For Jesus, the cross meant denial, it meant betrayal, it meant alienation, it meant abandonment,

it meant misunderstanding from those who were closest to him.

A student is not greater than his master, and so if they deserted the master and he had those

experiences, they will do the same. It will happen to us. And if one leads, they must accept

that as the cross upon which they must consent to be impaled.

How can a pastor in training make the most of his seminary education? And what is seminary actually supposed to teach those who feel called to pastoral ministry?

In our interview today, I'm talking with Dave Harvey about his own path to ministry,

what he did and didn't learn in seminary, and how to discern whether or not you're really called to the pastorate.

Dave is the president of a church planting ministry called the Great Commission Collective,

and is the author of Am I Called, the Summonds to Pastoral Ministry from Crossway?

Let's get started.

Well, Dave, thank you so much for joining me again on the Crossway podcast.

It's good to be back, Matt. I'm glad we're going to be able to have a conversation together.

Yeah. Yeah, in our last

conversation earlier this year, we were talking about your book, the plurality principle,

talking about the importance of having a plurality of elders in the church. But in that conversation,

you said something that really struck me and stuck with me and made me want to talk to you again, you said something

to the effect that every pastor that you know would resonate likely with the feeling that

that real ministry, the actual daily experience of pastoral ministry, is, I think you said,

dramatically different than what they expected while they were in seminary.

And so that comment stuck with me. I wanted to dig into that a bit more and discuss what it looks like even for a guy right now to make the most of his seminary education with that kind of reality in mind.

So maybe just to kick us off, I wonder if you could share a little bit about your own

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