Donald S. Whitney

Altogether I’ve spent 24 years in pastoral ministry. Some were part-time, but most were full-time, including almost 15 years as pastor of an SBC church in the Chicago area. This ministry experience, along with more than 70 years of active participation in local churches, has made it impossible for me to teach in a seminary classroom without applying the instruction to ministry in the church. By God’s grace, I am a lifelong churchman. I was even taken to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night for nine months before I was born. The family of God is my family. My ministry as a seminary professor is, ultimately, for the glory of God and for my family—”for the Church” of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are so many reasons; it’s hard to give a concise answer. For one, it’s deeply satisfying to teach in a place with the evident blessing of the Lord upon it. Second, the fidelity of the faculty to the confessional commitments of the seminary and the collegiality this fosters is a fulfilling context in which to teach. Add to these the quality and spirit of the leadership of Dr. Allen and his team, the caliber of students Midwestern tends to attract, and the sheer beauty of the campus all contribute to the reasons why I love teaching at MBTS.

The next generation of pastors and ministry leaders is facing and will face challenges that were unimaginable when my generation of pastors entered the ministry. However, I am encouraged by the fact that, for the most part, they are better prepared at the outset of their ministries than my generation was. I am incredibly grateful for the seminary education I was privileged to receive. I believe that whatever ministry fruitfulness I have seen would have been far less without seminary. But I think students today are better equipped than we were in my day. As one indication of this, I often find myself surprised to learn that—because of the advances in technology and the greater access it gives to Christian resources—many students who enter my classes have read classic books and writers I never even knew about until long after seminary.