Date: July 23, 2025
Summer is free of classes, homework, and exams. But returning students know better. We’re juggling CPE shifts, parish placements, and side jobs. Add holidays, family commitments, and long-delayed oil changes, and July can feel like finals week in flip-flops.
All that work is necessary to our training. Yet just as with gym training, those gains won’t stick if we don’t give ourselves a chance to recover. Recovery isn’t a break; it’s getting stronger. Our commitments, curricular and otherwise, will make us better ministers of the Gospel. But we have to follow them with adequate recovery.
The senior-class retreat hits early this year: September 4–7. It’s time for much-needed fellowship and rest before we turn to GOE outlines, senior sermons, and the job search.
Even if you’re not joining our retreat, here’s the ask: Schedule some real recovery before you climb back up the Holy Hill. Power down the GroupMe chats. Read something that isn’t on a syllabus. Take a walk, nap, or your car in—whatever will keep your engine from seizing mid-semester. Your family, friends, and classmates will thank you, and so will the parish that one day trusts you with the pulpit and the table.
Recovery is ministry prep. Let’s arrive in September rested and ready.
Joshua House
M.Div. Senior Class President, ’26