beautiful thing to learn to think critically and carefully in community.

Christin J. Fort, associate professor of clinical psychology

Seminary Helps Us Think Carefully About What It Means to be Christian

Seminary gives you time and space to reflect carefully about God and about how we, as the Christian movement, have arrived to where we are today, dealing with the challenges that we currently face. There are many ways of reading the Bible or of understanding Christianity that deserve to be questioned, and maybe those are questions that you have. Seminary gives you an opportunity to sit carefully with other people who have different experiences from you and think differently than you, to be exposed to the best scholarship that there is, and to think carefully about what it means to be Christian and what the Christian calling is in this world.

Tommy Givens, professor of New Testament and ethics

Seminary Gives Us Biblically-Grounded Depth and Clarity for Engaging with Our World

Our world is shallow, and it needs depth. Our world is confused, and it needs clarity. Going to seminary can give you the depth and the clarity that our world needs. You will be grounded in Scripture; you will listen to the big questions of the church and of the world. At Fuller, we do theologically, biblically grounded reflection. Then we emerge with much better answers for our confused and shallow world.

Kara Powell, chief of leadership formation, executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, and professor of youth and family ministry

Seminary Teaches the Journey of Christian Faith Throughout History and Around the World

At its best, seminary will take you through the journey of Christian faith—from its roots in the Bible with thousands of years of history and languages, through church history, through all of the things that the church has done in its past—and it will widen your scope of understanding beyond your own culture and to the whole world. Seminary provides you the faculty and the resources to cover this wide range of important topics, with the expertise to do it well.

Chris Hays, D. Wilson Moore Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Discerning a call to pastoral ministry? Learn about Fuller’s degrees, including the Master of Divinity (MDiv), which offers definitive training for agile, effective church leaders in an ever-changing world.