Mark Warnock. The Complete Seminary Survival Guide. West Palm Beach, FL: Seminary Survival Strategies, 2017. 147 pp. $9.99.
Considering seminary? Already a student? How do you navigate the waters of the seminary environment? How do you manage schedule, family, spiritual life, ministry preparation, finances, and so much more? Answering questions like these with practical, simple, but not always obvious solutions is the point of The Complete Seminary Survival Guide.
Mark Warnock is a seminary graduate with both an MDIV and PhD. He has been a student on campus and a student from a distance. Even more importantly, He has served in a variety of ministry settings and has a solid grasp of concepts to help students make things work.
What you should love about this book is the practical approach that Warnock offers his readers for seminary survival. The author is not foolish enough to think that he can offer a one-size-fits-all approach to how you should handle your own personal navigation through seminary. Instead, he offers multiple, practical, and useful bits of counsel. Often he will offer several options, and then simply tell students to pick one and see if it works. This practical and personalizable approach makes this book a help to students from a variety of backgrounds and in a variety of life situations.
Another beauty of this work is the author’s sometimes unconventional approach to seminary. While encouraging students to get all they can from their classes and to take advantage of the glorious opportunity afforded them, Warnock knows that not all classes will be of equal value and equal weight to every student. Thus, he can tell students—perish the thought—that settling for a B in a less important class is worth it in order to succeed in a more important class, in ministry, or in marriage. One would think that such counsel would be obvious, but as a seminary graduate myself, I can say that this simple principle is often overlooked by eager students who are slaves to their GPA.
One final positive that I will mention is Warnock’s focus on real ministry. The book contains some incredibly valuable advice to students about doing real ministry while in seminary. The author suggests to students that they should take advantage of the opportunities around them to serve in churches, to do real ministry, to learn from experienced pastors, and to simply not waste their time in seminary sitting in Sunday School classes full of other seminary students. The author points out that seminary students need to learn to love people, and this is not going to happen in the classroom. That piece of counsel alone would make the book worth far more than its purchase price for any student who would take it to heart.
No, as a student, you will not always agree with the advice Warnock offers in his book. He suggests that you avoid living on campus in order to relate to people outside of the seminary bubble. This is good counsel for many, but it will not work for all. Warnock understands that even as he will prod students to consider things from a fresh perspective.
I would happily and strongly recommend The Complete Seminary Survival Guide to any students presently in or presently considering seminary. Beyond that, however, I would also recommend this book to simply any student. The priorities that Warnock sets forth for seminary students should ring true for students in any degree program. His counsel on time-management and life priorities is invaluable. This would be a great book to pick up for someone you know headed to seminary or perhaps even for someone starting another type of graduate program. Many of the chapters on academics would even be a great help to high-school students. If you are a student, give this book a try. If you are a parent or pastor of a student, do not hesitate to make this a valuable gift.
Pastor Travis Peterson 