Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. – Friedrich Nietzsche

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. - Paul, Romans 7:19

Halloween is upon us.  The name comes from the Old English word for “All Halloweds Eve” – the night before All Saints Day.  Those two days make for the perfect chance to explore the best and worst of ourselves.  To face our inner monsters and to celebrate the “saints” in our lives who we admire and look up to.  In Jungian talk – these are our dark and golden shadows.

A powerful spiritual practice that addresses those parts of us that we’re “not so thrilled about” is known as shadow work. According to Jungian psychology, we all have metaphorical masks that we wear and images (our personas) that we seek to put forth in the world for how we’d like to be seen and known for.  Yet, the more that we focus on those idealized images, the more we repress and the opposites of whatever our preferred images may be pop up into our lives.  If I want to be known as “nice, sensitive person,” I stuff and hide away the “mean, insensitive, jerk” parts of me.  But the thing is, when we try to minimize those darker shadows, we actually increase and magnify their power.  And, unless we do something to own, embrace, and integrate those darker parts of ourselves, they grow and fester until they erupt – sometimes in embarrassing, even career-ending, sorts of ways.

A glaring example of what happens when we fail to admit and embrace our shadow sides is what happened to Ted Haggard in 2006. Haggard was the senior pastor of a mega-church in Colorado Springs, CO and he was the president of the National Evangelical Association.  He was forced to resign in utter humiliation when news reports were released about his engaging in extra-marital sex and taking illegal drugs with gay prostitutes in Denver (note: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with homosexuality, I’m merely stating the facts about that case and to show the staggering extent to which people will repress parts of themselves – even to the point of hypocritically preaching against part of their true selves.  While Haggard described this as “giving into his dark side” I would submit that this could better be understood as his golden shadow seeking to see the light of day).

We need to make friends with our shadows and allow them to vent, breathe, exercise, and see the light of day from time to time on our terms under our control.   If we don’t allow for this, they will speak their piece and they’ll do it on their terms.

Shadows thrive on being kept secret so one healthy thing to do is to admit what they are and tell people about them.  I know. This seems like it would be the last thing you’d want to do, but shining some light on them and vulnerably talking about them reduces their power considerably – and it may very well endear you to the people you disclose them too.  Such sharing shows that you’re a fellow human being who is trying to be down to earth and real.   Yep, talking about your dark side actually makes you more attractive to people than keeping them hidden.  It takes some time and practice to get your mind around this, but it’s true.

A sage truth that pastors and psychologists learn (or are at least taught) along the way is, “That which we criticize most in others is that which we struggle with most ourselves” (that concept isn’t original to me, though this particular wording of it may be). Hence, a powerful bit of shadow work is to think about the people in your life who irritate you and rub you the wrong way – the people who you simply can’t stand.  Then, think about how you are like those people – how you share some of the same qualities and tendencies that you loathe in them.  What you discover may be most revealing.  Consider what you can learn from your shadow(s); what they’re trying to tell you; and you can come to see them as a gift – a gift that can help you be a more gracious and effective vessel of God’s love in the world.

I’d like to suggest that we keep these things in mind as we put together our Halloween costumes.Instead of just buying some random costume or mask from a store, why not embrace this season as a part of our mental and social health? Why not use it as a time to lift up our shadow sides and bring them to the light of day?

One of the ways to exercise and embrace our darker shadow sides is to create a costume that exemplifies and exaggerates those qualities.  For instance, if you tend to want the world to see you as responsible, precise, always in control, and well, perfect, you might do well to throw on a tie-dyed t-shirt, preferably with some fresh oil stains on it from some deep fried onion rings or dripping burger juice, grow out your facial and/or leg hair, mess up the hair on your head, wear your pants on backwards and/or inside out (or at least have some oil on them from changing the oil of your car or some paint from having just attempted to paint a painting of a volcano erupting into the cosmos), tuck a half consumed bottle of Jim Beam in the waist, and wear the same underwear you wore a few days ago (nobody has to know about that detail).

Or if you tend to want folks to perceive you as a prim and proper, goody-two-shoes prude, perhaps donning a pair of lounging slippers, a pipe, and silk robe with a Playboy bunny emblem on it might be what’s in order to express the lustful beast that dwells beneath.  You may really need to let that freak flag fly a bit.

Or, if you want people to perceive you as a “player” who has more men or women than you know what to do with, perhaps a costume that embraces your inner, modest, socially awkward self who has a fear of intimacy is what would fit the bill.   …You get the idea…

Another tack to consider is to think of the sort of person who you can’t stand, the sort of person who would drive you bonkers to have to sit next to on a long plane flight and make a list of those qualities that ruffle your feathers.  Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, or Glenn Beck come to mind for me.  Then, create a mask or costume that personifies those qualities and wear it – all the while reflecting upon how you are like that person.  How you demonstrate some of those same tendencies and qualities.  Humbling, yes,  .. but this little exercise could really be a profound investment in yourself.

Clearly, healthy “shadow management” requires far more than a token lampooning of our shadows once a year on a holiday  (a way of dancing out our demons) – but I encourage us to try it.  Who knows what sort of inner shifts and liberations might take place as a result?  I for one am willing to find out.  I’ll be the guy in a suit with a sneer on his face in a hunting outfit with a homemade shotgun slung over his shoulder saying, “Trick or Treat Peon!”  I might even have some Tea Party brochures or forms to buy stock in Halliburton to give ya in exchange for some candy.

ps.  an alternative approach is to revive the practice from the Middle Ages where people would dress up as their favorite saint the night before All Saints Day.  For our purposes, we could dress up like someone who we really admire and look up to – as the reason you are drawn to such persons is because you seen in them what you have within you as well – your golden shadow.

Peace, Shalom, Salaam, Namaste, Blessed Be.

Roger

p.s. and may brother Ted no longer hide his golden shadow!  He is so gifted and talented in so many ways.  Thinking the costume he might consider wearing should be simply Divine.

This post originally appeared at Elephant Journal and is reprinted with permission from the author.

Roger is an ordained United Methodist pastor and the author of the new book - Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity.  He is also an active member of The Christian Left’s Facebook page

It’s been a long time since I was a seminary student.  I graduated from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1979 with an MDiv degree.  Since then I have worked as associate pastor in a large church, community organizer and non-profit agency director, university campus minister, small church pastor, and now in university religious affairs.  I’ve had three decades of OJT – on the job training – and it would have been nice to have learned some of it an easier way than the hard way.  So here I offer my list of things that I wish they’d teach in seminary.

1)  The Jesus Seminar (Westar Institute) approach to biblical study.  It’s dogma-free, cutting-edge scholarship that is presented in a church-friendly manner.  Future pastors need to get a clear-eyed view of the historical circumstances in which the Bible was assembled, without wearing doctrine-colored lenses.  They can study dogma and doctrine in other classes.

2)  Honest, lively, jargon-free preaching skills.  Pastors need to learn how to preach and teach the Bible in creative, engaging, inspiring ways while making it clear to parishioners that it is a description of the evolving human experience of God, rather than a set of once-and-for-all prescriptions by God for human behavior.   Seminaries need to teach future pastors how to make the transformative power of the Bible come alive while being honest with their parishioners about the poetic, metaphorical, and mythological nature of its content.  Churches are dying of dishonesty!  Seminaries need to be braver than the denominations that support them, so that future pastors will have the courage to speak their truth from the pulpit.  Seminarians must learn to preach in plain English (or plain Spanish, etc.) without theological or denominational jargon.  They must learn to preach in the language of people who are outside the church.   Otherwise the only folks who will understand them, or want to listen to them, are the (shrinking) number of people already in the pews.

3)  Entrepreneurial business skills.  Seminarians need to be told that to survive the coming massive changes in religious life in America and the world, they’ll need to become entrepreneurs.  They need to be taught that they cannot rely on denominational structures to facilitate their careers.  They need to be taught about current and long-term trends in religious affiliation and spiritual identity.  They need to be taught to take their profession into their own hands and learn how to create and manage all kinds of religious institutions that meet the changing needs of the population.  Seminaries should include coursework in how to start up churches, retreat centers, small groups, charitable organizations, and for-profit enterprises that serve the market for religion and spirituality. They need to teach skills in finance, personnel management, community organizing and development, and organizational theory.

4)  Worship skills from the outside world.  Seminaries should hire acting teachers, voice coaches, visual artists, and musicians who have no religious affiliation.  These professionals should teach seminarians communication skills from the arts world outside the church.  Seminarians will get plenty of exposure – for better and for worse – to traditional church worship modes through their internships and work experiences.   Students need to unlearn much about the worship forms they’ve experienced before they get to seminary.  Learning from talented “outsider” artists would give them a new toolset for developing liturgies and preaching styles.

5)  Spiritual practice.  Seminary ought to be a time for practicing what professors teach students to preach.  Meditation practice, prayer, contemplation through the arts, and other forms of mystical spirituality should be integral to the seminary experience.  Students need to experience God directly in order to make sense of religion to themselves and others.

I pray that seminaries will morph into prayer tanks, places where lay and professional people can come to deepen their spirituality and hone their leadership skills.  I envision a time when seminaries are better known as retreat centers for lay people than as schools for professional pastors.  If seminaries have a much wider cultural focus and impact, I believe they’ll be better able to serve their traditional functions for the church, as well.

For more perspectives on the future of seminary education, click here.

Jim Burklo is Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California and the author of Birdlike and Barnless: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians.

Our Symposium on the Future of Seminary Education continues with new posts and articles to continue the conversation.  Here, we share reflections by Dr. Ken Schenck, Dean and Professor of New Testament and Christian Ministry at Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University, originally posted at his blog, Quadrilateral Thoughts.

Over at Patheos, they’ve asked a cross-section of their bloggers to respond to a series of questions on the future of seminary education. I thought I would give you the kinds of answers I would give for Wesley Seminary at IWU.

What is the purpose of a seminary education?

The purpose of a seminary education is to equip a wide variety of “ministers” to participate as fully and powerfully as possible in the mission of God in the world. There are a host of such ministries, among which ministry to a local worshiping community (i.e., a church) is the primary one. There are also ministries to the sick, the poor, the imprisoned, to those in military service (chaplaincy, urban ministry, etc). There are specialized ministry skill sets to particular age groups, locations, and demographics (youth ministry, classical missions). There is the ministry of knowledge for those who resource the church as educators. And seminaries might very well train a host of lay ministers and parachurch ministers.

What are the challenges seminaries face?

I see three primary challenges for seminaries in the days ahead, two practical and one ideological. I am convinced that the biggest challenge seminaries have faced in the last decade is accessibility. There will always be some who are willing to go live somewhere for three years but this number is in sharp decline. The real demand for seminary education now is by some sort of distance education, whether it be online or through satellite campuses. Cost is another major factor, especially in these economic times.

The ideological challenge is America’s move toward a post-Christian society. Whether one agrees with their thinking or not, evangelical seminaries remain in demand because their students sense something living there, something that might make a difference. The question is whether these answers have staying power. What institutions will future ministers perceive to be able to best address the issues that our culture is raising?

I want to throw in a challenge related to this last one, a complaint you hear often from pastors–”Seminary didn’t actually teach me the things I needed to know to do ministry.” I don’t actually think this is entirely the case. I think the problem is more that seminaries do not typically do a good job of showing seminary students the relevance of what they are learning. Seminaries usually lean heavily toward the theoretical and do less to exercise skills in applying theory to practice.

How are you preparing for those challenges?

Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University was founded with these trends in mind. The university made a large commitment to the seminary so that it would be affordable. The university is particularly good at online and distance education, and we have transferred these strengths to our MA and MDIV programs. We have an onsite option, but the demand has clearly been the over 80% of our students who take two-thirds of their program online. In two years, we have over 200 students.

The most distinctive feature of our program is the way we have gone about integration in our curriculum to address the perceived disconnect between seminary and ministry as it really is. We require our MDIV students to be in a local ministry at least 20 hours a week, so many assignments are real church work. We have folded Bible, theology, and church history into the practice of ministry courses (a third of each praxis course is “foundational”). Students also do spiritual formation every semester.

That’s integration of theory with practice, foundations with practice, and the affective with the cognitive.

What is the future of theological education? What will a seminary education look like 10 years from now?

Seminaries will continue to move toward distance education. The online platforms get better and better and, while I do not think students want it, we are at the point where we could even have real time classes online where you could see all your fellow students. Only niche seminaries will survive in the future without a significant distance component.

I believe seminaries will get more and more practical. The days where professors are unaccountable for what they teach–meaning free to teach things perceived to be of no value by the students–are numbered. Whether we like it or not, seminaries are businesses in a competitive market. Those seminaries that don’t scratch the itch of some set of students won’t make it.

One direction the above trajectories point toward is onsite ministerial training. We already seeing the rise of large church ministerial training grounds here and there. There’s a good chance this trend will continue.

What new initiatives and/or creative conversations are shaping the life of your institution?

An immense amount of creativity went into the creation of the seminary and its fundamental design. Our leaders continue to think outside the box. We have started a Spanish version of the MDIV that is entirely in Spanish and two-thirds online. We are in the middle of global conversations about the possibility of serving other constituencies around the world as well. The leaders of the university are also dreaming another innovative plan for church planting where undergraduate students in various disciplines (e.g., nursing) pair up with ministry students (undergraduate or seminary) to plant new churches around the country and world.