Before I went to seminary, I was an avid reader. I especially enjoyed reading novels by authors like Stephen King. Often I would literally devour a novel in one or two days. Then, a few weeks later, I would go back and read the same novel again at a slower pace to make sure I hadn’t missed anything the first time through.

Seminary requires a tremendous amount of reading, much of it dry as dust and about that interesting, too. Very few of the books we had to read during seminary were less than 400 pages in length. And I usually had to plod my way through them, reading 20 or 30 pages at a sitting, then re-reading the same 20 or 30 pages to see if I could make any sense out of it the second time through. Don’t get me wrong – seminary was a tremendously rewarding experience, and I wouldn’t tra…