What is Seminary Stowaways?
A seminary education is the most recognized way for a believer to gain knowledge about the Bible, theology, and church history. Not everyone who has a passion for God's Word can spend 3 years, thousands of dollars, and hundreds of hours getting an MDiv, a common prerequisite for vocational ministry. And honestly, not everyone wants to stay in school that long. Hosts Luann Riley and Hannah Connor bring you along for Luann's journey through seminary. Subject by subject, Seminary Stowaways makes the lively discussion of a seminary classroom accessible to everyone - no love of academia needed, just a desire to know more of God. This is a journey for those without a a ticket.
That’s Hannah on the left and Luann on the right.
Meet Your Hosts
Luann Riley grew up in Alabama, but got to Texas with her husband Justin as fast as she could. She left her ladder-climbing gig in corporate America for a full-time job in ministry seven years ago. She is the former discipleship director of a large Houston area church. Luann is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Theology while wrangling twin boys. She has a passion for hoodie sweatshirts, non-dairy creamer, books that make her cry and Alabama football.
Hannah Connor is currently a Communications Manager for an anti child trafficking organization. She is also a wife and a mum. Her family just moved back to the US after doing missions in the UK for the past 3 years. She’s an Enneagram 5. She loves tv and detective stories. She has a degree in Creative Writing and has worked in church ministry or para-church ministry for the past 8 years.
Luann and Hannah met when they were both working for a church in the suburbs of Houston, TX. They became fast friends when they took a staff-enrichment Preaching class together and have been cheering one another on ever since.
Available Episodes
Trailer
Seminary Stowaways is a podcast that makes the lively discussion of the seminary classroom available to everyone.
Episode 1: Calling
What does it mean to be called? Do all Christians have the same calling? What if you don’t even know what your calling is? How do you find it? Luann shares the what she’s learning in her first seminary class, so clim aboard, Stowaways!
Episode 2: God is Like A Hot Dog
What are spiritual disciplines and where do they come from? Why are they such a central and challenging part of the Christian faith? Can we opt out of them? Make up our own? Anchors aweigh, stowaways, as Luann shares what she’s been learning about spiritual practices in seminary.
Episode 3: Animal Messengers and Other Ways to Hear From God - This week Luann is sharing what she’s been learning in seminary about discernment, as explained by beloved writer, philosopher and pilgrim, Henri Nouwen. Is discernment a gift or a discipline? How does God want to speak to us? What is required on our part? What if we don’t feel like God is saying… much of anything? And what does Nouwen say about the worst possible thing God might be saying to us: Wait.
Episode 6: My Thinking Cap - This week Luann and I are take some time to build a framework before we jump into the next class that she tackled in seminary: Worship Practices. We’re doing this because the class turned out to be totally different that she expected. Like any class, content is very influence by the teacher, and her teach this term came from a very strong viewpoint. Luann found herself dissatisfied with the explanations that she was being given. As she asked more and more questions, well… it started to reminded her of the days that drove her away from the church all those years ago. And that led to many conversations between the two of us. About the very specific theology this professor embraces, about the places where critical thinking isn’t always welcome and even (eventually) about Worship Practices).
Episode 9: The Bible Mafia. An episode on Bible translations, and the biases with which we approach them. Sounds simple. I mean, a translator just looks at an old manuscript and copies into another language the words that are there, right? Maybe. But what if there is no English equivalent for that word, or what if punctuation is missing!? What then? And it begs the bigger question of how do we decide which translations are most trustworthy and which ones are just rubbish! We’ll get into all that.
Episode 4: God Is A Big Boy - In this episode of Seminary Stowaways Luann share what she has been learning about the spiritual discipline of Lament. We look at the Psalms for guidance on how we can approach God when we are full of pain, anger, confusion. Is there a right way to lament? Is it possible to go too far - to be too uncensored as we pour out our hearts before God? Hosts Hannah and Luann have very histories when it comes to telling God just what we think of the painful times in our life. You don’t want to miss this episode.
Episode 7: A Better View of the Mountain - Welcome aboard, Stowaways! This week on Seminary Stowaways, we welcome our first guest, friend of the pod, Brion Daugherty. Brion spent 4 years working on his PhD in Old Testament at the University of Bristol, in addition to being a super brain he’s a down-to-earth, lovely person. And he was kind enough to answer all our questions as we prepare to jump head-first into Worship Practices. We’ll be running into the Old Testament everywhere we turn in this class, but first, we needed to know: “Why does the Old Testament matter so much?” “Can you be a good Christian and not know anything about the Exodus or the Passover?” Stick around for this one, folks.
Episode 5: Blind Date - In this episode Luann is going to share with us what she’s been learning in seminary about Lectio Divina, an approach to scripture that focuses on presence and listening rather than study. It’s a pretty old practice, but it’s seen a resurgence in recent days, and has actually stirred up a bit of Controversy within Christian circles. What is all the fuss? Well, stick around and we’ll unpack it all together.
Episode 8: God Said Nap! The Sabbath. The most ignored commandment, and in my mind, kind of the weirdest. It hardly seems to have the same urgency as “Do not murder”. It’s for people who make their own schedules and enjoy leisurely mimosa-brunches on Saturday. Not for people who wake up to children jumping on their faces or who are SERVING brunch on Saturday. In this episode, Luann walks us through an exploration of the Hebrew roots of Sabbath and explains the difference between keeping the Sabbath and embracing Sabbath-keeping practices. And that un-relenting business of life that make a day of rest seem both unattainable and lazy? Well, we get to the bottom of that too.